Frank Herbert's Dune and the Financialization of Heroic Masculinity

Abstract

TH I S A R T I C L E P R O C E E D S F R O M T W O B A S I C A S S E R T I O N S. FI R S T, T H A T FR A N K Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune is useful for thinking our financialized, late capitalist moment; and second, that the concepts and concerns of our moment are useful for rethinking this science fiction classic. As a conscious reading strategy, such anachronism brings seemingly disparate elements of the novel that critics tend to treat separately (ecology, gender, heroism, politics, prophesy, colonialism) into productive new conjunctions. In Dune’s protagonist, Paul Atreides, we see these threads woven into a problematic masculine subjectivity that exemplifies capacities of risk management and affective manipulation central to the postindustrial financial market system. The result is an early