The Socio-Economic-Political Crisis of the Frontier Thesis in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Abstract

While Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? explores the moral implications of enslaving androids, many scholars miss the fact that the novel belongs to a frontier narrative that prefigures a capitalistic model of economy. The novel not only enacts the systemic categorization of humans versus androids binary latent in the frontier thesis but also charters the position of the androids as a way of defining humans for socio-economic-political purposes. Having parallels with the frontier thesis, in the novel, androids, as sub-human beings, are considered as commodities, exotic/erotic trophies that represent their human owners` socio-economic-political status. Just as the frontier thesis implicitly supports class division and suppression of the native Indians as a way to promote nationalism and national superiority, in a similar way, the novel not only reveals the necessity of class differentiation and inequalities between humans and androids to stabilize the status quo of Terra`s socio-economic-political structure but also depicts the necessity of the androids to strengthen the ontological definitions between humans and androids.