Of language and music: A neo-baroque, environmental approach to the human, infrahuman and superhuman in Richard Powers' Orfeo

Abstract

In 2014, Richard Powers published Orfeo. Literally, a road novel, Orfeo tells the story of retired, avant-garde composer Peter Els as he flees Homeland Security for bioterrorism. However, Els's intentions in biohacking Serratia marcescens are merely artistic, and concerned only with encoding his last musical composition in the DNA of this bacterium. Troubled as he is with the purpose and reach of art, Els does not anticipate the consequences of his artistic experimentation until Homeland Security is after him. In Orfeo, the power of music to move human and natural elements and the illicit disruption of the divine order-of-being represented in the Orphic katabasis find their parallel within the historical context of post-9/11 America, the environmental concerns regarding scientific experimentation at the turn of the century and the transhumanist branch of posthumanist discourse respectively, but also as they relate to each other. Orpheus' katabasis is also reflected in the textual construction of the novel as a road novel, an epic journey the original purpose of which stands behind an ultimate gain of self-discovery that in the novel, engages the main character as much as the narrative itself. Finally, the thematic and formal aspects of the novel organize around a Neo-Baroque aesthetics that insists on the arrangement of apparently disconnected historical, musical and literary phenomena, as it widens into the transhistorical dimension of Orphic myths and religious practices. 1