'A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled': Posthumanism and female agency in the works of Milan Kundera.

摘要

In order to demonstrate the way his female characters rhetorically share agency with biological matter and inanimate objects within the social constructions of his novels, my thesis aims to reveal how the works of Milan Kundera can be explored through a posthumanist, feminist lens. Because several of the female characters are ontologically diminished to their female body by societal constructs, they are well aware that the body is not lacking rhetorical determination despite it being objectified due to gender binaries. Kundera's female characters are able to surpass the social constructs more efficaciously than their male counterparts because they are more willing to gain autonomy by rejecting a Cartesian dualistic view of body/mind and distributing their rhetorical agency through bodily performance and inanimate material.