The Posthuman Heroine in Policía del Karma (2011) by Jorge Baradit

Abstract

The dystopian Chilean reality depicted in graphic novel Policía del Karma (2011) by Jorge Baradit does not only bring about questionings about the world around us and concerns over the spectulative novel. The novel highlights the figure of the female hero as engine and central figure of societal and spiritual change in a mostly sick Chilean sociery. This paper attempts to read Baradit’s novel from an aesthetic perspective, especially the way in which Baradit constructs the female character. From a perspective based on posthuman feminism (Rosi Braidotti), we should have a look at the uses of the female body and, also the attempt at colonizing her psyche within Baradit’s narrative. Through the juxtaposition of various temporalities and the use of flashbacks and hallucinations resulting from the consumption of both natural and synthetic drugs, Policía del Karma brings a chaos which has a certain order, totalitarian in nature, highly religious and pagan at the same time, where the human mixes with the android and the machine is an extension of mutilated bodies that become a single ‘creature’ with it.