Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake" as a Critique of Technological Utopianism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.21.1.3Keywords:
dystopian fiction, Margaret Atwood, nostalgia, Oryx and Crake, technological utopianismAbstract
While there are major works tracing the themes of belonging and longing for home in contemporary fiction, there is no current study adequately addressing the connection between dystopian novel and nostalgia. This paper aims to illustrate how the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood uses nostalgia as a framework to level a critique against technological utopianism in her dystopian novel "Oryx and Crake" (2003). The first novel in Atwood's "MaddAddam Trilogy" problematizes utopian thought by focusing on the tension between two utopian projects: the elimination of all suffering and the perfection of human beings by discarding their weaknesses. Despite the claims of scientific objectivity and environmentalism, the novel exposes the religious and human-centered origins of Crake's technological utopian project. Atwood's "Oryx and Crake" is an ambiguous work of science fiction that combines utopian and dystopian elements into its narrative to criticize utopian thought.
References
Atwood, M. (2003). Oryx and Crake. Nan A. Talese.
Atwood, M. (2011). In other worlds: SF and the human imagination. Signal/McClelland & Stewart.
Barzilai, S. (2008). “Tell my storyâ€: Remembrance and revenge in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 50(1), 87-110. https://doi.org/10.3200/CRIT.50.1.87-110
Boym, S. (2001). The future of nostalgia. Basic Books.
Derrida, J. (2001). Structure, sign, and play in the discourse of the human sciences. In J. Derrida, Writing and difference (A. Bass, Trans., pp. 351-370). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203991787-14
Dusenbury, D. L. (2018, November 20). Utopia’s borders. American Affairs. https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/11/utopias-borders/
George, R. M. (1999). Home-countries: Narratives across disciplines. In R. M. George, The politics of home (pp. 11-34). University of California Press
Hofer, J. (1934). Medical dissertation on nostalgia. Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine, 2(6), 376-391. www.jstor.org/stable/44437799
Kakutani, M. (2003, May 3). Lone human in a land filled with humanoids. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/books/books-of-the-times-lone-human-in-a-land-filled-with-humanoids.html
Moretti, F. (1987). The Bildungsroman as symbolic form. In F. Moretti, The way of the world: The Bildungsroman in European culture (pp. 3-13). Verso.
Morton, O. (2003, May 9). Oryx and Crake. Entertainment Weekly. https://ew.com/article/2003/05/09/oryx-and-crake/
Parry, J. (2009). Oryx and Crake and the new nostalgia for meat. Society and Animals, 17(3), 241-256. https://doi.org/doi:10.1163/156853009X445406
Rao, E. (2006). Home and nation in Margaret Atwood’s later fiction. In C. A. Howells (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Margaret Atwood (pp. 100-113). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521839661.008
Rawson, C. (2005). Introduction. In J. Swift, C. Rawson, & I. Higgins (Eds.), Gulliver’s travels (pp. ix – xliii). Oxford University Press.
Rubenstein, R. (2001). Home matters: Longing and belonging. In R. Rubenstein, Home matters: Longing and belonging, nostalgia and mourning in women’s fiction (pp. 1-9). Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299750
Somay, B. (2010). The view from the masthead: Journey through dystopia towards an open-ended utopia. Istanbul Bilgi University Press.
Swift, J. (2005). Gulliver’s travels. Oxford University Press.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Murat Kabak
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
All published articles in the ESNBU are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don't have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
In other words, under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license users are free to:
Share - copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt - remix, transform, and build upon the material
Under the following terms:
Attribution (by) - All CC licenses require that others who use your work in any way must give you credit the way you request, but not in a way that suggests you endorse them or their use. If they want to use your work without giving you credit or for endorsement purposes, they must get your permission first.
NonCommercial (nc) - You let others copy, distribute, display, perform, and modify and use your work for any purpose other than commercially unless they get your permission first.
If the article is to be used for commercial purposes, we suggest authors be contacted by email.
If the law requires that the article be published in the public domain, authors will notify ESNBU at the time of submission, and in such cases the article shall be released under the Creative Commons 1 Public Domain Dedication waiver CC0 1.0 Universal.
Copyright
Copyright for articles published in ESNBU are retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. Authors retain full publishing rights and are encouraged to upload their work to institutional repositories, social academic networking sites, etc. ESNBU is not responsible for subsequent uses of the work. It is the author's responsibility to bring an infringement action if so desired by the author.
Exceptions to copyright policy
Occasionally ESNBU may co-publish articles jointly with other publishers, and different licensing conditions may then apply.
