Bodies for Profit and Power

Download or read book Bodies for Profit and Power written by Lisa Wenger Bro and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2023-10-05 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early dystopian science fiction like George Orwell's 1984 or Thea von Harbou's Metropolis show us bleak worlds where capitalism has no boundaries and has corrupted sovereign powers, exploiting the lower classes and benefiting only a few at the top. Political laws and policies related to human life--or the biopolitical--devalue that life, making humanity little more than expendable "machines" producing for capitalism, and capitalism's focus on progress has made it a central concern in much of science fiction. Covering science fiction from the early 1900s to present, this book examines the portrayal of dystopian capitalism and the biopolitical in works like Brave New World and R.U.R., among many others.