When the body is observed through a certain combination of technologies, there can be subversive politics to doing anything at all. The nature of media and biopolitics has permitted for a set of systems aimed at total control of the human body; a power which can permeate all facets of life. This thesis is a collection of essays which argues that speculative fiction contains multitudes of approaches to biopolitical discourse, permitting the reader of the text to approach politics from their own set of experiences, but not allowing the political to be ignored. These chapters contain three separate but interrelated arguments regarding the nature of power: “Law, Technology, and the Body,” “Weaponized Media,” and “The Subversive Politics of Doing Anything at All.” This thesis creates working definitions of critical or political concepts which the chapters engage, defining terms such as speculative fiction, formalism, and biopolitics. The texts which these chapters primarily rely upon to convey examples of the visibility of these concepts—the work of Margaret Atwood and David Foster Wallace—will also be explored in these pages, prescribing specific interpretations of their plots and suggesting possible readings of the way the narratives describe technologies. The first chapter, “Law, Technology, and the Body,” posits that computational metaphors for humans are used to enforce power, particularly through the construction of law, which is prominent in works of speculative fiction. This chapter will use biopolitical theory as well as formalist readings to approach the texts: it begins by explaining the biopolitical approach to the texts which permits for such readings, then elaborates upon law, power structures, and technology which affect the body within Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy. It ultimately concludes by suggesting that these structures will be visible within all narratives, but particularly prominent in speculative fiction due to the way speculative fiction engages with and responds to the technologies of the real world. The second chapter, “Weaponized Media,” shows that the trope of weaponized media is a compelling lens through which to approach text and an apt metaphor for the relationship between art and power, elucidating its prominence within speculative fiction. This argument relies primarily upon structuralism, linguistic theory, Russian formalism, and conflict theory to explain the highly-politicized use of weapons in these texts. Beginning with a survey of examples of this trope in speculative fiction, particularly within David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, the chapter concludes by reflecting upon the biopolitical structures which contribute to and are reflected by this trope. The final chapter, “The Subversive Politics of Doing Anything at All,” is a cumulation of the prior arguments. Supporting the chapter’s titular thesis, Russian formalism, media theory, and the surveillance and race theory of Simone Browne are used as central tenets to support this argument’s progression. This chapter argues that media propagates norms, that all things are now media. The consequences that follow from the nature of media entail that due to a hyper-connected world and the conflation of fear and terrorism, almost all things can be considered outside the norm—that doing almost anything at all is viewed as subversive by some, particularly by normative structures and governments. Speculative fiction questions these structures, specifically asking the reader to consider the political structures inherent in every action that they might commit to.

Women are traditionally counted among the victims or losers in religious power plays. On the surface, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novels give the impression that women will be the underdogs in these stories as well. However, on closer examination and application of Michel Foucault’s techniques of power, it can be seen that women indeed have and use power to put up resistance in otherwise seemingly hopeless situations in male dominated religious societies. The religious societies in The Year of the Flood and The Handmaid’s Tale will be compared as to how they appropriate religion and power to their advantage and how women make use of power techniques such as witnessing through discourse and the forbidden written language, use of their bodies and the fraying threads of power as opportunities, as well as community and solidarity and forgiveness to turn their situation around and fight for their futures.

Yuen Siu Fung. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 157-162). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter Chapter One: --- Re-imagining Female Subjectivity beyond Bodily Inscriptions --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter Two: --- Cultural Body and Female Agency: The Transformation of Identity in Jasmine --- p.21 / Chapter Chapter Three: --- Woman and Unwoman: Reconstructing Subjectivity in The Handmaids Tale --- p.64 / Chapter Chapter Four: --- Beyond Bodily Defined Identity: Per/Re-forming Man/Woman Relationship in Nights at the Circus --- p.114 / Chapter Chapter Five: --- "In Search of Fulfilment, Satisfaction and Development" --- p.150 / Bibliography --- p.157

In this thesis, I explore the textual strategy of feminist revision employed by contemporary women writers. After investigating Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea as a prototype of feminist revision, I focus specifically on Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” as a revision of Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard,” Michèle Roberts’s The Book of Mrs Noah as a revision of the Old Testament Flood narrative, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad as a revision of Homer’s Odyssey and the Troy narratives, and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lavinia as a revision of Vergil’s Aeneid. Through investigating the historical and literary contexts of each revisioned text, I identify the critical focus of the revision and analyse the textual effect produced by the revision. In each case, the feminist revision exposes the underlying ideological assumptions of the source text. By rewriting the canonical narrative from an alternative perspective, each revision extends beyond the source text, altering meaning and reinterpreting key symbols for feminist ends.

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語言是人們用以思考與表達思想的媒介。長久以來，人們相信語言為溝通的工具，可以傳達個人思想。但是由後現代的角度看來，語言一旦被使用，就具有自己的生命。一段文字的意義不再固定於創作出該段文字的人原本所要表達的意思，而在於聽者與讀者對於該段文字所產生出的不同的解碼。 本論文旨在討論艾德伍德《女僕的故事》中的語言力量。藉由探討小說中不同立場對語言的使用，希望能夠印證話語/語言絕不可能中立的看法，話語總是含有價值判斷的。而且，話語本身就是不同立場角逐的領域；只有權力最大的一方，才能輕易掌握發言權，並得以以最顯著的音量發聲。而這也是為何發聲是如何重要的事，只有發聲，才能表達自己的立場，也才能替自己爭取權益。 本論文分為六個部份：除了導論和結論外，第一章、第二章和第三章分別討論小說中三種不同的聲音，它們亦代表三種不同的思考模式；第四章討論小說作者艾德伍德本人的加拿大經驗對她的思考與寫作 (皆為使用語言的過程) 所產生的影響。話語在小說中不僅是被用以壓迫人的工具，但亦為受壓迫者得以反壓迫的方法，因為話語是具有強大力量的。 Table of Contents Acknowledgement………………………………………………………iii Chinese Abstract…………………………………………………………v English Abstract…………………………………………………………vi Chapter Introduction………………………………………………………1 Chapter One: Discourses of the Republic of Gilead…………………17 Discourses of Sexuality in Gilead ……………………………… 18 Althusser's Ideology and Language of Gilead ……………………26 Chapter Two: Offred's Story: A History of Wome …………………42 Offred's Language and Her Subjectivity …………………………45 A History of Women……………………………………………56 Chapter Three: The History Notes: Pieixoto's Story…………………62 Pieixoto's Appropriation of Offred's Tale…………………………64 A History of the Dominant Males ………………………………66 Chapter Four: The Canadianness in the Novel………………………73 Conclusion ………………………………………………………82 Bibliography………………………………………………………88 / Language is a medium by which people think and express themselves. For a long time, language was seen as a tool used by people to communicate and reveal thoughts. In postmodern time, language is viewed as having its own life. Once a speech or a statement is produced, it is beyond the control of the producer. It is, instead, in the hand of the listener or the reader. My thesis aims to discuss the language power in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. By analyzing the novel's three different language systems, I hope to demonstrate that language is never value-free and that it is always by someone and for someone. Moreover, language is itself a place where different positions struggle with each other. Only the most powerful people can dominate language as they wish and express themselves loudly. This thesis will be divided into six parts: introduction, three chapters dealing with three kinds of language systems underpinned by different thinking, a chapter dealing with the influence of Atwood's Canadian experience on her thought and language, and the conclusion. In the novel, language is not only used as a tool to oppress people, it is also used as a weapon to resist and subvert the oppression. This is all because there is power in language.

Speculative fiction is a genre that is gaining urgency in the contemporary Canadian literary scene as authors and readers become increasingly concerned with what it means to live in a nation implicated in globalization. This genre is useful because with it, authors can extrapolate from the present to explore what some of the long-term effects of globalization might be. This thesis specifically considers the long-term effects of globalization on communities, a theme that speculative fictions return to frequently. The selected speculative fictions engage with current theory on globalization and community in their explorations of how globalization might affect the types of communities that can be enacted. This thesis argues that these texts demonstrate how Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s notion of “cooperative autonomy” can be uniquely cultivated in the conditions of globalization – despite the fact that those conditions are characterized by the fragmentation of traditional forms of community (Empire 392).

Speculative fiction is a genre that is gaining urgency in the contemporary Canadian literary scene as authors and readers become increasingly concerned with what it means to live in a nation implicated in globalization. This genre is useful because with it, authors can extrapolate from the present to explore what some of the long-term effects of globalization might be. This thesis specifically considers the long-term effects of globalization on communities, a theme that speculative fictions return to frequently. The selected speculative fictions engage with current theory on globalization and community in their explorations of how globalization might affect the types of communities that can be enacted. This thesis argues that these texts demonstrate how Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s notion of “cooperative autonomy” can be uniquely cultivated in the conditions of globalization – despite the fact that those conditions are characterized by the fragmentation of traditional forms of community (Empire 392).

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood indirectly exposes frightening and undemocratic traits in societies of our time when she applies them to a fictive future in which these factors have caused horrible consequences. A group of men has formed a new state, “Gilead”, in which they ruthlessly control the population. This essay studies how this dictating power gains and, essentially, maintains power in the fictive society. The essay argues, and comes to the conclusion, that by surveilling the population and by restricting its means of communication the dictatorship is able to control the people and keep them docile.

This thesis explores the oppression of women within the gender institution of patriarchy in Margaret Atwood¡¦s dystopian novel The Handmaid¡¦s Tale, and their resistance to this male-dominated society. As a feminist writer, Atwood is very much concerned about the issue of gender, which she foregrounds in The Handmaid¡¦s Tale. In my analysis, I apply some theories of radical feminists and the French feminist who devote themselves to the study of gender--Kate Millett, Adrienne Rich, Catherine MacKinnon, and Hélène Cixous. Millett focuses on women¡¦s subordinated position that leads to women¡¦s oppression in patriarchy. Rich and MacKinnon focus on how women are controlled and oppressed in maternity and sexuality within the patriarchal society of gender inequality. Cixous challenges the validity of gender by pointing out its characteristic fluidity through creating woman¡¦s own writing in order to redefine female selfhood for women¡¦s resistance. The thesis is composed of five chapters. The Introduction presents the background materials about Atwood and The Handmaid¡¦s Tale, the motivation of the thesis, and the resonance between The Handmaid¡¦s Tale and certain feminists¡¦ theories. The first chapter analyzes the formation of the unbalanced power relations between the sexes in which women are subordinated to men through the socialization. Moreover, because of women¡¦s subordination, women are modulated as mothers through socially institutionalized motherhood such as the Wives and the Handmaids in Gilead. The second chapter further analyzes how women are formulated as sexual objects through the experience of sexual objectification within the institution of heterosexuality, such as the mistresses and the prostitutes of Gilead. The third chapter discusses how female orality empowers women to resist their patriarchal society in The Handmaid¡¦s Tale. The protagonist Offred, by ¡§writing her voice¡¨ through storytelling, resists patriarchal oppression, restores her body and self, and transforms herself from a victim in a claustrophobic world of male domination to a heroine of femininity. Moreover, her act of writing by her voice also reflects women¡¦s histories of repression, which should be reconstructed in a culture in which only males are literate. Offred¡¦s oral act of storytelling, to the reader, may also signify her resistance to reconstruct women¡¦s repressed histories. The concluding chapter reiterates the research of The Handmaid¡¦s Tale with a synthesis of Atwood¡¦s and some of the prominent feminists¡¦ points of view, namely Millett¡¦s, Rich¡¦s, MacKinnon¡¦s and Cixous¡¦s, toward the oppression and resistance of women within the institution of gender. This study hopes to explore and thus illuminate the nature, the functioning, the operation of socially constructed male domination, and then proceed to search the possible solution, or the ¡§voice;¡¨ however feeble it is, the author, or the protagonist conceives to defy the oppression imposed on women.