The Posthuman Child as a Genderless Ideal

Abstract

Artemis Fowl is a series of eight science fiction fantasy novels targeted at the young adult audience. The central protagonist is Artemis Fowl II, a 12-year-old criminal mastermind who exploits the magical Fairy People and discovers the fairy technology commonly known as magic. The series raises several important discussions around androgyny, gender roles and even re-conceptualizes the traditional image of the body.  As a text of children’s literature, Artemis Fowl intersects the fantasy world of magical creatures of pixies and fairies and the real world of the pre-teen and re-imagines them to provide new answers to questions of what the body is in the age of technoculture. Positioned among these concerns is the adolescent teen’s search for his own identity, which is woven together with bioethical and technological issues. The series raises important questions about the co-existence of humans with the machinic developments of the twenty-first century as well as about the very nature of human identity in an age of advanced scientific possibility. This article will serve to answer some of these complexities through a critical assessment of how the posthuman/ technologically enhanced child is foregrounded all through the series and will interrogate his relationship to gender and adulthood.