The Celebration: polyphony and posthumanism as social criticism

Abstract

The rejection of difference has been cultivated by humanity for many centuries, reinforced by the idealization of the European, male, and white people since the Renaissance. This exclusionary logic, however, is critically analyzed in this work through the authors Braidotti (2013) and Nayar (2014), who defend the perspective of critical posthumanism, proposing an understanding of interdependence among diverse beings, whether human or non-human. This approach is aligned with the Bakhtinian concept of polyphony, which, by valuing the coexistence of contradictory voices, breaks with monologism and hierarchical structures of representation. This article aims to analyze how polyphony contributes to Ivan Ângelo's novel ‘The Celebration’ (1976) to be seen itself as a posthumanist novel that breaks with the naturalization of social hierarchy by bringing together distinct subjects, thus constructing a critique of social oppressions. To investigate this production, bibliographic research is adopted as the methodology for the initial sections, presenting the conceptualization of posthumanism and the concept of polyphony based on Bakhtin (2018). Subsequently, a qualitative analysis of the novel will be conducted to identify how it brings together contrasting worlds.