Posthuman Gothic and Monstrosity in Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad

Abstract

Posthuman Gothic is one of the recent emerging areas of research in the twenty-first century. It explores the different ways in which Posthuman thoughts and ideologies conflate with Gothicism in all its contemporary variations. Primarily, the posthuman gothic concerns itself with the human beings’ technological, biomedical, and supernatural experiments with the human body and consciousness that alters the human identity into the posthuman. The possibility and capability of humans to alter the human identity into something other than human or into the ‘posthuman other’ create anxiety among humans. The humans’ fear of becoming the posthuman other or encounters with the posthuman other over the course of evolution is the nucleus or the driving mechanics of the posthuman gothic genre. The Posthuman Gothic fiction deals with the scientific, technological, as well as supernatural developments on cyborgs, android robots, bio-engineered transhumans, vampires, zombies, and Frankenstein monsters in a gothic setting that opens up a dystopian posthuman future or condition. Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad deals with the Frankenstein monster kind of posthuman that kills humans and poses a threat to human lives in a post-modern gothic setting. In this paper, the researchers try to highlight the dovetailing of the posthuman thoughts with the post-modern gothic setting and the posthuman monstrosity of the posthuman other, i.e a Frankenstein monster with multiple consciousness that threatens the human identity, lives, survival, and the very existence in Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad through the posthuman gothic lens.