Moloch's Children: Monstrous Techno-Capitalism in North American Popular Fiction
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Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 10-17-2019 2:00 PM Moloch's Children: Monstrous Techno-Capitalism in North American Popular Fiction Alexandre Desbiens-Brassard The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Randall, Marilyn The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Comparative Literature A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Alexandre Desbiens-Brassard 2019 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Comparative Literature Commons Recommended Citation Desbiens-Brassard, Alexandre, "Moloch's Children: Monstrous Techno-Capitalism in North American Popular Fiction" (2019). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 6581. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/6581 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract Deriving from the Latin monere (to warn), monsters are at their very core warnings against the horrors that lurk in the shadows of our present and the mists of our future – in this case, the horrors of techno-capitalism (i.e., the conjunction of scientific modes of research and capitalist modes of production). This thesis reveals the ideological mechanisms that animate “techno-capitalist” monster narratives through close readings of 7 novels and 3 films from Canada and the United States in both English and French and released between 1979 and 2016. All texts are linked by shared themes, narrative tropes, and a North American origin. Since the corpus emerges from the home of the current techno-capitalist hegemony, it reveals the fears of those who benefit from the system yet are still terrified by its potential. The inclusion of Canadian texts nuances the analysis by taking into account the internal hierarchy of the North American capitalist empire. The thesis is primarily interested in how texts from three different cultures in the corpus construct their plots, characters, and settings to perform similar kinds of ideological work, that is, the work of representing and critiquing capitalist ideology. Special attention is paid to repeated motifs used to reveal and represent the monstrousness of the techno- capitalist system. The study of these motifs is divided into three sections. The first explores techno-capitalist monsters as personifications of the worst excesses of contemporary consumer culture. The second focuses on the fusion of science and capitalism as dramatized through the figure of the corporate mad scientist. The third reads the corpus as a collection of environmental narratives that comment on the techno- capitalist exploitation of nature. The ideological analysis of the corpus favours a socio- economic hermeneutic but also addresses issues of ethnicity and nationality. A Marxist theoretical approach is privileged throughout, with reliance on Baudrillardian concepts such as the code and the hyperreal. Keywords: Techno-capitalism in fiction, Monsterology, Scientific horror fiction, Mad scientist, North American literature, North American cinema, MaddAddam trilogy, Biotechnology in popular culture, Eco-fiction, Technophobic fiction, Québécois horror fiction ii Summary for Lay Audience Deriving from the Latin word monere, which means to warn, monsters are at their very core warnings against the horrors that lurk in the shadows of our present and the mists of our future. This thesis is especially concerned with the monsters created by techno- capitalism: the worrisome alliance of science and capitalism. Through detailed analysis of 7 novels and 3 films from Canada and the United States in both English and French, this study reveals the ideological mechanisms that animate “techno-capitalist” monster narratives. All 10 works studied are linked by shared themes, narrative tropes, and a North American origin. Since the novels and films analyzed emerge from the home of the current techno-capitalist superpower, they reveal the fears of those who benefit from the system yet are still terrified by its potential. In three chapters, this study explores how American and Canadian novels and films released between 1979 and 2016 construct their plots, characters, and settings in order to represent and critique capitalist ideology. It pays special attention to repeated motifs used to reveal and represent the monstrousness of contemporary consumer society, for-profit science and uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources. These motifs include, but are not limited to, cannibalism, mad scientists, theme parks and human/animal hybrids. Using concepts created by well-known philosophers like Karl Marx and Jean Baudrillard, among others, this thesis highlights the socio-economic subtext behind popular monster stories while also touching on issues of ethnicity and nationality. The result is a unique and nuanced analysis that explores the seldom-studied internal hierarchy of the North American capitalist empire by studying its worst nightmares. iii Acknowledgments I want to thank the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for their financial support throughout my doctoral program. Thank you to Ms. Marie-Eve Jeannotte from the Éditions de Mortagne for accepting to be interviewed and quoted in this thesis. A very, very warm thank you to my supervisor, Dr. Marilyn Randall, without whose tireless support this thesis would simply not exist. Thank you also to all faculty members who supported or helped me in some way during the writing of this thesis, including (but not limited to) Drs. Christopher Gittings, Christopher Keep, François Poiré, Ana Garcia- Allen, and James Miller. Thank you to my defense committee – Drs. Tim Blackmore, Thomas Carmichael, Antonio Dominguez-Leiva, and Jane Toswell – for their time, their perceptive comments and their helpful advice. Thank you to all the friends I made in London who helped me in small and big ways throughout these last five years: Pari, David, Laura, Raha, Jeff, Christian, Anda, and everyone else. Thank you to my entire family – Christine Desbiens, Alain Brassard, Vincent Desbiens- Brassard, Marthe Dufour, as well Hélène and Benoit Brassard – for helping me fight the boredom and loneliness with regular phone calls, yearly summer visits, and the occasional financial help. Finally, thank you to Rye, Jimmy and Gaby. You are my second family, and I cannot wait to be back among you once more. iv Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. ii Summary for Lay Audience ............................................................................................ iii Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. v List of Figures .................................................................................................................. vii Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 0.1 – Genesis ................................................................................................................... 1 0.2 – Monster Zones ....................................................................................................... 6 0.3 – Roll Call ................................................................................................................. 9 0.4 – Silver Bullets ........................................................................................................ 16 0.5 – Here Be Dragons .................................................................................................. 19 0.6 – A Note on Translation .......................................................................................... 19 Part I: Capitalism, Cannibalism and Monstrous Consumerism. ............................... 21 1.1 – Introduction .......................................................................................................... 21 1.2 – The Economic Uncanny of the Code ................................................................... 24 1.3 – Nonconsumption and Identity .............................................................................. 43 1.4 – Excessive Consumption and the Homo Economicus ........................................... 50 1.5 – When Hunger Leads to Violence ......................................................................... 69 1.6 – Anti-Consumerism as Nationalist Discourse ....................................................... 88 1.7 – Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 99 Part II: The Mad Scientist in a Corporate World ..................................................... 100 2.1 – Introduction ........................................................................................................ 100 2.2 – Mad Scientists and Intertextuality. .................................................................... 104 2.3 – The Capitalist Answer to the Mad Scientist. ....................................................