Wasted lives and resistance in contemporary speculative TV: Orphan Black (2013–2017)

Abstract

This article discusses the representation of biopolitical oppression of women’s bodies and its ethical consequences in the SF TV series Orphan Black (2013–2017). The series focuses on a group of self-aware clones who discover that they are victims of biological experimentation and corporate profit and start a collective fight against their oppressors. The show explores how biosciences and big corporations oppress women’s bodies and regard them as waste. However, as it will be argued, the series also proposes spaces of resistance and fight against such power structures, whereby characters succeed in conquering spaces of domination in their quest for freedom. Taking as starting points of analysis Bauman’s concept of “wasted lives” (2004) and Tyler’s proposal of stigma as an instrument of state coercion (2020), this article seeks to demonstrate through the lens of feminist critical posthumanism (Braidotti, Ferrando, Vint) how Orphan Black serves as a science fiction narrative in which women’s bodies are systematically disciplined and exploited, and yet they eventually manage to become (posthuman) active agents of change and transformation.