Published Paper Details:

This research paper attempts to explore Michel Foucault's concept of Biopower in the novel The Handmaid's Tale written by Margaret Atwood. This dystopian novel portrays a totalitarian society named Gilead where women are denied their bodily autonomy by objectifying them as commodities for reproduction. Biopower is the system of operating power on a population by regulating and controlling their bodies. This happens in a normative pattern that its affects the population in a devastating manner. In the novel, Gilead's oppressive regime enforces strict gender roles and religious doctrines to justify the commodification of women's body for reproductive purpose. The state establishes control and surveillance over the population by subjecting women to reproductive servitude in the name of cultural and religious norms. Thus women's body becomes a contested terrain of domination. The paper aims to provide an understanding about the biopower mechanisms established by an oppressive state in the name of social welfare and societal stability. The paper also highlights the intersection of power, gender, race , class and religious discourses in a hierarchical world. By exploring the biopower mechanisms in the novel, the paper serves as a powerful warning against the dangers of power structures that tend to control and commodify individual bodies and their reproductive capacities in the name of maintaining order and control in the contemporary world.