Volume V Special Issue V November 2025

Name of Author : Jasna Nafeesa. P K

Title of the paper : Biopower, Ecology, and Corporate Hegemony in Paolo Bacigalupis The Windup Girl

Abstract: Paolo Bacigalupis The Windup Girl 2009 presents a nearfuture ecodystopia where environmental collapse and biotechnological monopolies shape human survival and power relations. Set in postoil Bangkok, the novel depicts a world where corporate control of food and water embodies new forms of domination, echoing Michel Foucaults notions of biopower and governmentality. Through the figure of Emiko, a genetically engineered New Person, Bacigalupi explores blurred boundaries between human and machine, nature and technology, raising pressing ethical questions of posthuman existence. This paper argues that the novel reflects digitalage anxieties surrounding genetic engineering, corporate hegemony, and ecological scarcity. By dramatizing struggles over resources and life itself, The Windup Girl critiques hydrohegemony and the commodification of biology, positioning literature as a vital site for interrogating sustainability, ethics, and power in the twentyfirst century.

Keywords : Ecodystopia, Biopower, Hydrohegemony, Posthumanism, Political Ecology

DOI :

Page Number : 88-91