48
Vol. 21 No. 1, April 2021, pp. 48 – 57
DOI: 10.24071/joll.v21i1.2687
Available at https://e-journal.usd.ac.id/index.php/JOLL/index
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Posthumanism in Hernan Diaz’s In the Distance
Pegah Abedi & Rasool Moradi-Joz
pegahi.abd@gmail.com & moradijoz@znu.ac.ir
Department of English Language and Literature, University of Zanjan, IRAN
Abstract Article
information
This study is an attempt to shed new light on the potential representation
of posthumanism, the posthuman condition in particular, in Hernan Diaz’s tour
de force novel entitled “In the Distance.” The main focus of the study is
highlighting the inextricable bond between humans and their surroundings in
the most anthropocentric trend of posthumanism, and addressing our
exploitative way of living and the outcomes of our ill-treatment toward the
natural environment, as represented in one of the contemporary fictions, “In the
Distance.” We are told that nature is an eternal Eden which was predestined for
serving humankind, and will be balanced once it has fulfilled its duty. The novel,
however, as evidenced by current environmental issues, makes an effort to warn
us about the end of nature and in turn the failure of humanity. In the same
context, this study seeks to demonstrate the “In the Distance” novel as one of the
main works arguing for post-humanistic principles during and after the
colonialization of America, accompanied by modern civilization and
technological advancement in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Keywords: posthumanism; anthropocentrism; environment; modernism
Received:
29 June
2020
Revised:
19 October
2020
Accepted:
11 December
2020
Introduction
There have been many efforts by
philosophers and critical theorists to question,
shift, and even remove the boundaries among
all living beings, especially those that man has
installed between human and non-human
matters, including animals and nature. As
Badmington (2003) maintains in his earlier
"Theorizing Posthumanism", posthumanism
reflects the probability that earlier phenomena
(Like improvements in technology or findings
of animals) are directing to the underlying
transition in humanity. The earlier humanist
representations which can be located in
seventeenth-century writings, particularly in
Descartes's, indicate that the human has a
legitimate and immortal place at the heart of
everything, where it is identified from
environment and animals (Badmington,
2003).
Posthumanism resists the old claim on the
uniqueness of man and as Serenella Iovino
(2016) states, "If there is a basic premise of
posthuman thinking, it is that the idea of the
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49
human is not Platonic in itself, but it is always
ready plotted." In this regard, posthumanism
rethinks the nature of humanity and its
connection with the planet and focuses the
deep-seated interrelations among various
forms of life as well as the liability of social
practices to the environment (Iovino, 2016).
Therefore, it includes fundamentally
reexamining the prevailing, typical humanist
story of who “we” are as individuals and how
we are persistently objectifying the existing
realm of nature instead of respecting it. The
moral assumptions of humans' abusing habits
for both the human and the natural world are
mostly argued in ecocriticism and portrayed as
a theory of the environmental studies in
literature. Literature then manages to remind
us of the catastrophes of our mistreatments
toward nature and animals in the concept of
“Posthumanism” by illustrating the soon
annihilation of humans as a result of his
practices (Gerhardt, 2006).
The emergence of posthumanism is
widely renowned for Donna Haraway, who has
depicted cyborg creature as a natural/artificial
hybrid in A Cyborg Manifesto in 1985.
However, Marry Shelly’s Frankenstein
(1823) might be one of the earliest sources of
Ecological posthuman reflection about the
status and abilities of humans in the universe.
In perusing Frankenstein novel, we can run
into the fall down of a primary oppositional
binary between non-human and human since
Shelly vividly illustrates Victor Frankenstein’s
failure to enslave nature for his egomaniacal
intentions, “Thus, the conception of the human
can no longer hinge on a binary opposition to
the non-human animal” (Rastelli, 2019;
Walter, 2019). Right through the Frankenstein
novel, the monster stands for a part of the
unnatural environment, something
constructed based on modern knowledge and
“the nature that (did not) give it birth”
(LeMenager, Shewry, & Hiltner, 2011).
Humans took aim at the natural world by
misusing modern technology, which paved the
way for generating an immortal monster. To
Shelly, this is where humanity is rearranging
all his constraints and seeks the power that
does not belong to him.
The current Canadian author, Margaret
Atwood, is a well-known novelist for her post-
humanist world view in many of her novels.
We can observe the shade of the post-
humanist approach from the beginning in her
first published fiction, the edible woman
(1969), which demonstrates Marian’s fiancé as
a self-sufficient man who objectifies his
surrounding ambiance. The man exploits
animals and is entirely apathetic about the
moral value of any life form. In fact, gun and
knife, which are two handmade tools for
hunting and “act as means of annihilation of
Peter, therethrough reminding us of the
discourse involving posthuman existence.” In
reading the book, it could be noticed that
humans are not unaffected by their ill-
treatment toward other kinds with whom we
share our planet (Oppermann, 2016). In
exploring Atwood’s next novel, Surfacing
(1972), we find out that the anonymous
protagonist reappears in her hometown and
recalls past events and eventually dives into
her childhood and polls out of human society
to live in the wild nature. At this point, Skinner
(as in (Bandyopadhyay, 2011) comments that
by returning to her homeland, the female
protagonist reaches the self-knowledge and
regain human-nature coexisting
consciousness to prove how modern man
spoiled the natural environment and himself.
In the same vein, focusing on Cormac
McCarthy's (1985) fiction, Blood Meridian’s
“The Evening Redness in the West,” which
according to Goodreads website is one of the
best English language novels published since
the 20th century, highlights the everlasting
and indisputable occurrence of natural
destruction in a uniquely posthuman
approach. In Blood Meridian, the human lives
as no more in a prominent position than any
other non-human being; therefore, it must
struggle with all creatures to state itself as an
individual amongst the plenitude. The
decentralizing of humankind is a significant
theme in McCarthy's fiction and is supported
by Cormac's other novels as well. However,
“decentralizing” might not be a proper word
since “the human has never been at the center
of the natural story” (Zimpfer, 2019).
Contextualizing the other work of the
Canadian Atwood, The Oryx and Crake (2003),
presents us with a moment at which human
begin interferes in the natural environment
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50
and virtue to overcome depravity. In the
posthuman atmosphere, it is the preceding
mankind attempting to lengthen its presence
through devices that has ominous
consequences. The story is set for the
extinction of humans and other bio-forms as
the errancy of mankind to stretch and objectify
the environment, leading to a dystopian future
(Gonçalves, 2017). From the same perspective,
two contradicting lifestyles in a companion
novel to The Oryx and Crake can be seen as
well. The hypothetical novel, The Year of the
Flood (2009), sketches out a society in which a
denaturant droughty deluge (which has roots
in genetic modification), causes a disastrous
influence on both human and non-human
presence on earth as “the process had only
succeeded in bringing about the destruction of
all” (Bandyopadhyay, 2011).
In a groundbreaking article entitled “Back
to the Garden: New Visions of Posthuman
Futures,” Jendrysik (2011) explores the
possibility of human extinction in a not so far
future, through the lens of environmentalism.
He calls for thinking about climate change as
the features of nature in the hands of
humankind shifted by dystopian technology
instructions. At the same time, the author
brings up the value of our utopian planet and
our dependence on the non-human sphere;
mankind, not unlike any other species, he
contends, is a part of the original natural
world, and his new practices are killing the
wild and uninhibited environment. Jendrysik
(2011) then explains how, in the best case, our
activities bring about the extinction of the
human race while nature might survive since
“We are, in effect, at war with nature and have
been as long as we have had the intelligence to
dominate the animals and flora of the planet.”
Therefore, we ought to rethink the disastrous
outcomes of this modern warfare to prevent
human vanishing nightmare before it comes
real (Jendrysik, 2011).
By considering the shade of
posthumanism on each of these works we
come across the fact that for many people,
different envisions of apocalypse are rooted in
wild and untamed nature, although it should
be realized that the posture of nature toward
man is generally well-disposed and
communications among current human and
natural milieu is deep-rooted and human
dynamism has probably had the most critical
impact on the environment thus far. However,
humans usually choose to vanquish nature in a
high-handed manner and stand as opposed to
the natural environment and animals due to
long-lasting anthropocentrism (Wang, 2019).
Mankind threatens the natural world by means
of modern technology, assuming themselves as
integral to the natural environment, shifting all
their limitations, and continuously seeking
domination. It seems that humankind
subconsciously is to resist the accountability of
his practices on nature and animals and his
race as well.
A number of contemporary theorists such
as Hayles (2010) focus on conceptualizing
posthumanism. However, unlike the Techno
and Cyborg posthumanism, little has been said
about the underlying notion of the European
posthumanism approach, the human-
nonhuman relationship, and the state of
current humans in the natural environment.
Rethinking the posthuman as what being
human means and how modern practices of
human have harmful effects on other species
as well as himself can give way to reflecting on
one of the contemporary novels to define the
human-nonhuman bond and how the latter
was exploited by the former since American
colonialism till now. This study is thus an
attempt to examine In the Distance novel by
Hernan Diaz (2017) to announce the unseen
posthuman assumption, and oppression of
nature and less advanced people throughout
America back to the nineteenth century.
Through this lens, different scenes of
objectifying non-human matters such as
animal, mineral, and vegetal forms by modern
mankind are portrayed, and the perspectives
toward the earth during America’s union in
nineteenth-century that probably
incorporated into loss, melancholy,
disappointment, and death of moral values in
human society are examined.
Viewed hence, drawing on Hernan Diaz’s
In the Distance, the present study attempts to
illustrate posthumanism as the destiny of
humankind since its casts doubt on the
mastery of man over non-human, and erodes
any track of objectification in the human-
nonhuman connection. It then insists that we
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51
must start caring for other beings and refuses
the division of animal and human (Westling,
2006). From this perspective, posthumanism
eludes discriminating betwixt man and
environment, and man is no more
acknowledged as a superpower of the universe
as he has decentered to an equivalent level to
animals and other life forms on the planet
(Wang, 2019). In this light, lay waste to nature
and act like ecology is a "thing" to consume is
thoroughly non-environmental and ends in the
disappearance of non-human and humankind.
Therefore, by doing so, humankind's
anticipatory destiny appears to be sinister and
nothing would shield him against his
unecological industries (Aretoulakis, 2014).
Posthumanism in Origin
The term "posthumanism" is generally
applied to many current hypothetical notions
concerning modern western cultural
settlements. However, this theory, notably in
literary and cultural studies, originates from
Ihab Hassan (1997), the postmodern theorizer
who had introduced the definition of
posthumanism in his seminal monograph
titled “Prometheus as Performer: Towards a
Posthumanist Culture?” His article is a
resistance to problematical subjective
opinions within humanistic and enlightenment
schools. It offers a concept for removing or
displacing the borders of all living beings on
the planet, which facilitates analyzing the
human position within the natural ecology of
the earth. In other words, posthumanism is
constant with outlooks in animal ethics that
aims to shrink the concept and value of claims
that species borders should have any effect on
our moral dedication to various life forms
(Hassan, 1977). In this fashion, the broad
comprehension of the posthumanism theory
also provides us with how up-to-date
discussions of posthumanism could
encapsulate a reflective standpoint on
humanity's discretion and exceptional
position in the environment. In this sense, a
fundamental assumption of posthumanism is
its crucial posture toward the markedness that
is afforded to humanity in the original order.
Therefore, the "post" of posthumanism does
not signify the nonattendance of humanity or
moving ahead it; rather, it reminds us of what
has been eliminated from an anthropocentric
worldview, which entails coming to terms with
how the emphasizing humanity has been
acknowledged as ineffectual (Bolter, 2016).
Only then will our interactions with other
creatures be recognized as an aid to realizing
powerful forces outside our control (Ağın,
2016).
To move toward the modern era
principles, the machine became a gadget of
human attention, a means to an end, stressing
the position of the human being as a device
user. Technological devices were used to
strengthen the man's authority and autonomy
and, therefore, caused a breakdown in the
human-environment relationship, just like a
human-made coat separating humans from
other creatures (Miah, 2008). The division of
man and his surroundings is drawn on
principles that seem to be consistent with the
post-humanist stance. This argument
illustrates the disuse of technology and
modern tools in order to dominate nature and
exploit it rather than to tackle the
environmental issues. Posthumanists do not
doubt technology as a cause for the promotion
of the human. However, they scrutinize the
conditions of an ideal world without humans;
therefore, they have been always critical of
technological advancement as a particular sort
of ill-disposed stance that has destroyed
human and non-human interrelation shifted
the feature of the world thus far.
The posthuman discourse have also paved
the way for establishing a meaningful bond
between postcolonialism and the planet
ecology. In this regard, posthumanism had
given rise to postcolonial studies as a probable
connection between ecocriticism and racism
and as one of the influential classifications of
the environmental analysis, especially in
America. However, in the midst of exploration
into the nature statues of America, the role of
Native Americans is considerable since they
stand for nature and are people formerly
colonized by the west (Childs & Williams,
2014). Indigenous Americans are appreciable
instances of harmonious human relationships
with nature before civilization and misusing
modern instruments as a means for
dominating the landscape and its creatures
(Huggan, 2004). Of course, not only native
Indians but also the whole landscape,
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52
including trees, rivers, birds, fishes, animals,
sky, dust, and air, were under the domination
of colonizers. These practices began from the
16th century by the kingdom of England and
were followed by migration of people from
other countries to North America in order to
establish colonies until the last waves in the
19th century.
Posthumanism in Practice
Viewed from the perspective of Kuhn's
(1970) scientific revolutions and paradigm
theory, posthumanistic studies mainly fall
under action-oriented philosophical paradigm,
technically labeled as participatory-advocacy
paradigm with activist, transformatory, and
emancipatory goals. However, posthumanism
seems to move beyond uncovering the unequal
power relations among human beings,
societies, and cultures in part exerted and
maintained through ideological moves
represented in social actions in a way that it
strives to demystify the illusion of human
superiority over non-human, which has led to
the destruction of environment, thus calling
for and incorporating into protection and
preservation of the environment.
The study has a textual analysis design
with qualitative approach, falling into not only
advocacy-liberatory paradigm but also weak
version of social constructivism,
interpretivism. In this study, the subject under
scrutiny is a contemporary novel in which the
posthumanism mindset can be observed. In
order to affirm a claim as such, the theoretical
framework is sketched out drawing on driving
forces in posthuman theory and the novel is
critiqued within the same conceptual
framework.
In the light of posthuman theories, a
general and close reading of the work in
question, In the distance, would hopefully
unveil the probable mentality of the novel’s
author. Indeed, posthuman theories could
reveal whether the hypothesized
posthumanistic mentality of Diaz is
systematically represented and traceable in
his novel or not.
In the Distance and Posthumanism
The philosophical novel In the Distance by
Hernan Diaz describes the journey of a
Swedish boy across continents in the 19th
century. At this fiction, Diaz is after placing a
world wherein both the environment and
human existence front a severe hazard due to
constant attempts of humankind for ruling
over his surroundings. In other words, the
anthropocentrism view indicates a lack of
consciousness about the possible perils that
are anticipating man and nature since human
exercises and decisions might determine to be
self-destructive in the long-term future.
Diaz’s fiction In the Distance initiates in the
flat white wasteland, where a hole has
interrupted the sea ice, “The hole, a broken
star on the ice, was the only interruption on the
white plain merging into the white sky. No
wind, no life, no sound.” (Diaz, 2017) The story
starts in an uncharted island, which is well-
known as Alaska, with emptiness, an omission
of something that once existed. The cracked ice
was extracted from the sea by a man carrying
a pickax and rifle, a white man who disturbed
the silence of frozen land. This is an
interruption of the vast landscape, admittedly,
but also a beginning of interference in the
whole natural environment by humans. The
narrative pauses here (since Diaz decided to
apply various genres such as saga, historical
fiction, psychological fiction, western fiction,
and natural tale on his work), and the novel
goes through a flashback to an enigmatic tale
of a despondent man.
The story begins in Sweden, where two
brothers want to escape the poverty of their
homeland and start a journey for a new life in
the so-called world of opportunities, America.
However, they separated shortly after starting
the travel in Portsmouth. Although they had
shared their money, they were not prepared
for the following situation. Hakan, the younger
brother, had to head his way to New York as it
was the only place that he and his brother
Linus, were capable of spelling. “There was no
doubt in his mind that his brother had made it
to New York—Linus was much too smart to get
lost” so that he left with a ship to find his way
to the newly founded continent and revisit his
missing brother. Later on, an Irish immigrant
family clarifies their destination for Hakan
through a map, “That was the first time he
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53
heard the word California.” As he could not
speak any English, he thrusts into Bernans and
accepts to follow them to San Francisco via
Buenos Aires so that he can get enough money
and probably a horse to pass through the
continent and settle down in New York.
Hakan’s facing frenzied efforts of James
Bernan to extract gold in his own called “mine”
is probably one of the earliest scenes of
domination of mineral resources by the human
in this novel. Greedy James finally unearthed
pieces of gold, alone by his pickle and hammer,
creeping from dawn until late the night in his
holes. His dirty gold mining seeks to devastate
lands, taint the lake’s water, and add to the
devastation of the lively ecosystem. However,
he was too obsessed with mining gold that
“Their living conditions deteriorated rapidly”
as a result of his aim to take advantage of
nature and make his fortune. Eileen Bernan,
James’ wife, and the children wearing torn and
ragged outfits; Governed by the tatters, their
flame-colored skin bubbled with blains. They
even revealed white slough on their lips, noses,
and earlobes. It did not take long that not only
their clothes, but their very skin ripped to
shred, and it hung off their body like a worn
bandage. James’ thirst after abusing rich
mineral resources led to the loss of
biodiversity, and toxic leavings had
deleterious effects on his health and the people
living around his mines.
Initially, the interruption of the icy lands in
the unknown landscapes by a "White man,"
elaborates on the disturbance of the
environment. With this in mind, we would face
the association of aboriginal citizens of
America with the natural environment, which
is betokened as the pure soul of nature and
ransacked by invaders. Local inhabitants were
under constant attacks of white travelers with
rotten skins and filthy outfits. However, unlike
the colonizers, Indians were exceptionally
clean and organized, and their faces displayed
no tussle with the environmental milieu.
Hakan understood that he had always
assumed these far-flung provinces were
vacant and that he had concluded they resided
just during a short period while migrants were
crossing through them. He further learned that
everyone, himself involved, were trespassers,
and this fact would reflect how the landscape
was interrupted by colonizers. Indians were
dominated by devices of white colonial
authority, and their relation to white
immigrants aroused the opposition to an ever-
augmenting sovereign control that demanded
everlasting residence of the land. One
afternoon, Hakan and Lorimer, found
wounded Indians with their tents and shelters
in smoke; "Fractured skulls, splintered bones,
chests and limbs crushed by gunshots, entrails
barely held in place by shaking hands" were
products of armed aggressor's attacks to
citizens. Lorimer, who was a naturalist, gained
his intelligence by studying nature and
animals, saved Hakan's life earlier by using his
pure knowledge. He then had a struggle with
assailants and eventually sent them off to
remedy disabled people, in that he was a wise
and humble man and did not consider himself
superior to other beings. That moment Hakan
though that the naturalist's face seeks to
become like one of the locals and reveals no
conflict either with nature or its offspring.
Among those who recovered swiftly, an
old short-haired man had efficient treatments
and was an expert physician with a sensitive
understanding of the human body. In addition
to his medical skills, his surgeries would have
been done under two conditions: boiling the
instruments and washing the hands. The lower
rate of infections as the result of this practice
bedazzled Lorimer; therefore, he concluded
that the old man's wisdom represents the
original American's attachment to the ecology
of the land:
“Our learned scholars in our marbled
academies have failed to understand
what this wise man has gathered from his
observation of nature—that the
putrefaction that flowers in a wound and
the diseases that bloom in an open injury
can be nipped in the bud. The very seed of
these maladies can be boiled and wiped
away before it takes root in the flesh.”
(Diaz, 2017, p. 97)
The scenery that had resembled so featureless
to Hakan was soon an expanding puzzle he was
keen to solve. However, there was limited time
left after managing the business of staying
alive. After all, it was apparent to everyone that
one-third of injured people would die. The man
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54
with short hairs unclothed the corpse, and au
naturel dead body went on a stretcher.
Lorimer and Hakan made sure victims could be
abandoned unsupervised for a few minutes,
arranged to attend the stretcher-bearers. The
sun was setting when stretcher bearers
stopped and rolled up the stretcher, without
any hesitation or special ceremony, in a
random spot in the middle of the wilderness,
and walked back to their campsite. Hakan had
never seen anything like this, they abandoned
the naked corpse, like it truly is, to transform it
into part of nature, where the human truly
belongs. It seems that Lorimer describes the
exact roots of humankind, and its relation to
other living forms on behalf of Diaz throughout
the novel:
“What greater tribute than to be feasted
upon by one’s fellow creatures? What
monument could be nobler than the
breathing tomb of a coyote or the soaring
urn of a vulture? What preservation more
dependable? What resurrection more
literal? This is true religion—knowing
there is a bond among all living things.
Having understood this, there is nothing
to mourn, because even though nothing
can ever be retained, nothing is ever lost.
Can you imagine?” Lorimer asked again.
“The relief. The freedom.” (Diaz, 2017, p.
102).
Hakan's Journey so far pictures the world as
"us all one" since both Lorimer and
anonymous Native American man educated
him with posthumanist views; that man can no
longer consider his milieu only as a cover
disperse exotic things and creatures
associated with him just by their advantage.
They taught Hakan caution, obligation, and the
existence of an extreme bond among all living
forms. The living way of Native Americans,
their inspiring notions, and their immediate
relationship to the environment shrewdly
fortify the conspicuous green voice in Diaz's
fiction that permeates through great parts of
Posthumanism. However, nature is on the edge
of disintegration since modern humankind
seeks mastery over it with his mechanical
instruments. It will be noticed that guns and
human's new practices caused the extension of
indigenous Americans, which were spirits of
the planet, and led to the environmental
changes as well as the deprivation of man. The
day that Hakan faced a stone craved chair in
the open wilderness, he asked himself if the
seat is a sign. He gazed into it, "What does chair
mean?" he came closer and touched it. Then he
sat on the chair and suddenly felt infirm and
fragile. At the same time, he reckons smaller
and lonelier "There was something thrilling
and comical about this." (Diaz, 2017) Was this
chair a proof of human presides over the
natural environment? Maybe it was a
rapturous kingdom chair constructed by the
human in the wild nature, even though by
sitting on it, you would feel less significant
than ever.
Hakan's sense of fellowship among nature
and his wise tutors, however, appears as
oppositional to his adventures in the city of
Clangston with the autocratic, colonist woman,
who killed Bernans for gold, and subsequently,
the trespassers' trail with Jarvis, where the
natural environment and its residents were a
store to be manipulated. Hakan confronts the
ruthless exploitation of the natural landscape
and the severe colonization of both place and
humankind beneath the shelter of opportunity
and modernity. Later on, he gets stalk in the
violence of coloniality and acts against his
moral values, for he takes lives in Jarvis' trails,
which parenthetically, only causes "feeling of
sorrow and senselessness" for him. Had
learned painful lessons walking around the
continent, Hakan "arrived nowhere." He could
neither fulfill his dreams nor find his brother,
and it was time for turning back home.
He planned to travel back and discover
James Brennan's buried gold. To do so, he must
find Clangston, from where he could directly
arrive to the mine and then Brennan's hidden
cave. Having gold, he could discover a pathway
into San Francisco and later, take a ship and
sail away. His Journey to Clangston was like his
many other journeys. However, Hakan got
surprised how everything was changed in
Clangston. Natural face of the city had been
vanished and was replaced by lines of
civilization; a night less wired mining town
with aggressive individuals, fancy dressers,
overloaded wagons, poor beggars, working
children under the filth, and "black, brown, and
red slime that covered the street from
threshold to threshold like a stagnant river of
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55
mud, excrement, and rotting food." At the
moment, Hakan notices a confident man
marketing his fake tonics at the corner of the
street with a crowd around him:
“Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and
gentlemen!” he cried. “A physic for every
condition, a tonic for each malady. … And
I have all the remedies right here. Blisters,
blemishes, blackheads? … You will never
believe what marvels two or three drops
of this powerful patent preparation here
can work. Instant relief! Weak, weary,
wan? You can’t go on. You’ve had enough.
Waking up is a struggle. … Here is the
cure. In this bottle. The rejuvenator! The
one, the only, the original rejuvenator. A
cordial made of herbs gathered by an
Indian doctor, combined with the latest
discoveries made by European chemical
practitioners.” (Diaz, 2017, p. 247).
He was the third scientist Hakan had faced in
his thus far global journey. By Lorimer, the fact
was an instant, innocent sense of touch.
Reason grew later and verified it, yet initially,
it had been a nearly tangible experience from
the fountain of nature, similar to awakening
from a lucid illusion. His other contact with
science had been by the Native Indian man.
Repeatedly, the proof of that man’s genius left
no room for ambiguity. His perception of the
mortal anatomy and the best way to remedy it,
his safe medicines and ointments, and his
nearly exact methods of preventing infections
were pieces of evidence from his authorization
by the power of nature. However, this guy,
with his tonics and medicines, was a clown and
a deceiver and had nothing in common with his
two masters. In the modern Clangston,
everything was unreliable and immoral as if
modernity turned people's lives upside down,
and nobody cared about what was happening.
Humankind now had dominated nature, seeing
that Diaz inscribes, "Nothing left behind in the
wilderness could ever be retrieved."
Hakan's way took him back to the spot he
first started his journey. However, the
landscape was like nothing Hakan had seen
before; "Every plant had been forced into some
artificial shape" in an oppressive method;
every animal had been domesticated; water
had been contained and redirected, and all
around, "Indians in white made sure that each
blade of grass stayed in place." Native
Americans, the pure souls of the planet whom
they had a deep-rooted relationship with the
environment, just like any other element of
nature, now working as slaves under modern
white men dominance. One of these men was a
wealthy Finnish man named Captain
Altenbaum. Captain was an animal fur trader
who was celebrating his triumph over natural
environment and animals in his castle, and
recently his ships were sailing through new
territory of "Alaska" to get ice from here and
there. The captain showed Hakan a globe and
pointed out to Alaska: “Just the place for
you…Whichever spot you choose, you can be
sure that you will be left alone. And that game
will be abundant” (Diaz, 2017), P. 265).
Hakan, however, inescapably, was part of
this dirty game until the last moments. Captain
Altenbaum's shipping company was
continually disrupting Alaska's new lands, just
like the formerly discovered America. Not only
his fur trading industry is undoubtedly a hassle
for local ecosystems, but the new notion of the
ice industry adds to global warming and the
extinction of several species. Humankind had
de-world the world and brought nothing but
wreck and bafflement for himself. In the
distance's white old man ends up where the
narrative begins, in a horizonless white plain,
breaking the stillness of nature. The constant
interruption that eventually resulted in
frustration of Hakan's ambitions and made
him an unfortunate man.
Inspired by posthumanism, the novel
illustrates how the underpinnings of the
posthumanistic constellation of thought could
be encoded in literary work. For instance, Diaz
implies the crisis of no longer standing with
nature, and mankind privileging of the
environment, which both are the chief
exemplars of the posthumanism perspective.
According to him, excavating gold had
intensified “the void” between the human and
ecology, and “separated” Bernans from the
natural sphere, as if they are standing above or
outside it. In other scenes throughout the
novel, Lorimer probably speaks for Diaz in the
shed of posthumanism since he often claims
“knowing nature means learning how to be” as
humankind in correlation with his only actual
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ISSN: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online) Pegah Abedi & Rasool Moradi-Joz
56
domicile, planet earth. As stands in what Diaz
argues, the whole life is “connected,” and all
living beings are “tied” together in this “natural
kingdom” which provides a network among all
beings; Therefore, we are “us all one” and to
trace the roots we need to monitor the
consistent discourse of creatures. Hereby,
Lorimer describes the exact roots of mankind
and the mentality of a “bond” among all living
forms (including humankind) on behalf of
Diaz. Thus, the narrative depicts how Hakan
felt the delight of being “a living thing among
living things” shortly afterward. He could now
comprehend that the land, which had
sheltered him for decades, is “part of his body,”
and therefore, nature or its offspring had no
intention to “kill or amaze” him. In the end, the
narrator uses the word “punitive” and “angry”
for describing the artificial design of the
modern city and expresses how the new world
is turning to be “complex” and “frightening” as
the human race seeking power over it.
This novel should give us cause to worry.
Hernan Diaz seems to bear a posthumanist
mentality while writing In the Distance novel,
and if not, he evidently had a vivid record of
this notion in his mind. The narrative inscribes
sequences of pattern like events by exercising
posthuman style of writing which ultimately
lead to the triumph of the human over nature
and decay of the environment; an ending
which eventually heads to the terrifying doom
of human civilization, including Hakan. In the
distance’s protagonist, Hakan, involuntarily
was a part of the systematic exploitation of
nature by colonizers, and became alienated
and manipulated through his traumatic
journey. However, his interactions—with
Indians, nature, animals, minerals, and
ecowarrior scientists—brought him a
universal sensibility and reminded him of his
inextricably bound up relation with other
beings, apart from their outside form. Images
of human domination of nature in this novel
are admittedly an earthly variant of the
apocalypse. What makes it even more
horrifying is the infinite avarice of humankind
as a slip that derails the human-non-human
network; the continuation of such abusing
points to the destruction of the whole
environment, which all in all, do not hold out
any hope that things would change for good. At
least not for years afterward.
Conclusion
The study explored the posthumanism
mindset reflected in one of the contemporary
novels In the Distance by Hernan Diaz, and
questioned the taxonomy of the human and the
non-human by breaking the anthropocentrism
and de-centering the human race from its
dedicated position of exceptionalism. The
novel is best understood as an endeavor to
awaken us to the perils for the environment by
making a journey toward consciousness. In
doing so, an attempt was made to uncover the
fiction's underlying assumptions as to how
humanity is shifting the boundaries among
living forms and exploiting the non-human
sphere since the modern period at the turn of
the 20th century. To put it another way, the
fiction doubts the widely acknowledged notion
of anthropocentrism and describes the misuse
of mineral, vegetal, and animal forms by the
modern human. The narrative is about to give
voice to abused living beings by employing a
posthuman way of thinking; therefore, Hernan
Diaz can be considered as one of the
contemporary driving forces of posthumanism
reflecting upon the relation of humankind and
nature in his fiction. He interestingly points out
how furtherance of the human race has made
us a threat for planet earth and continuously
makes an attempt to warn us against
consequences of the environmental
destruction, the unthoughtful objectification
that not only had resulted in the destruction of
the human-non-human network but also led to
extreme incompleteness and misery of man.
Diaz vividly illustrates how the pattern of the
landscape had changed due to humanity's
modern activities in a short period. He,
therefore, depicts modern American
civilization in the early 20th century and
mentions that even large settlements rising
from the ashes of the destructed environment
to improve mankind's living conditions can
lead to the collapse of moral ethics in human’s
society.
The brief epilogue to an analytical reading
of In the Distance fiction would inform us about
where the world was, where it is in the status
quo, and which rout it is taking in the near
future. The fictional world of Hernan Diaz,
makes us rethink human singularity and warns
us about the adverse repercussions of the man
Journal of Language and Literature
Vol. 21 No. 1 – April 2021 ISSN: 1410-5691 (print); 2580-5878 (online)
57
seeking authority over nature, promoting an
eco-morally mindset: we might guarantee the
presence of life on our planet, unless, of course,
we are happy with the way things are!
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