Dissecting the Doubtful Darwin: Kurt Vonnegut’s Humanist Posthumanism in Galápagos

Abstract

Abstract Kurt Vonnegut’s Galápagos is his most studied novel after Slaughterhouse-Five. A considerable number of the studies produced on the novel investigate it using a posthumanist theoretical framework, for its unprecedented narrative spans a million years, employs a ghost for its omniscient narrator, and depicts human extinction and the evolution of a post-Homo sapiens species. This article questions scholarly claims that Galápagos is a truly posthumanist text. It begins with an account of the anthropocentric and humanist thought originating in the Western tradition and then touches upon the many strands of posthumanism that strive towards decentring the human and promoting inter-species equality and justice. Next, it dissects in detail the flaws of Vonnegut’s posthumanism and his incorrigible humanist bent in Galápagos, and goes on to identify the novel’s plot as echoing the archetypal trope of the creation myth—a humanist construct. The article thereby concludes that Galápagos, despite its depiction of the post-human in the form of an evolved post-Homo sapiens species, suffers from Vonnegut’s ever unstable humanist and posthumanist impulses and thus manages to remain a humanist–posthumanist concoction at best.