ABSTRACT

This article investigates the relation between science and narration through the lens of gender and anthropocentrism. By analysing Calvino’s long, ‘biocomic’ triptych ‘Priscilla’ (published in T con zero in 1967) alongside (popular) scientific tales on (a)sexual reproduction, patterns in fictional and scientific storytelling are individuated. The three parts of Calvino’s story, starting from a unicellular organism and ending in the (primordial) sea, tell a remarkably non-anthropocentric tale. Different life forms and sexualities are explored alongside the microbiology of human reproduction. The binary terms and gendered hierarchies through which the meeting of egg and sperm is often recounted in scientific narratives are much less pronounced in ‘Priscilla’. By exploring the posthuman and non-speciesist aspects of Calvino’s story, the entanglement between past and future, pre-human and post-human, human and animal, can be reappraised in an original manner.

摘要

本文通过性别和人类中心主义的视角研究科学与叙事之间的关系。通过分析卡尔维诺的长篇“生物喜剧”三联画“普里西拉”（发表于《T con 0》）1967年）除了关于（a）性生殖的（流行）科学故事之外，虚构和科学故事讲述的模式也被个性化。卡尔维诺故事的三个部分，从单细胞生物开始，到（原始）海洋结束，讲述了一个非常非人类中心的故事。与人类生殖微生物学一起探索不同的生命形式和性行为。科学叙述中经常描述卵子和精子相遇的二元术语和性别等级制度在《普里西拉》中没有那么明显。通过探索卡尔维诺故事中的后人类和非物种歧视方面，过去与未来、前人类与后人类、人类与动物之间的纠葛可以以一种原创的方式重新评估。