本論文旨在探討後人類時代的個體如何在真實與虛構間重塑其存在與自我，並以當代推想小說為切入點，聚焦四種虛構模式：人工智能創造、跨物種情境、虛擬遊戲的意義建構與科學真理生產。通過分析四部英語文學推想小說——珍妮特·溫特森的《弗蘭啃斯坦：一個愛情故事》（2019）、勞拉·麥凱的《那個國家的動物》（2020）、威廉·吉布森的《邊緣世界》（2014）與理查德·鮑爾斯的《困惑》（2021）。如是，本論文探討了四種形態的後人類身份：超人類、跨物種、跨宇宙和跨個體。運用德勒茲的生成概念和布拉伊多蒂的後人類遊牧學的理論框架（其核心內容包括差異性和關係性本體論、遊牧主體、肯定性倫理、橫貫性、具身唯物論、生命平等主義），本研究主張挑戰本體論邊界、建立多元聯結、擁抱流動性，以增進對去中心化存在模式中的人類自我的尊重。此外，通過檢視四部小說中的人物角色對四種後人類身份的呈現、協商、接納或拒斥的過程，本研究試圖勾勒人類「自我」演化的潛在軌跡及其倫理意涵。基於此，本論文以上述四部小說為例，闡述了當代推想小說在虛構與真實的張力場中重塑後人類主體性的深層機制：此過程本質上是對未知領域的解構性協商，是從人類向後人類的生成過程中對「不可協商之物」的持續對話，並最終指向對「他者性」的動態生成。

This dissertation aims to explore how fiction intersects with reality, reshaping human existence and selfhood in the posthuman era's contemporary speculative fiction. To this goal, it examines four modes of fiction: the creation of AI machines, trans-species scenarios, virtual gaming, and the construction of scientific truths. Specifically, using four Anglophone speculative fiction novels—Frankissstein: A Love Story (2019) by Jeanette Winterson, The Animals in That Country (2020) by Laura McKay, The Peripheral (2014) by William Gibson, and Bewilderment (2021) by Richard Powers—the research delves into four types of posthuman identity: trans-human, trans-species, trans-universe, and trans-individual. Drawing on Deleuze's notion of becoming and Rosi Braidotti's framework of posthuman nomadology, featured by its claims on differential and relational ontology, nomadic subjects, affirmative ethics, transversality, embodied materialism, and zoe-based egalitarianism, the dissertation argues for reshaping selfhood towards posthumanism. It suggests challenging limitations, fostering connections, and embracing fluidity to deepen reverence for human selfhood in the de-centered modes of existence. Therefore, the dissertation scrutinizes how characters in the four novels portray, negotiate, and embrace or reject posthuman identities, illuminating potential trajectories of human evolution and their ethical implications. Reshaping the selfhood between fiction and reality in contemporary speculative fiction illustrates the ongoing deconstructive negotiation of the unknown from a human to a posthuman—to negotiate the unnegotiable in the process of becoming otherness.

Abrams, M. H. and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 10th ed. Wadsworth, 2012.
Agamben, Giorgio. The Open: Man and Animal. Translated by Kevin Attell, Stanford UP, 2004.
Aristotle. The Poetics of Aristotle. Translated by S.H. Butcher, Pennsylvania State University, 2000.
Badiou, Alain, and Nicolas Truong. In Praise of Love. Translated by Peter Bush, Serpent's Tail, 2012.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser, Michigan UP, 1994.
Baelo-Allué, Sonia, and Mónica Calvo-Pascual, editors. Transhumanism and Posthumanism in Twenty-First Century Narrative: Perspectives on the Non-human in Literature and Culture. Routledge, 2021.
Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke UP, 2007.
---. “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 801-831.
Barnes, Annette. Seeing through Self-deception. Cambridge UP, 1997.
Bishop, Katherine E. “Ecological Recentering in William Gibson's The Peripheral.” Polish Journal for American Studies, vol. 12, 2018, pp. 319-367.
Bostrom, Nick. “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?” Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 211, 2003, pp.243-255.
---. “Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up.” The Transhumanist Reader, edited by Max More and Natasha Vita-More, Wiley, 2013, pp.28-53. Boutler, Jonathan. Parables of the Posthuman: Digital Realities, Gaming, and the Player Experience. Wayne State UP, 2015.
Braidotti, Rosi. “A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities.” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 36, no. 6, 2019, pp. 31-61.
---. “Affirmative Ethics, New Materialism and the Posthuman Convergence.” Bridges to Global Ethics: Geoethics at the Confluence of Humanities and Sciences, edited by Giuseppe Di Capua and Luiz Oosterbeek, Springer, 2023, pp. 93-108.
---. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Polity, 2002.
---. Nomadic Theory: The Portable Rosi Braidotti. Columbia UP, 2011.
---. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, 2nd ed., Columbia UP, 2011.
---. The Posthuman. Polity, 2013.
---. Transpositions: on Nomadic Ethics. Polity, 2006.
---. Posthuman Knowledge. Polity, 2019.
Bogue, Ronald. Deleuze on Literature. Routledge, 2003.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 1990.
---. Undoing Gender. Routledge, 2004.
Callus, Ivan, and Stefan Herbrechter. “Introduction: Posthumanist subjectivities, or, coming after the subject....” Subjectivity, vol. 5, no. 3, 2012, pp. 241-264.
Caracciolo, Marco. “Animals Squawking Their Mysteries: Narrative, Poetic Form, and the Nonhuman in Laura Jean McKay’s The Animals in That Country.” English Text Construction, vol. 15, no. 2, 2022, pp. 118-137.
Chalmers, David. Reality +. Penguin, 2023.
Charkrabarty, Dipesh. “Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change.” New Literary History, vol. 43, no.1, 2012, pp. 1-18.
Chiew, Florence. “Posthuman Ethics with Cary Wolfe and Karen Barad: Animal Compassion as Trans-Species Entanglement.” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 31, no. 4, 2014, pp. 51-69.
Ciompi, Fausto. “《The Future of Humans in a Post-Human World》: Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson.” Between, vol. XII, no. 24, 2022, pp.166-182.
Clark, Andy. Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence. Oxford UP, 2003.
Clarke, Bruce. “Machines, AIs, Cyborgs, Systems.” After the Human: Culture, Theory, and Criticism in the 21st Century, edited by Sherryl Vint, Cambridge UP, 2020, pp. 91-104.
Clarke, Bruce, and Manuela Rossini. “Preface: Literature, Posthumanism, and the Posthuman.” The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman, edited by Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini, Cambridge UP, 2017. pp. xi-xxii.
Coole, Diana, and Samantha Forest. “Introducing the New Materialisms.” New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, edited by Diana Coole and Samantha Forest, Duke UP, 2010.
Conner, Steven. Dream Machines. Open Humanities Press, 2017.
Damasio, Antonio. Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. Pantheon, 2010.
Dehaene, Stanislas. Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes our Thoughts. Penguin, 2014.
---. How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine...for Now. Penguin, 2021.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi, Minnesota UP, 1987.
---. What is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell, Columbia UP, 1994.
---. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Translated by Donna Polan, Minnesota UP, 1986.
Derrida, Jacques. The Animal that Therefore I Am. Translated by Marie-Louise Maller, edited by David Wills, Fordham UP, 2008.
---. Positions. Translated by Alan Bass, Chicago UP, 1982.
---.“Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass, Routledge, 2002, pp.351-370.
Deshong, Scott. “On (post)human (dis)ability.” Subjectivity, vol. 5, no. 3, 2012, pp. 265-275.
Eagleman, David. Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. Canongate, 2011.
---. The Brain: The Story of You. Vintage, 2017.
Eagleton, Terry. The Event of Literature. Yale UP, 2012.
Ehlers, Nadine. “Life ‘Itself’.” After the Human: Culture, Theory, and Criticism in the 21st Century, edited by Sherryl Vint, Cambridge UP, 2020, pp.120-133.
Eich, Sandro. “ ‘There is No Alterantive!’—The Case for a Co(n)temporary English Fiction: Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me and Jeanette Winterson's Frankissstein.” On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture, no. 15, 2023.
Elias, Amy. “Realist Ontology in William Gibson’s The Peripheral.” William Gibson and the Futures of Contemporary Culture, edited by Mitch R. Murray and Mathias Milges, Iowa UP, 2021, pp.167-178.
Ellis, Erle. Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UP, 2018.
Ferrando, Francesca. Philosophical Posthumanism. Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
Fetherston, Rachel. “ ‘Muzzle for the Queen’”: Settler-Nohuman Entanglements in Australian Speculative Ecofiction.” Animals and Science Fiction, edited by N. Castle and G. Champion, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024, pp.111-127.
Friendenberg, Jay. The Future of the Self: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Personhood and Identity in the Digital Age. California UP, 2020.
Gabriel, Markus. Why the World does not Exist. Translated by Gregory S. Moss, Polity, 2015.
Gibson, William. The Peripheral. Penguin, 2014.
Gillard, William, James Reitter, and Robert Stauffer. Speculative Modernism: How Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Conceived the 20th Century. McFarland, 2021.
Gilson, Erinn Cunniff. “Responsive Becoming: Ethics between Deleuze and Feminism.” Deleuze and Ethics, edited by Nathan Jun and Daniel W. Smith, Edinburgh UP, 2011, pp. 63-88.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago UP, 1980.
---. Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England. California UP, 1988.
Greene, Brian. The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos. Vintage, 2011.
Habib, M.A.R. Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: A History. Blackwell, 2005.
Haine, Christian. “ ‘Just a Game’: Biopolitics, Video Games, and Finance in William Gibson's The Peripheral.” William Gibson and the Futures of Contemporary Culture, edited by Mitch R. Murray and Mathias Nilges, Iowa UP, 2021, pp. 195-210.
Haraway, Donna J. When Species Meet. Minnesota UP, 2008.
---. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke UP, 2016.
---. Manifestly Haraway. Minnesota UP, 2016.
Harari, Yuval Noah. Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. Random House, 2024.
Harman, Graham. Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything. Pelican Books, 2017.
Hassan, Ihab. “Prometheus as Performer: Toward a Posthumanist Culture?” The Georgia Review, vol. 31, no. 4, 1977, pp. 830-50.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago UP, 1999.
Henricks, Thomas S. Play and the Human Condition. Illinois UP, 2015.
Hood, Bruce. The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity. HarperCollins, 2012.
Huizinga, J. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Beacon Press, 1955.
Iser, Wolfgang. The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology. The Johns Hopkins UP, 1993.
Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concept of Psychoanalysis. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Karnac, 1977.
---. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Freud's Papers on Technique 1953-1954. Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, translated by John Forrester, W.W. Norton, 1991.
Lai, Chung-Hsiung. Critical Thinking: Twelve Lessons on Contemporary Literary Theory. Linking Books, 2020.
Laird, Tessa. “Zoognosis: When Animal Knowledges Go Viral. Laura Jean McKay's The Animals in That Country, Contagion, Becoming-Animal, and the Politics of Predation.” Animal Studies Journal, vol. 10, no. 1, 2021, pp.30-56.
Latour, Bruno. Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Translated by Catherine Porter, Polity, 2015.
---. Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard UP, 1999.
---. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Translated by Catherine Porter, Harvard UP, 2004.
---. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford UP, 2005.
---. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Catherine Porter, Harvard UP, 1993.
Leslie, Ian. Born Liars: Why We Can't Live Without Deceit. Quercus, 2012.
Lewis, Jonathan. “Entangled but Incompossible: The ‘Many Worlds Interpretation’ of Quantum Mechanics in William Gibson’s The Peripheral.” Dagenham, vol. 50, no. 138, 2021, pp. 23-34.
Lin, Shaojing. “Another Humanist Ideal: The Transhuman Future in Frankissstein: A Love Story.” Forum for World Literature Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2021, pp. 44-58.
Lokta, Alfred J. “The Law of Evolution as a Maximal Principle.” Human Biology, vol. 17, no. 3, 1945, pp. 167-194.
Lyotard, Jean-François. Postmodern Fables. Translated by Georges Van Den Abbeele, Minnesota UP, 1997.
---. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time. Translated by Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby, Stanford UP, 1991.
Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan. AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future. Random, 2021.
Kurzweil, Ray. The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Penguin, 2006.
MacCormack, Patricia. Posthuman Ethics: Embodiment and Cultural Theory. Ashgate, 2012.
Mahon, Peter. Posthumanism: A Guide for the Perplexed. Bloomsbury, 2017.
Mansfiled, Nick. Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway. Allen & Unwin. 2000.
Martori, Claudia. “Trans-forming Bodies: Transgender and Transhumanism in Jeanette Winterson's Frankissstein.” FemCrítica Revista de estudios literarios y crítica feminista, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 45-58.
Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Duke UP, 2002.
McFarlane, Anna. Cyberpunk Culture and Psychology: Seeing Through the Mirrorshades. Routledge, 2022.
---. “‘Anthropomorphic Drones’ and Colonized Bodies: William Gibson's The Peripheral.” English Studies in Canada, vol. 42. no.1-2, 2016, pp. 115-131.
McHugh, Susan. “Animals.” After the Human: Culture, Theory, and Criticism in the 21st Century, edited by Sherryl Vint, Cambridge UP, 2020, pp. 105-19.
McKay, Laura. The Animals in That Country. Scribe Publications, 2020.
McMillan, Grant. “‘Everything will be dead:’The Eco-Activist Archetype in a Time of Bewilderment.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 00, no. 00, 2025, pp.1-20. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isaf033.
Meerleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith, Routledge, 2005.
---. “Eye and Mind.” The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History, and Politics, edited by James M. Edie, translated by Carleton Dallery, Northwestern UP, 1964, pp.159-190.
Meillassoux, Quentin. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. Translated by Tr. Ray Brassier, Continuum, 2010.
Mirza, Kanza Fatima, and Ahmad Rehan. “Solastalgia in Richard Powers’ Bewilderment: Exploring Eco-anxiety through a Biophilic Lens.” Qlantic Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 5, no. 1, 2024, pp. 78-88.
More, Max. “The Philosophy of Transhumanism.” The Transhumanist Reader, edited by Max More and Natasha Vita-More, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, pp.1-17.
Morgan, Glyn. “Detective, Historian, Reader: Alternate History and Alternative Fact in William Gibson’s The Peripheral.” Polish Journal for American Studies, vol. 12, 2018, pp. 307-317.
Morton, Timothy. Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence. Columbia UP, 2016.
Murray, Jessica. “Using Critical Animal Studies to Read Climate Change Fiction: Literary Reflections and Provocations.” English Academy Review, vol. 39, no. 2, 2022, pp. 67-78.
Nagel, Thomas. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review, vol. 83, no. 4, 1974, pp. 435-50.
Nash, Richard. “Animal Studies.” The Routledge Companion to Literature and Science. Edited by Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini, Routledge, 2011.
Newman, James. Videogames. Routledge, 2004.
Neyrat, Frédéric. Literature and Materialisms. Routledge, 2020.
Omry, Keren. “Something so deeply earned”: Sympathy in William Gibson's The Peripheral.” Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, vol. 18, no. 2, 2020, pp. 335-348.
Oziewicz, Marek. “Speculative Fiction.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, Oxford University Press, 29 Mar. 2017, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.78.
Paul, Piatkowski. “Mind inside Matter: The Physics of Interface in William Gibson's The Peripheral.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 60, no. 1, 2019, pp. 34-48.
Phillips, Jessica. “Proximities and Cross-Species Empathies in Laura Jean McKay's The Animals in That Country.” Narrative, vol. 31, no. 3, 2023, pp. 255-272.
Piatkowski, Paul. “Mind Inside Matter: The Physics of Interface in William Gibson's The Peripheral.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol.60, no.1, 2018, pp.34-48.
Plato. The Dialogues of Plato, Volume II: The Symposium. Translated by R.E.Allen, Yale UP, 1993.
Powers, Richard. Bewilderment. Penguin Random House, 2021.
Richardson, Michael. “Embodiment and Affect.” After the Human: Culture, Theory, and Criticism in the 21st Century, edited by Sherryl Vint, Cambridge UP, 2020, pp. 58-71.
Rovelli, Carlo. The Order of Time. Translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell, Penguin, 2018.
---. Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution. Riverhead Books, 2020.
Roden, David. Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human. Routledge, 2015.
Rowner, Ilai. The Event: Literature and Theory. Nebraska UP, 2015.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. Avatars of Story. Minnesota UP, 2006.
Shaviro, Steven. The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism. Minnesota UP, 2014.
Skiveren, Tobias. “Fictionality in New Materialism: (Re)Inventing Matter.” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 39, no. 3, 2022, pp.187-202.
Song, Ho Rim. “Ecstasy and Posthuman Community in Richard Powers's Bewilderment.” New Korean Journal of English Language and Literature, vol. 65, no.1, 2023, pp.107-128.
Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. Penguin Books, 1992.
Stiegler, Bernard. The Neganthropocene. Edited and translated by Daniel Ross, Open Humanities Press, 2018.
---. Nanjing Course: Reading Marx and Engels in the Age of the Anthropocene－From German Ideology to the Dialectics of Nature. Nanjing UP, 2019.
---. Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Stanford UP, 1998.
Smith, Justin. Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason. Princeton UP, 2019.
Suoranta, Esko. “The Ironic Transhumanity of William Gibson's The Peripheral.”Fafnir, vol. 3, no. 1, 2016, pp. 7-20.
Susskind, Jamie. Future Politics. Oxford UP, 2018.
Tegmark, Max. Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Penguin, 2018.
Van de Tuin, Iris, and Bolette Blaagaard. “Introduction.” The Subject of Rosi Braidotti: Politics and Concepts. edited by Bolette Blaagaard and Iris van der Tuin, Bloomsbury, 2014. pp. 3-18.
Vartanian, Aram. La Mettrie's L'Homme Machine: A Study in the Origins of an Idea, Princeton UP, 1960.
Veyne, Paul. Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?: An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination. Translated by Paula Wissing. Chicago UP, 1988.
Vint, Sherryl. Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed. Bloomsbury, 2014.
Weinstein, Jami, and Claire Colebrook. “Preface: Postscript on the Posthuman.” Posthumous Life: Theorizing Beyond the Posthuman, edited by Jami Weinstein and Claire Colebrook, Columbia UP, 2017, pp. ix-xxix.
Winterson, Jeanette. Frankissstein: A Love Story. Vintage, 2020.
---. 12 Bytes: How AI will Change the Way We Live and Love. Grove Press, 2021.
Wise, J. Macgregor. “Assemblage.” Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts, edited by Charles J. Stivale. MacGill-Queen's UP, 2011, pp.77-87.
Wrobel, Claire. “Underground Machester as Urban Palimpsest in Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein: A Love Story (2019): Probing the Posthuman Horizon in a Gothic Laboratory.” Angles [Online], no. 15, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.6207.
Wolfe, Cary. What is Posthumanism? Minnesota UP, 2010.
Yonck, Richard. Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence. Arcade Publishing, 2017.
Žižek, Slavoj. Event: Philosophy in Transit. Penguin, 2014.