Identity Crisis In The All-power State

The famous British writer Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is one of the big threeof the dystopian science fiction novels in the20th century. The novel describes afuture world where superficial happiness masks a dark reality. As an influentialscience fiction novel, Brave New World is not only a critique of social reality, but awarning for future development.The study of power is an important topic in Culture Studies. Gramsci, who firstproposes the theory of “cultural hegemony”, opens the studies on how political power,as coercive force its manifestation, is supported, dispersed and transferred by cultureforms. Foucault inherits and deepens this idea by interpreting the non-coercive powerwith “disciplinary power”. He emphasizes on the production of power, that is, poweris used to produce, educate and standardize various forces and is operated by meansof the norms and political techniques in shaping the body and the soul. This thesis isintended to explore, in terms of Gramsci’s “cultural hegemony” theory and Foucault’sidea of “disciplinary power”, power operation in Brave New World and its effect onindividuality and freedom, which results in loss of one’s identity.This thesis is composed of five parts. The first chapter is the introduction whichpresents a brief overview on Huxley and Brave New World, the relevant theories thisthesis employs and previous criticism on the novel. The second chapter usesFoucault’s idea of “disciplinary power” to sketch the power operation mechanism ofthe World State, in the fields of mass production and consumption. Chapter threeanalyzes the dissemination of cultural power in the World State from culturalpromotion, habit formation and religious belief according to Gramsci’s “culturalhegemony” theory. Identity crisis of some main characters in the novel is studied inchapter four. In chapter five, the operation of non-coercive power in Brave New Worldis reviewed and the significance of individuality and freedom to the survival of humanbeings and development of society is advocated.