Reconfiguring Masculine Agency within Posthuman Sexuality in Thomas Pynchon’s V. Anonymous College

Posthumanism paradoxically reconciles the antagonistic self and other in Thomas Pynchon’s V. through a mechanical transformation of human desire. In revealing these features of the narrative, analysis must draw on the mechanical transformations of both Benny Profane and V. to interrogate the value of masculine agency as a humanist value in light of post-humanism. A reconfiguration of masculine agency and mechanisation of human desire is required to reconcile our ambivalences with technology; however, Pynchon in his bleak conception of the cyborg, also warns us against the dangers of an over-commitment to self-objectification and relinquishing of masculine agency.

As a concept, posthumanism is essentially a paradoxical position that is represented by the figure of the cyborg. The boundaries of the human self are transgressed by definition of the cyborg; “cyborgs incorporate rather than exclude humans, and in so doing, erase the distinctions previously assumed to distinguish humanity from technology” (Springer 58). Nevertheless, aspects of humanity persists in posthumanism, but is radically transformed and reconfigured. According to Springer, posthuman sexualities “occupy a contradictory discursive position where they represent...