Adolescence and Artificial Intelligence: Posthumanism and Maturation in Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff's Illuminae Files

Abstract:Young adult science fiction holds in tension the ideological position that adolescents are posthuman and a socializing mandate to enable adolescent maturation into normative, humanist adulthood. Frequently, this tension is resolved through the rejection of technology, but recent young adult science fiction interrogates and challenges traditional maturation. Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff's Illuminae Files series demonstrates how hierarchical social, legal, and political structures categorize and control adolescents to encourage their traditional maturation, but it also suggests the empowerment and agency possible through posthumanist alternatives, such as the cyborgian hybridity of an adolescent and artificial intelligence.