Posthuman Feminism: Reconfiguring Gender, Identity and Agency – A Study in Manjula Padmanabhan’s The Island of Lost Girls

Abstract

Posthuman feminism paves the way to understanding gender, identity, and agency in a fast changing technological and hybrid world. This theory arises from the intersection of posthumanism and feminist theory, each of which criticises the basic ideas of humanism. Human beings are rational, independent, and distinctly separate from non-human entities. Posthuman feminism defies fixed gender binaries, criticises
anthropocentric thinking, and seeks to redefine the boundaries of embodiment in relation to technology. Due to the advancements in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and cybernetics the difference between human and machine gets complicated. The identity and gender should be understood as fluid, dynamic, and
co-constructed with technology. This paper examines how posthuman feminism deploys traditional conceptions of gender and identity, reimagines agency and embodiment, and investigates power dynamics with special reference to Manjula Padmanabhan’s The Island of Lost Girls. Drawing Rosi Braidotti’s Posthuman Feminism, the study exposes the new materialist ideas which integrate the impacts
of technology and a critique of human exceptionalism. It also proposes that gender is continually reconfigured in a complex, post human world.