Volume 8, Issue 1 (March 2026)
IEEPJ 2026, 8(1): 0-0 |
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Moslehi M, Borzabadi Farahani H, Azizmohammadi F, Khodadad M. (2026). Ideological Power in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake: Bio politics, Exchangeability in Language, and Post human Legibility through the Lens of Judith Butler and bell hooks. IEEPJ. 8(1),
URL: http://ieepj.hormozgan.ac.ir/article-1-1127-en.html
URL: http://ieepj.hormozgan.ac.ir/article-1-1127-en.html
1- Department of English language, Ar.C., Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran
2- Department of English language, Ar.C., Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran ,053225372522@iau.ac.ir
2- Department of English language, Ar.C., Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran ,
Abstract: (64 Views)
Objective: This article examines the role of ideology in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, focusing on how corporate power shapes life, identity, and the post-human condition. It aims to analyze how biopolitics, linguistic fluidity, and capitalist structures construct and legitimize a post-human future.
Methods: The study employs a critical literary analysis informed by Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and bell hooks’ critique of capitalism and gendered exploitation. Through close reading of the novel, the article investigates how language, branding, and corporate control function as mechanisms of biopower that shape bodies, identities, and desires.
Results: The analysis shows that biopower in Oryx and Crake operates through both biological manipulation and ideological control. Corporate structures commodify life itself, redefining what counts as human while normalizing bodily modification, consumerist identities, and systemic inequalities. Language and branding play a central role in shaping subjectivity, while gendered exploitation and normalized violence underpin the novel’s portrayal of a supposedly “optimal” post-human humanity.
Conclusions: The article argues that Atwood critiques the post-human ideal by revealing how it depends on entrenched systems of inequality, exploitation, and ideological manipulation. Oryx and Crake ultimately functions as a cautionary narrative about the power of ideology in shaping the future, suggesting that acts of remembering and retelling history offer a form of resistance against the normalization of a post-human utopia.
Methods: The study employs a critical literary analysis informed by Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and bell hooks’ critique of capitalism and gendered exploitation. Through close reading of the novel, the article investigates how language, branding, and corporate control function as mechanisms of biopower that shape bodies, identities, and desires.
Results: The analysis shows that biopower in Oryx and Crake operates through both biological manipulation and ideological control. Corporate structures commodify life itself, redefining what counts as human while normalizing bodily modification, consumerist identities, and systemic inequalities. Language and branding play a central role in shaping subjectivity, while gendered exploitation and normalized violence underpin the novel’s portrayal of a supposedly “optimal” post-human humanity.
Conclusions: The article argues that Atwood critiques the post-human ideal by revealing how it depends on entrenched systems of inequality, exploitation, and ideological manipulation. Oryx and Crake ultimately functions as a cautionary narrative about the power of ideology in shaping the future, suggesting that acts of remembering and retelling history offer a form of resistance against the normalization of a post-human utopia.
Type of Study: Original |
Subject:
Evolutionary Psychology
Received: 2025/08/11 | Accepted: 2025/12/18 | Published: 2026/03/1
Received: 2025/08/11 | Accepted: 2025/12/18 | Published: 2026/03/1
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