Brave New World and the Rise of the Factory Farm

Abstract: This essay argues that Aldous Huxley's dystopia Brave New World is an ecological novel that points to the historically specific nexus of forces—Fordism, agricultural technology, an emergent propensity to see animals as raw materials, even the discovery and synthesis of vitamins—that help give rise to the industrial institution of the factory farm and thereby to the crisis of our warming planet. Furthermore, it contends that the novel illuminates the inextricability of the human/animal hierarchy from white supremacy and other forms of coloniality, thus allowing us to more vividly perceive the connections between environmental degradation, speciesism, and social injustice.