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Chapter 1 - Suspending Death, Reinventing Life

The Immortal Vessel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2021

Sherryl Vint
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
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Summary

This chapter theorizes from the temporalities of finance capitalism, embodied in future-oriented instruments such as derivatives, and the mirror logic of cryonic suspension. Through a comparative analysis of Don DeLillo’s Zero K and Rachel Heng’s Suicide Club, both of which explore extended human lifespans, the chapter argues that these works speak to the crisis of financialized capitalism, in which many people are no longer necessary to the economy and thus appear – from its point of view – as wasted life. DeLillo examines privileged characters who attempt to live in capital’s own temporalities by cryo-preserving their physical bodies in anticipation of arriving in some transcendent and better future. Heng focuses on those whose lives are extended in perceptible time, augmented bodies in need of continual update and upgrading as much as are the technologies that have displaced other workers. Both show the inhumanism and emptiness of the life of neoliberalism’s Homo economicus, a life lived entirely to suit capital. They offer humanist culture as resistance to this trajectory, but the chapter argues these ideals are insufficient in the face of the real subsumption of life by capital.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Suspending Death, Reinventing Life
  • Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside
  • Book: Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
  • Online publication: 16 September 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108979382.002
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  • Suspending Death, Reinventing Life
  • Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside
  • Book: Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
  • Online publication: 16 September 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108979382.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Suspending Death, Reinventing Life
  • Sherryl Vint, University of California, Riverside
  • Book: Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction
  • Online publication: 16 September 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108979382.002
Available formats
×