Extinctathon: Margaret Atwood’s Urge for an Immanent Episteme in Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood

Abstract

The first two novels from Margaret Atwood’s projected MaddAddam eco-trilogy, Oryx and Crake (2003) and The Year of the Flood (2009) depict a corporate capitalism, or corporatism, constantly pushing its limits by privileging unregulated techno-scientific endeavours with palpable results and high financial yield. This lack of regulation—legal, ethical, moral—emerges as the main problem highlighted by the two companion dystopias. This article argues that Atwood critiques the privileging of the techno-scientific epistemology to the detriment of the humanistic one, and emphasizes the need for an integrated episteme in an immanent system. Methodologically, the comparative analysis focuses on close readings of illustrative excerpts from the novels, side by side with Michel Foucault’s theorization of the episteme and Félix Guattari’s concept of the three ecologies, while Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s description of the plane of immanence of capitalism informs the conceptualization of corporatism.