ORIGINAL PAPER Clockwork: Philip Pullman’s Posthuman Fairy Tale Richard Gooding Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Abstract This article examines the connections between posthumanism and nar- rative form in Philip Pullman’s Clockwork. Beginning with an account of Pullman’s materialism, it argues that the novel represents consciousness and agency as emergent properties of matter, a position that manifests itself first in the tale’s figurative language and later in the cybernetic inventions of Dr. Kalmenius. As Pullman effaces the boundaries between animate and inanimate, human and non- human, he generates uncanny effects that are best understood in terms of the posthuman condition and narrative modes that reject liberal humanist models of subjectivity. Clockwork’s uncanny elements, metafictive qualities, and distribution of narrative voice across multiple perspectives thus represent narrative accommo- dations demanded by the tale’s rejection of the Cartesian mind/body dualism that grounds the liberal humanist subject. Clockwork’s acceptance of the posthuman condition is, however, incomplete and anxiety-laden, and the fairy-tale transfor- mation of Prince Florian at the end of the novel represents a partial recuperation of liberal humanist morality. Keywords Philip Pullman Á Clockwork Á Posthumanism Á Fairy tale Á Narrative form Richard Gooding is a lecturer in Arts Studies in Research and Writing and the Department of English at the University of British Columbia, where he teaches children’s literature, eighteenth-century studies, and writing. R. Gooding (&) Department of English, University of British Columbia, 397-1873 East Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1, Canada e-mail: rgooding@mail.ubc.ca 123 Children’s Literature in Education DOI 10.1007/s10583-011-9135-2