Transhuman Possibilities and Posthuman Futures in Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods

Year 2026, Issue: 5, 47 - 59, 26.01.2026

Fatma Gamze Erkan

Abstract

Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007) interrogates the promises of technological progress and the shifting boundaries of human identity in a world shaped by genetic engineering, automation, and artificial intelligence. The novel critiques transhumanist narratives of mastery, optimization, and rational advancement, showing how such technologies—marketed as liberatory—often reproduce existing hierarchies and forms of exclusion, particularly through gendered and embodied norms. Simultaneously, the novel explores alternative subjectivities through posthuman figures that challenge essentialist notions of the human. Characters such as Spike, a sentient Robo sapiens, and the radioactive mutants from the Dead Forest disrupt boundaries between human and nonhuman, synthetic and organic, conscious and disposable. This study offers a critical reading of The Stone Gods through the dual frameworks of transhumanism and posthumanism. It argues that the novel not only exposes the limits of techno-utopian visions but also imagines more inclusive, affective, and relational models of being.

Keywords

transhumanism , posthumanism , human/nonhuman boundaries , posthuman identity , technological dystopia , mutant bodies , Jeanette Winterson , The Stone Gods

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