Regulating Life and Living Otherwise: Post-Humanistic Biopolitics in Harvest and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Sharika PV
Independent Researcher, India
Abstract: Biopolitics, as conceptualized by Michel Foucault explores how authorities and institutions exercise control and power through agencies of body and life encompassing the areas of health, gender, reproduction, etc. Instead of explicit execution of power, authorities device methods that can potentially shape life, bodies, and behaviors of individuals and thus society. This paper examines the operation of biopolitics in contemporary Indian literature, focusing on Manjula Padmanbahan’s renowned play Harvest (1997) and Arundhathi Roy’s notable novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017). These texts are read and analyzed through the lens of biopolitics, to explore the spectrum of life management in contemporary Indian society, highlighting both technological and socio-political mechanisms of control. Whilst Harvest portrays techno-market control over human bodies, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness presents social and political control of population, especially that of the marginalized community. The characters of both texts are further juxtaposed with each other in order to identify the diverse agencies by which power regulates the body. In addition, reading the aspect of biopolitics in a post humanistic framework enables one to view how life is regulated in society via invisible agencies of power and control. The comparative analysis of these texts would reveal how post humanistic subjectivity emerges through cooporation and negotiation, instead of individual autonomy and liberty. A close reading of Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest and Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness would clearly show us the micro and macro level mechanism of power in our society, through which human lives are essentially controlled and commodified. Using Foucault’s Biopolitics and Rosi Braidott’s Post humanistic theory as theoretical frames, this study demonstrates how contemporary Indian literature interrogates the intersection of body, consciousness, ethics, and survival under systems of power.
Keywords: Biopolitics, Posthumanism, Michel Foucault, Braidotti, Indian Literature, Liminal space, Discipline, Body
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