Transnational posthumanism in times of pandemic: resistance in EmilySt. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014) and Sea of Tranquility (2022)

Resumo

 Emily St. John Mandel has emerged from a distinctively Canadian strain of female-authored speculative fiction that is deeply concerned with reflecting on and processing the most disturbing events of our time. In both Station Eleven (2014) and Sea of Tranquility (2022) she fictionally contemplates the long-term effects of a deadly pandemic. The first novel preceded Covid-19 whereas the second was written in the midst of that global health crisis. How is the 2022 novel informed by this historic experience? In the first instance, the author suggests that theatre and music could show the way out of the horrifying trauma of mass extinction:
the non-linear storyline follows the nomadic journey of the Travelling Symphony, a troupe performing only Shakespearean plays. In the post-apocalyptic world, survivors find solace in classical music and in Shakespeare. In Sea of Tranquility however, Mandel has humanity escaping catastrophe by sending it into space, thus realising a new colonising endeavour. Here too chronology is non-linear as the past and the present are not necessarily discernible and characters, in a more markedly sci-fi manner, are able to transcend time itself.
This paper will discuss selected common themes of the two novels, namely those of nomadic/fluid post-pandemic identities, transnationalism and posthuman forms of resistance. They necessarily materialise differently, as in one novel the action takes place during a pandemic, whereas in the other it occurs twenty years after the fact. Some comments of an ekphrastic nature will also be made, since Station Eleven was adapted in 2021 as a mini-series by HBO.