Research Question: In what ways does Oryx and Crake connect traditional gender with how they bleed into patterns of violence, consumer culture, and emotional detachment within late-capitalist culture
Annotated Bibliography:
Franks, Nadia-Terese Laguna. “‘Belief Rather Than a Memory’: The Relationship Between Gender and Trauma in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.” C21 Literature, vol. 11, no. 1, 2024, p. Volume 11 • Issue 1 • 2024 • Spring-Summer 2024,
https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.8735.
In this article, Nadia-Terese Laguna explores how Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake explores topics like traditional gender norms and trauma within a post 9/11 dystopia. She depicts the gender binary as a social construct that is a trauma driven tool used to reinforce patriarchal control while masking suffering both as an individual and a collective feeling. Her analysis reveals how late capitalism weaponized the gender binary to sustain a hierarchical power and fosters alienation and emotional numbness. Through the use of a male protagonist’s struggles with toxic masculinity and the commodification of femininity, she argues how gender roles enable acting out, violence, and ecological devastation that in turn fosters emotional detachment. Thus, this article is a great source that gives us a view into feminist trauma for understanding gender roles in connection with violence, consumption, and an emotional disconnect in a dystopian future.
Martín, Javier. “Dystopia, Feminism and Phallogocentrism in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.” Open Cultural Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2019, pp. 174–81,
https://doi.org/10.1515/culture-2019-0015.
In this article, Javier Martin explores how Margart Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake portrays a world where male dominant thinking and sexual control lead to the progress of dangerous scientific ideas and damage to our environment, showing a culture that is obsessed with putting a price on the human body and suppressing empathy among ourselves. Martin uses feminist theory and Derrida’s concept of phallogocentrism to argue that Atwood’s dystopia is a critique on male dominated systems of knowledge and power. In this novel men such as Crake are the embodiment of sexual objectification, using hyper-rational logic that leads to destruction, while women such as Oryx resisted these norms through showing a victimized point of view, creating a powerful space. This dynamic offers a theoretical framework that can be used to analyze gendered power structures and how they influence scientific ambition and ecological collapse within the novel.
Siemann, Catherine. “Science, Gender and History: The Fantastic in Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 27, no. 1 (95), International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, 2016, pp. 170–72.
This review by William Tringali on Science, Gender, and History analyzes traditional gender norm roles and how they confine women, linking such norms to violence, emotional detachment, and systemic control which are all themes especially present in Margaret Atwood’s other work The Handmaid’s Tale and in Oryx and Crake. These books’ connection to male driven scientific transgression within a late capitalist consumption culture shows how gendered violence and emotional estrangement sustain the dominant economic nature. Tringali’s work provides a valuable framework into understanding the culture and historical forces surrounding gendered experience in such dystopian narratives.
Ismael, Henir, and Hasan Saleh. “The discursive strategies of power and female resistance in Margaret Atwood’s the handmaid’s tale: a foucauldian reading.” Govara zanistîn mirovayeti ya-Zankoya Zaxo, vol. 11, no. 3, 2023, pp. 555–61, https://doi.org/10.26436/hjuoz.2023.11.3.1096.
This article explores how Atwood exposes how within traditional gender norms there is violence embedded that shows how women’s bodies have become tools used for political control and economic value. The author argues that the novel reveals how systems of power use elements like discipline, surveillance, and sexual regulation to enforce ideas such as female objectification and emotional detachment. Even though the main focus on this article is in Atwood’s other work The Handmaid’s Tale, it can still be used to support the research question since it demonstrates how Atwood constantly links patriarchal gender expectations to the theme of the commodification of bodies and the suppression of empathy within the late capitalist structure.
Kaličanin, Milena M., and Marija Nešić. “THE KATABASIS TROPE AND A DESCENT INTO FUTURE IN MARGARET ATWOOD’S THE HANDMAID’S TALE.” Društvene i Humanističke Studije (Online), vol. XXIV, no. 24, 2023, pp. 279–94.
This article looks into The Handmaid’s Tale, showing how Atwood uses a katabasis structure to expose violence produced by patriarchal gender norms. The author argues that that having such a strict control over women’s bodies, reproduction, and identity reflect an extreme extension of late-capitalist consumption where women have become a resource to be used rather than separate individuals to be cared for. This descent structure is used to underscore the psychological and political oppression of women while also revealing other paths to renewal or even resistance. Yet again, even though it’s not directly related to Oryx and Crake, this article still contributes to the historical view of how gendered suffering and dystopian futures interact in works made by Atwood.
I changed my research question since i didn’t like the other one. I want to thank you again for giving me an extension. I went to the doctor and it got SLIGHTLY better, but then i got worse and now I’m sick in bed again. I have medicine now and I hope this goes away soon. 🙁
