Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) And Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day (1970): A Critical Study Of An Advanced Industrial Society.

Résumé: This dissertation falls within social and critical theory. It analyses technological rationality in both Aldous Huxley’s Brave New Word (1932) and Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day (1970). To fulfill our task, we relied on Herbert Marcuse’s theory of “One-Dimensional Man” as it is articulated in his work One-Dimensional Man (1964). In the first part of chapter one, we have discussed the concept of “Technological Rationality” and the way it redefines social institutions. We have proved that Technology permeates labor, religion and educational institutions and changes their basic and traditional functioning. In the second part, we have analyzed both Huxley’s and Levin’s futuristic societies in terms of Culture Industry. In fact, this latter postulates to be a mean of securing the established reality from negation by promoting false needs and amusement. In the second chapter, we have investigated the way technological rationality invalidates the elements of High Culture because this latter represents a threat to the established order. We have also discussed the role of the libido ‘Sublimation’ in the development of High Culture. Albeit we have stressed the importance of sublimation, we have noted that within both societies World State and Family sexual acts are highly appraised. As a result in both societies instinctual drives are repressed. In the second part of this chapter, we have discussed the role of language in both novels. Indeed, we have observed that language postulates for a suitable vehicle of one-dimensional discourse which promotes identification with the system by blocking the transcendental and subversive elements of language.

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