Speculative Fiction, Biocapitalism and Being Tentacular: Reading the MaddAddam trilogy as Posthuman Saga

Abstract

This paper focuses on the posthuman ideas that are ingrained within the narrative of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. The paper will identify various philosophical challenges posed by biocapitalism and a hyperhumanist ideology, while tracing the counter narrative through the critical framework of resistance provided by the critical humanist school of thought in particular. By reading into the writings of K Sundar Rajan and Nicholas Rose, the paper dwells on the issue of biocapital and its commodification of life, and also attempts to read an interventionist politics into the idea of bio-power which Mitchel Foucault posits. It also tries to provide an antithesis to the capitalocene and its subsidiary biocapitalism through an understanding of Donna Haraway’s concepts of critter and chuthulucene.