Subjectivity and Biopolitics in Post-postmodern Novel (Oryx and Crake) by Margaret Atwood as an example

Abstract

Subjectivity and Biopolitics in  Post-postmodern Novel (Oryx and Crake) by Margaret Atwood as an example

Abstract: Margaret Atwood’s novel (Oryx and Crake) questions the meaning of life, and what it means to be a human being in the age of tremendous progress in medicine and biotechnology that endorses dangerous operations such as genetic editing, cross-species hybridization, and organ transplantation. It also elaborates on the distinction between bare life and life proper not only for humans but for other living species.The novel not only discusses issues and concerns related to life but emphasizes working- together on the ground. Therefore, it provides us with a fertile environment for analyzing biopower and biopolitics in Anthropocene Epoch. The novel reflects contemporary fears of unprecedented technological developments and political practices:  fear of a totalitarian regime, loss of rights and freedoms, dehumanization of human beings, fear of environmental disasters, diseases, treatments, scientific and technological developments and their consequences, exploitation of nature and its resources, and the loss of "ontological" categories and boundaries such as the natural/artificial and the human/non-human. These are actual fears we live with today on various levels. The novel approaches the concerns with a critical stance. It focuses on stable and resistant subjectivities, which requires a perception of subjectivity that contradicts the postmodern perception; this classifies the novel among those writings that transgress postmodern narrative themes.

Keywords: Margaret Atwood, post-postmodernism, biopower, biopolitics, Homo Sacer bare life, the state of exception. Oryx and Crake