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  1. Home
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  3. Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
September 2021
Print publication year:
2021
Online ISBN:
9781108979382
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108979382
Subjects:
Literature, English Literature: General Interest, Literary Theory
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Culture
Information

Book description

Drawing on a rich array of twenty-first-century speculative fiction, this book demonstrates how the commodification of life through biotechnology has far-reaching implications for how we think of personhood, agency, and value. Sherryl Vint argues that neoliberalism is reinventing life under biocapital. She offers new biopolitical figurations that can help theoretically grasp and politically respond to a distinctive twenty-first-century biopolitics. This book theorizes how biotechnology intervenes in the very processes of biological function, reshaping life itself to serve economic ends. Linking fictional texts with material examples, Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction shows how these practices are linked to new modes of exploitative economic relations that cannot be redressed by human rights. It concludes with a posthumanist reframing of the value of life that grounds itself elsewhere than in capitalist logics, a vision that, in a Covid age, might become fundamental to a new politics of ecological relations.

Reviews

‘… rich and compelling … the larger political and ethical ramifications of Vint’s project in Biopolitical Futures could not be more urgent or clear.’

Hugh C. O’Connell Source: Science Fiction Studies

‘Recommended …'

M. L. Robertson Source: Choice

‘Biopolitical Futures examines a truly impressive range of twenty-first century speculative fiction. … [the book] will be of particular interest to students and scholars of speculative fiction studies, feminist science and technology studies, posthuman studies, and related fields. Readers will come away inspired to explore, research, and teach many new titles alongside Vint’s book.’

Sharon Tran Source: American Literary History

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