“To Teach It Grief”: AI, Reality, and Identity in the Posthuman Age through Richard Power’s Galatea2.2
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Date
2025-07-10
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Abstract
Abstract
The present study examines the depiction of artificial intelligence, identity, and embodiment in Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2. It aims to examine how the novel portrays artificial intelligence as a posthuman subject shaped through relational, cognitive, and affective entanglements. The research seeks to analyse how contemporary posthumanist theory enables an insightful exploration of the novel’s treatment of agency, perception, and subjectivity in the course of intelligent machines. To achieve this objective, the study adopts the theoretical frameworks of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, Karen Barad, and David Gunkel. Therefore, the findings indicate that Powers’s novel dismantles human exceptionalism and redefines identity as a hybrid, fluid process phenomenon co-produces through technological and human interactions. Ultimately, the research suggests that the novel presents a critical perspective of posthuman subjectivity and the ethical implications of artificial intelligence
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Keywords: artificial intelligence, posthumanism, embodiment, agency, subjectivity, hybrid identity.