COERCED REPRODUCTIVITY IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S SPECULATIVE, FEMINIST ECO-DYSTOPIA, THE HANDMAID’S TALE

Authors : Pelin Kumbet

Pages : 23-34

View : 154 | Download : 216

Publication Date : 2023-10-21

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Entering into the long-held white, male-dominated domain of science-fiction, feminist writers, inspired by the 1960s second-wave feminist awakening and consciousness, have started to use science-fiction genre as a "fruitful venue” for exploration of the radical entanglement between eco-catastrophic scenarios and misogynistic, sexist ideologies, and impositions. Being one of these influential and prolific feminist science-fiction, rather as a speculative fiction writer, Margaret Atwood, in her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, focuses on the interrelatedness of women and environment, and their dual subjugation, abuse, and destruction in the not-too-distant speculative world. She depicts that in the case of environmental disasters or ecological instability, women becoming the most disadvantaged group, suffer and pay the consequences gravely, and be subjected to docility, exploitation, and various horrendous practices. Portraying post-collapse USA, where the president, members of the parliament, and senate are killed and the US judicial system is suspended, the story takes place in what is now called the Gilead Republic, run by a group of totalitarian and despotic commanders. In this grim world order, infertility as a result of environmental and ecological crises, becomes a huge problem, leading this oppressive government to take action. Through invasive and selective methods, fertile women are collected as "herds” and first "tamed,” then reduced to forced breeding and handed over to rich, elite and high-ranking male commanders to be used as breeding machines. The paper entails an exploration of how because of the escalating eco-catastrophic problems the female body is grotesquely transformed into a "biological vessel” (Roos 45). In this paper, thus the horrific scientific intervention applied to the female body and the quest to save the society from environmental collapse here is examined by Michél Foucault’s biopolitics and the concept of bio-power.
Keywords : Margaret Atwood, The Handmaids Tale, Michel Foucault, Biopolitics, Biopower