"A.I. is a distraction. The glory of language is in its ambiguity": Narrating Contemporary Reality with Jeanette Winterson. A Conversation with Jeanette Winterson

Throughout her career, Jeanette Winterson has been celebrated for her innovative postmodernist narrative structures and thematic boldness, through works that blend genres and challenge conventional storytelling norms. However, in recent years, Winterson has also explicitly turned her attention to posthuman themes, exploring the implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital technology on biological human existence. Her engagement with the Posthuman is found both in novels like "Frankissstein: A Love Story" (2019), a contemporary take on Mary Shelley's classic, and in essay collections such as "12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next" (2021). Equally opposed to technophobic and technophiliac reactions to AI, Winterson maintains a more critical stance, positing that language and the human experience it conveys continue to possess a distinct emotional resonance that AI cannot fully replicate. The following interview was kindly granted by the author in July 2023 at the Forum Hotel in Rome, previous to her participation in the capital's International Literature Festival with a piece on Italo Calvino. In the course of this conversation, it becomes evident that Jeanette Winterson reaffirms her commitment to the fearless exploration of today's burning questions, positioning herself as a pivotal figure in the artistic examination of humanity's relationship with technology in the 21st century.