Book contents
- Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
- Cambridge Studies in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Culture
- Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Suspending Death, Reinventing Life
- Chapter 2 The New Flesh
- Chapter 3 Capital Reproduction
- Chapter 4 Surplus Value
- Chapter 5 Life Industries
- Chapter 6 Living to Work
- Chapter 7 Life Optimized
- Chapter 8 Surplus Vitality and Posthuman Possibilities
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Neoliberalism and the Reinvention of Life
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2021
- Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
- Cambridge Studies in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Culture
- Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Suspending Death, Reinventing Life
- Chapter 2 The New Flesh
- Chapter 3 Capital Reproduction
- Chapter 4 Surplus Value
- Chapter 5 Life Industries
- Chapter 6 Living to Work
- Chapter 7 Life Optimized
- Chapter 8 Surplus Vitality and Posthuman Possibilities
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Introduction explains how and why our contemporary context prompts the reinvention of life as conceptualized by Western metaphysics. It theorizes why biopolitical governance should be understood as the real subsumption of life by capital and argues for the importance of speculative fiction as a cultural mode that reflects upon and responds to how biotechnology is remaking life, conceptually and materially. The Introduction argues that we need a new dispositif of personhood that must necessarily be attentive to issues of colonialism and race. Taking up work by Sylvia Wynter, the chapter connects it to Foucault’s discussions of Homo economicus. It concludes by suggesting that the contemporary world can be characterized as a condition of epivitality, the prefix signifying “over, around, and outside of” and thus signaling the blurring of living beings with objectified things in biotechnology and practices of dehumanizing labor.
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- Information
- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021