Il corpo affamato. Nutrimento e privazione nella narrativa distopica

Abstract

Food and hunger are two sides of the same coin: one expresses power and privilege, the other deprivation and submission. Whether it is the insistent bite of a missed meal or the slow agony of malnutrition, hunger emerges as a force full of meaning, capable of uncovering the fragilities and idiosyncrasies of the human condition. This essay investigates its role in a selection of dystopian novels, trying to demonstrate how it is not reduced to a simple biological phenomenon or a direct consequence of the scarcity of resources, but transforms into a narrative device capable of laying bare the dynamics of power and the mechanisms of oppression. The control of food, in fact, imposes itself as a means of coercion that disciplines bodies by reducing the individual to a state of extreme vulnerability. In an era in which millions of people continue to suffer from it, hunger looms as the thermometer of a collapsing society, an inescapable signal of impending doom.