Violence, the Humanness of Things and the Thingness of Humans in Nicoletta Vallorani’s Avrai i miei occhi

The article analyzes the work of Nicoletta Vallorani, one of Italy’s most well-known science fiction authors, through a feminist and posthumanist lens, focusing specifically on her recent novel Avrai i miei occhi (You Will Have My Eyes) (2020). Vallorani investigates the ways in which gender intersects with new technologies such as cloning in societies that capitalize upon power inequality and exploit the marginalized. The novel interrogates the boundaries of the human in a transnational and intermedial way, engaging in (intertextual) dialogue with feminist artists such as Sylvia Plath and Francesca Woodman and with examples of English-language sf, including N. K. Jemisin, James Tiptree Jr., Adjei-Brenyah and the Westworld (2016–) series. Vallorani’s engaged sf places pain and exploitation at the center of the narrative but also indicates possibilities of shared resistance for the displaced.