ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how Giorgio Agamben’s philosophical system can be applied to gender theory, and how individual examples of women are so bound up with the conceptualisations of the wider category that the paradigm of “Woman” becomes “suspended” between universal and particular. For Agamben, the paradigm of life, which includes the ideas of both biological existence (zoe) and political life (bios), is also suspended in this way, and this makes it possible for government to exclude certain groups – the excluded occupy a position of “bare life” outside the law while also at risk of being sacrificed by the state. Applying Agamben’s philosophy alongside that of Monique Wittig and Judith Butler, the chapter explores how the “suspended” nature of women is often exposed in science fiction texts. Analysing Stanisław Lem’s Solaris and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, I argue that these texts can be used to explore how women can be understood as examples of “bare life.” The chapter also explores Agamben’s understanding of the biopolitical power structure, “oikonomia,” a paradigm of political and domestic management which blurs the boundaries between the public and private spheres as well as the biological and political aspects of life through the institution of the household. The chapter examines these biopolitical concepts in relation to Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy.
