This notion of discipline is known as 'biopower' (literally it means control over human bodies). Foucault identifies the emergence of such disciplinary power as a gradual process in which the subjected body becomes submissive when the mind has been manipulated to believe in the correctness of the functioning of the body. The goal of a disciplinary society, according to Michel Foucault (1979), is to make citizens more profitable and productive, and less individual, through mental and physical conditioning in order to turn people into compliant subjects. For the moment, we should interpret it as a warning about what may happen if we focus too much in pleasure and consumption. Nevertheless, those trends have been taken to the extreme by Huxley, and his prophecy has not yet come true. Nowadays, many of the aspects described by Huxley are already present in our society: more sexual freedom, advanced control on reproduction, high use of drugs and medicines, etc. The dystopian novel was also interpreted as a prophetic one. However, the presence of Shakespeare in this novel is very powerful, functioning as a contrast to this empty and materialist world. The society is based on consumerism and foolish distractions, while art, culture, history, religion, and literature are considered dangerous and thus totally forbidden. One of the prevailing ideas in this novel is the loss of individualism by the citizens, people in Brave New World are totally controlled and conditioned to behave as the state wants.
It is called a novel of ideas due to the fact that the author focuses mainly in satirize the rapid advancements of technology and its consequences in the twentieth century. Brave New World is a novel of ideas written by Aldous Huxley in 1932.
0 kommentar(er)
