'Feeding Like a Parasite': Extraction and Science Fiction in Capitalist Dystopia

Abstract

The chapter explores the economic concept of extraction as both Science Fiction, and economic reality. I use Marx’s concept of surplus extraction (Marx, 1975) and apply it to fields outside of wage labour (Harvey, 2003; Lazzarato, 2011; Vercellone, 2006; Federici, 2004), but further develop the concept of extraction to take full account of its economic and cultural potentiality. I will consider how the concept of extraction is central to both capitalism (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013) and the Science Fiction imaginary of capitalism (Freedman, 2000). Whereby both capitalism and Science Fiction are wedded to the extractive impulse: capitalism through its drive for profit and Science Fiction through the continued depiction of the abject and or ‘other’.