Anthropocene Feminism, Companion Species, and the MaddAddam Trilogy

This article claims that Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (2003–2013) offers insights into an emerging “anthropocene feminism” that disrupts the universalized “human” asserted by the Anthropocene. Likewise, Atwood decolonizes Anthropocene discourses by critiquing their reliance on human exceptionalism. By contrasting male characters who adopt humanist–imperialist perspectives with the character of Toby, whose evolving relations with nonhumans are aligned with a feminist new materialist vision, Atwood develops a compelling politics of the posthuman. The trilogy’s privileging of hybrid ontologies reveals the mutually entangled relations that exist between companion species. Arguing for a posthuman ethics, Atwood challenges the Anthropocene’s apocalyptic determinisms and suggests that only such an ethics makes possible a world that continues rather than ends.