ABSTRACT
With reference to posthumanist critics such as Donna Haraway, Jacques Derrida, and Cary Wolfe and Gillian Beer’s seminal monograph Darwin’s Plots (2009), this chapter examines Vonnegut’s treatment of the human/animal binary and the evolutionary nature of the literary impulse in Galapagos (1985). The novel, in which a ragtag group survive human extinction on the titular islands, paradoxically questions literature – and sapient thought in general – from an evolutionary perspective, and seriously considers the possibility that both may be evolutionary dead ends. This chapter considers the history of human (and humanist) exceptionalism and misconceptions regarding Darwinian evolution – in particular, the misconception that reason, intellect, self-consciousness, or advanced culture are inherently desirable; that they are in some sense at the top of the evolutionary ladder; and that these qualities are in some sense ontologically separate from ‘nature’. Vonnegut’s posthuman novel is radical and destabilising. Unlike other far-future fables, Galapagos is not a drama of loss, fall, or degeneration; culture simply becomes evolutionarily defunct.
