Necropolitics, Affirmative Ethics and Atwood‘s Speculation of an Integrated Human History in the Gilead Series

Abstract

Margaret Atwood speculates a totalitarian regime Gilead in her novels The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and The Testaments (2019. It was formed under a coup after the civil war preceded by the assassination of the US president and collapse of the Congress. The state represses its people, especially women, to enforce forceful sex, marriage, pregnancy and births to cope with the population crisis induced by continuous wars, climate disasters and low human fertility rate. To execute these repressive policies, the state invents extreme forms of control mechanisms built on Puritan doctrines, militarism, pervasive surveillance and utter violence like public execution, selective killings, brutal punishments, violence and intimidation. Sinners and criminals like adulteresses, rapists and pedophiles are not tolerated, and women are cared for and controlled to manage the population. Quite contradictory to totalitarianism and repression, the state employs a female leader, Lydia to watch the ―female sphere‖ and carry out safe births. This thesis analyzes the extreme means of control and punishment on women and attempts to answer how and why the state resorts to such mechanisms ranging from militarism, theocracy, rampant surveillance to female leadership. This thesis examines how the state evokes positive response and support from the disempowered women. Furthermore, it probes into the implications of inclusion of a woman leader into state politics and unravels the rationale of such contradictions prevalent in state. Besides, it pays critical attention upon the plurality of forces and people performing their roles constructively and flexibly in the reduced circumstances. This thesis is framed under interpretive research design and is substantiated by interpretation and criticality as theoretical underpinnings under constructivist approach as explained by Creswell and Creswell. This approach helps to reflect and understand reality constructed by four female narrators from their experiences and observations as main victims and witnesses of the repression, and supports the interpretation of women‘s responses to state politics. Moreover, it employs Butler‘s theory of performance to deepen the understanding of shifting roles and responsibilities, openness and fluidity of identities. It uses the conceptual framework built on Mbembe‘s concept of necropolitics, Braidotti‘s approach of affirmative ethics, Butler‘s concept of frames of war and Agamben‘s idea of ―state of exception‖ to discuss why and how the regime violates law, eliminates selective population of women, and executes repressive rules by employing a female leader. Mbembe‘s concept of sovereign right for selective killing and Braidotti‘s ideas about sacrificial deaths, legalized euthanasia, use of technothanatological weaponry and ―ethos of engagement‖ are relevant tools to analyze the totalitarian regime, its people framed in different categories and their performances to live through the unprecedented crisis in Gilead as a ―state of exception‖. This thesis concludes that the state violence, repression, selective killings and extreme forms of control on its people are neither for sovereignty, elimination of the enemies as by racism nor a tool for eugenics but they are critical choices the state has to make when all other alternatives of saving the human future are exhausted by itself in the pretext of wars, nationality and individual freedom. Consigning the political power to the woman leader is the recognition of women‘s agency unacknowledged in the history but crucial in lifting up the fallen societies and rebuilding peace. Atwood‘s implication is of a collective battle as the ultimate resolve to fight against the shared precariousness and common vulnerability of the imminent human future. Unity can overcome the unprecedented crisis. Empathy, compassion, forgiveness, affirmative ethics and charity founded on self-criticism, critical retrospection and sense of oneness can rebuild an integrated history. Proposed as a design to live the future under the constant threat of ever-going wars, the rehearsal of thoughts in this discourse can trigger affirmative response and transformative approaches to crises in the uncharted chapters humanity is likely to face. To conclude on what Atwood says: ―imagination influences hope‖ and on what Braidotti claims: ―words are sonic acts‖, this thesis draws upon the chilling experiences of the repressive rule of Gilead and keeps readers aware and critical about contemporary wars and violence, and the past. Implicitly, it asks us to be prepared to take the dystopian future if navigated otherwise. Rigorous in tone, Atwood, nevertheless gives hope providing patterns of lives to live through similar situations awhile and learn to resist them, meanwhile. Keywords: affirmative ethics, critical retrospection, ethos of engagement, necropolitics, repression, shared vulnerability