The Dehumanization Caused by the Domination of Corporations in Nicholas Lamar Soutter's "The Water Thief" and Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl"

Details

Supervisors

Bragard, Véronique

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en langues et lettres modernes, orientation générale

Abstract

enRecent dystopian fiction reveals and indicts the power of corporations to replace governments. This dissertation discusses how two recent novels, Soutter’s The Water Thief (2012) and Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009) imagine post-oil societies where corporations dominate the world. They constitute a turning point in dystopian fiction as they represent the shift of society towards capitalism. After reviewing the evolution of the dystopian genre and of the role of capitalism has played in this shift, the present research work analyses how both novels expose the detrimental role of corporations. Both authors emphasize how this new corporate system makes use/abuse of competition and profit, and have serious dehumanizing effects. With Haslam’s theory of dehumanization, which defines dehumanization as a denial of humanness, constituted of uniquely human and human nature traits, the present dissertation explores how both novels reveal how the dehumanizing acts affect both the victims and the perpetrators at the center of the system. Moreover, this dissertation also explores the issue of the posthuman, present in Bacigalupi’s novel, within the scope of dehumanization.