ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how Jeff Vandermeer’s biotech postapocalyptic novel, Borne (2017), explores ideas of posthumanist empathy towards animals created through biotechnology. Borne follows a scavenger, Rachel, in the ruins of a nameless future city who finds a mysterious creature that she names Borne. Borne is an enigmatic hyper-advanced genetically produced organism. Throughout the novel, Borne’s body and mental capabilities rapidly evolve, resulting in Rachel blurring the boundaries between plant, animal, and person. While Borne invites readers to consider how biotechnology can have dire consequences and to judge the implications and consequences of creating genetically modified animals, a larger focus of this chapter is to consider human responsibility towards these creations, once they have been created. This chapter argues that Borne allows us to study an idea of post-humanist empathy. In exploring posthumanist empathy in the novel, this chapter considers Borne’s appearance, Rachel’s conflicting emotions towards Borne, the symbiosis and symphysis between Rachel and Borne, and Borne’s concerns about personhood and whether he is a person.
