A Prelapsarian Ustopia:

Reversing the Genetic Fall in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy

Abstract

This paper examines the reception of the Genesis creation narrative in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, situating it within a North American post-apocalyptic tradition of engagement with Genesis 1-3. I argue that the trilogy discloses the potential for a posthuman ontology that retells the foundation myth through a lens of partnership, challenging the gender and species hierarchies that pervade the myth’s reception. Echoing colonial efforts of cultivating a new Eden on Earth, its characters locate original sin in the genome, attempting to eradicate it in an effort to build a prelapsarian utopia. This transhumanist future, however, fails to materialise as expected, leading instead to an ambivalent ustopia (Atwood’s term for a combined utopic and dystopic future) in which the Fall is repeated. In this strange world, the apocalypse reveals the potential for rethinking our origin story not by seeking to reverse the Fall, but by embracing the creaturely and the queer connections that a rereading of Genesis enables.