Brave New World : A One-dimensional Society

Aldous Huxley is one of the most important British novelists in the twentieth century. His masterpiece Brave New World is a book about the future, in which the novelist expresses his concern about humanity and the fate of modernity. The thesis is intended to reveal how scientism and technocracy, consumerism and culture industry become the new forms of control, and how a technological society deteriorates into a one-dimensional society and how the individual is turned into a one-dimensional man from the perspective of Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. The project is laid out in light of Herbert Marcuse s theory of technological rationality, Jean Baudrillard s criticism of consumerism, and Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer s discussion of culture industry.The thesis consists of three parts. The first part studies technological rationality and exposes how scientism and technocracy degenerates into political rationality and becomes the new forms of control. The key concepts of Fordship, Bokanovsky s Process, Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning and sleep teaching from Brave New World are analyzed in light of Marcuse s Critical Theory. The second part exposes how consumerism controls and regulates New World citizens mode of thought and behavior by the creation of false needs for incessant consumption. The thesis examines four typical forms of consumption: soma, sexuality, leisure time and other products based on the consumerism theory proposed by Baudrillard. The third part scrutinizes the forms of culture industry in the New World: the feely and the synthetic music, and reveals how culture industry functions to deprive the New World citizens of their individuality and critical thinking on the ground of Adorno and Horkheimer s Critical Theory.