Abstract or Introduction
In Brave New World Aldous Huxley explores a dystopian scenario of a centuries-away future where a totalitarian regime utilizes scientific advancements and disciplinary conditioning to form the human species to their vision. Huxley’s novel explores what happens when society fully cedes its power to a government that subsequently utilizes scientific advancement to improve their control over said society.
Using Michel Foucault’s power theory and his concept of biopower, I will analyze how the government of Huxley’s World State successfully exerts biopower by combining regulation of the population and conditioning of the individual to create a hamster wheel of a society that spins in an era of everlasting contentment.
I will first outline the beginnings of political power theory at the examples of enlightenment philosophers Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau and then transition into a more modern perspective on power by twentieth century French philosopher Michel Foucault. The gained insights on political power philosophy I will then apply to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and analyze the government’s utilization of the examined power variants and to which success they exert these.
- Quote paper
- Anonymous, 2022, The Dehumanization of the Fordian Society. Foucauldian Biopower in Aldous Huxley’s "Brave New World", Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1248891
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