Myths of the End and Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods

In The Stone Gods (2007), Jeanette Winterson creates a subject position that defies humanism by getting rid of the body and biology completely by creating the character Spike, a robo sapiens who presents herself as a woman that decides to be a lesbian later on. This robo sapiens, detached from its body at the end, provides an interesting position to discuss the deconstructionist and feminist critique of the subject and gender. I will argue that, despite its radical divergence from the subject of humanism, this subjectivity is actually embedded in the religious and humanist conception of the subject, which is revealed in the apocalyptic pattern of the novel. This apocalyptic pattern and the logic of ending is in accordance with the Biblical apocalyptic pattern which also encompasses the rational perception of apocalypse which defines the discourse of global warming. An analysis of the apocalyptic philosophy of the Bible will show that the intelligible and rational world view dominates both religious and secular writings such as The Stone Gods, and this world view implies a certain subjectivity that this apocalyptic vision can accommodate. This subjectivity is a complete entity that has free will defined in its difference from and in relation to others - human, animal or divine - and this difference and relation is what constitutes the subject of humanism. This humanist subject is in opposition to the subject of change and shape-shifting of mythology or pre-monotheistic religions as illustrated in Joseph Campbell’s study of Oriental mythologies and in Mikhail Bakhtin’s study on the carnivalesque. In other words, the narration of apocalypse that marks the end of time and follows a rational logic of reward and punishment as featured in The Stone Gods inheres a certain understanding of subject that cannot diverge much from the male humanist subject, which is the case regarding the character of Spike.