Politics, Art, Representation (For the Umpteenth) - Parabasis

Politics, Art, Representation (For the Umpteenth) - Parabasis:

I happened to be talking to a student about this yesterday, and brought up the example I always bring up in these instances: Dune. Dune is a novel that comes out the same year that the pill is introduced into the marketplace and that positions as the its true villains not the fascistic, cruel Harkonnen, but rather the Bene Gesseret, a society of psyhcic women who control the Universe through deciding when they will have children.

I think that's worth interrogating for a bit. Part of having a rich and complex understanding of Dune is thinking about the implications of that world-building choice and talking about how there's a kind of panic at women gaining more control over their bodies that runs throughout the book.