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    Chapter 13 A Change of Heart: Animality, Power, and Black Posthuman Enhancement in Malorie Blackman’s Pig-Heart Boy

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    Author(s)
    Trott, Emma
    Collection
    Wellcome
    Language
    English
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    Abstract
    As cardiac xenotransplantation moves from labs into hospitals, this chapter asks what Malorie Blackman’s young adult novel Pig-Heart Boy reveals about power, race, and identity in relation to the experimental therapy. Common heart metaphors are analyzed to ask how the xenograft shapes the teenage protagonist’s developing selfhood, challenges species boundaries, and conceptualizes a move to the posthuman. While a greater appreciation of biological correspondences between creatures has the potential to challenge anthropocentrism, this can be disrupted by power imbalance, producing not empathy but the development of bioresources. Pig-Heart Boy’s protagonist is a Black British boy who understands that power is inherent to ethical debates about xenotransplantation, and he draws parallels between racism and speciesism. While the novel’s opportunities to fully critique shared power structures are not taken, this chapter suggests that this Black child’s agency in choosing to be the first to receive cutting-edge treatment reimagines histories of abusive experiments on Black bodies and positively speculates on a society without structural health inequities. Acknowledging the complexities in Black posthumanism, this chapter argues that Pig-Heart Boy shows the potential for Black enhancement within posthumanist futures.
    Book
    Animals and Science Fiction
    URI
    https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/92126
    Keywords
    Malorie Blackman’s; young adult novel Pig-Heart Boy; power; race; identity; experimental therapy; xenotransplantation
    DOI
    10.1007/978-3-031-41695-8_13
    ISBN
    9783031416941, 9783031416972, 9783031416958
    Publisher
    Springer Nature
    Publisher website
    https://www.springernature.com/gp/products/books
    Publication date and place
    2024
    Grantor
    • Wellcome Trust - 204825/Z/16/Z
    Classification
    Biography, Literature and Literary studies
    Biology, life sciences
    Pages
    22
    Rights
    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
    • Imported or submitted locally

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    License

    • If not noted otherwise all contents are available under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

    Credits

    • logo EU
    • This project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 683680, 810640, 871069 and 964352.

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