Metamorphosis Towards Human-Vegetal Hybrids, From utopia to Dystopia and Back: A Mirrored Reading of Franci Conforti’s "Carnivori" and Clelia Farris’s "I vegumani"

Abstract

This article proposes a compared reading of two contemporary Italian novels: Carnivori, by Franci Conforti, and I vegumani, by Clelia Farris. Their stories, both located in a remote future, revolve around the common premise of a plan to hybridize humans with plants, in order to better face current vital issues, such as climate change and the issue of feeding the whole human population. Despite significant common points, the two novels diverge in their trajectories, insofar as the former starts from a partially utopian situation and ends on a dystopian and even apocalyptic note, in which the few human survivors are forced into exile on another planet, whereas the latter follows an exactly opposite path, hybridization being seen as the solution that prevents the necessity of exodus. This article explores the different factors that may explain this striking difference, including the SF subgenres to which the novels are related, the importance and relevance of plants in the stories (while there are almost completely absent from Carnivori, they are treated as full-fledged characters in I vegumani), and the ways hybridization is represented (as a loss of humanity and involution towards monstrosity vs as a vital enrichment of the characters’ identities and way of life). As I will argue, the different approaches of the two authors may be traced back to the opposite ideological stances they take with regard to a traditional, humanist view of human identity: adhering to it (Carnivori) or overcoming it in favour of a post-anthropocentric perspective (I vegumani).