Mechanized Death and Disposable Lives: A Marxist, Technocritical, and Necropolitical Reading of Wilbert Salgado’s “The Human Obsolescence Company”
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Introductory Note to the
Reader After reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave
New World or the many stories I have enjoyed by Isaac Asimov, dystopian
fiction has naturally become part of my nightly reading routine before going
to sleep. When I first encountered The Human Obsolescence Company,
written by my friend and Nicaraguan author Wilbert Salgado, I immediately
thought, “This short story of Wil’s is a great example of what dystopia is
meant to be and how he criticizes the so-called ‘contemporarian’ world we
live in.” In this blog entry, Wilbert kindly
shares his story so readers can experience it directly. What follows is my
literary analysis of the text, this time through a Marxist lens, while
also incorporating technocritical and necropolitical approaches to understand
the unsettling vision of humanity portrayed in this powerful dystopian
narrative. |
Mechanized Death and Disposable Lives: A Marxist, Technocritical, and Necropolitical Reading of Wilbert Salgado’s “The Human Obsolescence Company”
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Abstract This paper offers a Marxist, technocritical, and necropolitical
reading of Wilbert Salgado’s dystopian short story The Human Obsolescence
Company. Through its portrayal of a forensic pathologist who mechanically
processes the deaths of state-sanctioned “obsolete” individuals, the
narrative exposes how bureaucratic rationality, technological control, and
class stratification converge to devalue human life. The analysis examines
plot structure, characterization, symbolism, and intertextual connections to
Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Franz Kafka. The essay argues that
Salgado’s story dramatizes the transformation of human beings into disposable
units within a technocapitalist regime that manages life and death through
algorithmic ethics. Ultimately, the pathologist’s moment of hesitation
functions as the final symbolic resistance against a system that renders
humanity obsolete. |
Keywords: Dystopia, Marxist Literary Approach, Technocriticism, Necropolitics,
Bureaucracy, Wilbert Salgado, Aldus Huxley, George Orwell, Franz Kafka,
Literary Criticism |
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Resumen Este artículo ofrece una lectura marxista,
tecnocrítica y necropolítica del cuento distópico The Human Obsolescence
Company de Wilbert Salgado. A través de la figura de un patólogo forense
que procesa mecánicamente muertes autorizadas por el Estado, el relato revela
cómo la racionalidad burocrática, el control tecnológico y la estratificación
de clase convergen para desvalorizar la vida humana. El análisis examina la
estructura narrativa, la caracterización, el simbolismo y las conexiones
intertextuales con Aldous Huxley, George Orwell y Franz Kafka. El ensayo
sostiene que la historia dramatiza la transformación del ser humano en un
elemento desechable dentro de un régimen tecnocapitalista que administra la
vida y la muerte mediante una ética algorítmica. Finalmente, la vacilación
del protagonista simboliza la última resistencia ante un sistema que vuelve
obsoleta a la humanidad. |
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Resumo Este artigo apresenta uma leitura marxista,
tecnocrítica e necropolítica do conto distópico The Human Obsolescence
Company, de Wilbert Salgado. Através do patólogo forense que processa
mecanicamente mortes autorizadas pelo Estado, o texto revela como a
racionalidade burocrática, o controle tecnológico e a estratificação social
convergem para desvalorizar a vida humana. A análise aborda a estrutura
narrativa, a caracterização, o simbolismo e as relações intertextuais com
Aldous Huxley, George Orwell e Franz Kafka. O ensaio argumenta que o conto
dramatiza a transformação do ser humano em um elemento descartável dentro de
um regime tecnocapitalista que administra vida e morte por meio de uma ética
algorítmica. A hesitação final do protagonista simboliza a última resistência
contra um sistema que torna a humanidade obsoleta. |
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Introduction:
Bureaucracy, Technology, and Manufactured Death
Wilbert Salgado’s short story “The Human
Obsolescence Company” unfolds within a bureaucratic dystopia where death
has become a function of administrative precision. Through the experience of a
forensic pathologist working under the Human Obsolescence Program (HOP), the
text interrogates the commodification of life, the ethics of technology, and
the normalization of state-sanctioned extermination. The story lends itself to
a multifaceted analysis through plot and structure, characterization, themes
and motifs, and symbols and style. It also rewards readings through Marxist
criticism, technocritical theory, and necropolitical analysis. In dialogue with
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, and Franz
Kafka’s The Trial (2009), Salgado’s dystopia redefines the human within
late capitalism’s machinery of control.
Plot and Structure: Routine as Violence
The narrative begins with the pathologist completing an autopsy report and marking “premature death” as the cause. His realization that the deceased, Subject 221, resembles his own father, fractures the sterile routine and injects emotional dissonance into mechanical procedure. When he “scribbled 221, with a shake,” the bureaucracy resumes its rhythm, highlighting the triumph of institutional order over conscience. Like Kafka’s protagonists, the pathologist is trapped in a system where duty overrides humanity, and guilt persists without redemption.
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1. Character
Analysis: The Pathologist (Protagonist) |
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Aspect |
Description |
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Role in Story |
Forensic pathologist employed by the
Conglomerate to certify deaths under the Human Obsolescence Program (HOP). |
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Physical Description |
Middle-aged, methodical, accustomed to
antiseptic environments. His precision symbolizes institutional order. |
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Psychological Traits |
Dutiful yet morally divided; represses empathy
until the recognition of Subject 221 awakens guilt. Suffers from “ethical
numbness” that cracks in the final scene. |
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Motivations |
Initially motivated by professional pride and
financial stability; later haunted by conscience and the need to find meaning
in his work. |
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Conflict |
Internal moral conflict between obedience to
procedure and awareness of injustice. External conflict with the ideology
upheld by his wife and employer. |
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Symbolic Role |
Represents the alienated worker in Marxist
terms, one who carries out systemic violence while losing his humanity.
Embodies the collapse of empathy in a technocratic regime. |
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Transformation |
Moves from mechanical compliance to moral
awakening; though minimal, his final “shake” suggests the reemergence of
conscience. |
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Literary Echoes |
Comparable to Winston Smith (1984) and
Josef K. (The Trial), figures trapped within totalizing bureaucracies,
aware yet powerless. |
Characterization and Alienated Labor
Characterization deepens the story’s critique of
alienated labor. The pathologist functions as a technician of death,
simultaneously victim and executor of the system’s will. His wife, an employee
of the same conglomerate, mirrors the ideological absorption of totalitarian
power, echoing the propaganda line, “Be happy to know we are ensuring our
future, dear.” Their domestic complicity reproduces systemic oppression in
private life. Subject 221, however, speaks from the margins through fragments
of his affidavit, granting voice to the subaltern whose humanity survives only
in bureaucratic remnants. His testimony reveals that those who sign the “Human
Obsolescence Program” do so under desperation, sacrificing themselves for their
families’ welfare.
The text’s themes revolve around dehumanization,
class stratification, and technological control. HOP’s logic mirrors capitalist
production cycles where human beings are manufactured, utilized, and discarded.
As Marx and Engels (1848/2024) affirmed, “The history of all hitherto existing
society is the history of class struggles.” The program institutionalizes this
struggle by transforming survival into a privilege of class. The “Centralites”
live in comfort while the “Doopples” are consigned to death contracts.
Bureaucratic euphemisms such as “Fulfilled submission” conceal moral atrocity
beneath technocratic language. Orwell’s (1949/2021) notion of “newspeak,” which
reshapes moral perception through vocabulary, resonates here: “Power is in
tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of
your own choosing” (p. 266). Language, in both worlds, becomes an instrument of
ideological domination.
Symbolism and style reinforce the story’s
critique. Salgado’s antiseptic imagery, the smells of formaldehyde, the
pristine reports, and the corporate letterhead, metaphorically sterilize
morality. The numbered bodies, such as “25,550 reports,” reduce individuals
to production data. The glossy brochures promising “rebirth and paradise”
recall Huxley’s engineered utopia. As Huxley (1932/2014) warned, “The greater a
man’s talents, the greater his power to lead astray” (p. 78). The story’s
minimalist style and bureaucratic diction heighten its moral disquiet,
dramatizing how efficiency becomes a euphemism for erasure.
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2. Character
Analysis: The Wife |
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Aspect |
Description |
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Role in Story |
Secondary character who reinforces state
ideology. Works for the same Conglomerate, keeps confidential notes about the
subjects, including Subject 221. |
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Physical Description |
Professional, composed, with gestures of
orderliness reflecting her devotion to the institution. |
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Psychological Traits |
Emotionally detached; finds comfort in slogans
that rationalize death (“Be happy to know we are ensuring our future”).
Represents ideological internalization. |
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Motivations |
Desire for stability, security, and social
status among “Centralites.” Believes compliance ensures survival. |
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Conflict |
Unspoken tension between loyalty to the
Conglomerate and the repressed knowledge of the pathologist’s family link to
Subject 221. |
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Symbolic Role |
Embodies the apparatus of ideological
reproduction, how the private sphere mirrors the propaganda of the state. |
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Transformation |
Stagnant; unlike her husband, she does not
question the system. Her silence symbolizes complicity. |
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Literary Echoes |
Echoes Parsons’s wife in 1984, who
repeats Party slogans without understanding them, illustrating total ideological
absorption. |
Class, Exploitation, and Marxist Critique
From a Marxist perspective, Salgado’s dystopia
exposes the commodification of life and alienation of labour. The pathologist’s
mechanical repetition exemplifies the worker estranged from the product of his
labour. Hamadi (2017) emphasizes that “Literature must be understood in
relation to the historical and social reality of a certain society” (p. 155),
and the story reflects the logic of late capitalism, where value depends on
productivity and disposability. Jameson’s (1981/1989) admonition to “always historicize!”
(p. x) situates the narrative within the ideological apparatus of
neoliberalism, which treats obsolescence not as failure but as design. Human
beings become waste products of economic progress.
Technocritical Readings: Coding Humanity
Through a technocritical lens, the story
dramatizes the collapse between human and machine. RFID chips, digital
submissions, and automated mortuary systems exemplify Michel Foucault’s
biopower: “a power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavours to
administer, optimise, and multiply it” (Critical Legal Thinking, 2017, para.
2). In Salgado’s world, biopower mutates into algorithmic necropower, where
technology administers death to maintain equilibrium. Donna Haraway (1991)
warned of “the translation of the world into a problem of coding” (p. 164), and
the pathologist’s digitalized conscience illustrates this reduction of human
experience to data processing. Like Kafka’s paper labyrinths, Salgado’s
bureaucracy of silicon annihilates moral agency through procedural necessity.
Necropolitics and the Administration of Death
A necropolitical reading extends these insights.
Achille Mbembe (2003) defined necropolitics as “the contemporary forms of
subjugation of life to the power of death” (p. 39). The Human Obsolescence
Program epitomizes this, transforming death into a patriotic duty. Zimmer
(2018) notes, “The very essence of the right of life and death is actually the
right to kill”, a truth embodied in the Conglomerate’s mandate. Houtz (2022)
adds that “weapons are deployed in the name of life but produce death-worlds”.
The story’s bureaucratic serenity conceals its genocidal intent; the apparatus
kills not through violence but through paperwork, echoing the quiet
extermination of Kafka’s courts and Orwell’s ministries.
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3. Character
Analysis: Subject 221 |
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Aspect |
Description |
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Role in Story |
Deceased participant in the HOP whose file
triggers the protagonist’s moral awakening. Revealed to resemble, or possibly
be, the pathologist’s father. |
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Physical Description |
“Burly body in his 60s,” “stern look as if
repented of something.” Healthy yet executed by programmed obsolescence. |
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Psychological Traits |
Honest, resigned, torn between duty to family
and instinct for survival. His affidavit reveals a reflective, moral voice. |
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Motivations |
To secure his daughter’s welfare through the
insurance promised by the HOP; participates out of desperation, not
conviction. |
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Conflict |
Struggles with the moral paradox of
self-sacrifice for collective good versus self-preservation. |
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Symbolic Role |
Represents the dehumanized working class
(“Doopples”) and the moral residue of humanity that systems seek to erase.
His death exposes the ethical bankruptcy of the Conglomerate. |
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Transformation |
Posthumous revelation; through his words, he
reclaims individuality and moral depth. |
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Literary Echoes |
Similar to the clones in Ishiguro’s Never
Let Me Go, conscious of their fate yet retaining dignity through memory
and love. |
Intertextual Lineages: Huxley, Orwell, and Kafka
Intertextually, Salgado’s story situates itself
within a lineage of dystopian literature. Like Brave New World, it
sanctifies progress and stability to justify eugenic selection. Huxley’s motto
“Community, Identity, Stability” (1932/2014, p. 3) becomes the unspoken creed
of Salgado’s state. Like Orwell’s 1984, the narrative exposes
surveillance, ideological indoctrination, and linguistic control. Like Kafka’s The
Trial, it portrays a protagonist trapped in a labyrinth of procedure that
defies logic yet demands obedience. Salgado fuses these traditions with
posthuman anxieties about biotechnology and automation, producing a distinctly
twenty-first-century dystopia of human obsolescence.
Conclusion: Conscience Against Automation
Through its plot, characterization, thematic
depth, and symbolic austerity, “The Human Obsolescence Company” portrays
how bureaucratic rationality annihilates the intrinsic value of life. The
antiseptic tone of the narrative reinforces its critique of mechanized ethics.
Marxist analysis reveals class-based exploitation; the technocritical
perspective uncovers the ideological role of technology; and the necropolitical
framework exposes the systemic governance of death. In conversation with
Huxley, Orwell, and Kafka, Salgado’s story extends dystopian critique to an age
of algorithmic morality and digital compliance. The pathologist’s trembling
hand becomes the final symbol of conscience resisting automation. His
hesitation mirrors our own complicity in systems that quantify and discard
human worth. Ultimately, the story forces us to ask an urgent question: in our
technologically managed world, who decides when a human being becomes obsolete?
📚 References
Critical Legal
Thinking. (2017, May 10). Michel Foucault: Biopolitics and biopower. https://criticallegalthinking.com/2017/05/10/michel-foucault-biopolitics-biopower/
Hamadi, L.
(2017). The concept of ideology in Marxist literary criticism. European
Scientific Journal, 13(20), 154–162. https://doi.org/10.19044/esj.2017.v13n20p154
Haraway, D.
(1991). A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in
the late twentieth century. In Simians, cyborgs and women: The
reinvention of nature (pp. 149–181). Routledge.
Houtz, C. (2022).
Biopolitics, living death, and difficult ethics. Harvard University. https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstreams/27eef36b-664e-426f-8f5c-a65ac9ba4887/download
Huxley, A.
(1932/2014). Brave new world. Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
Jameson, F.
(1981/1989). The political unconscious: Narrative as a socially symbolic
act. Cornell University Press. https://archive.org/details/politicalunconsc0000jame
Kafka, F. (2009).
The trial (M. Mitchell, Trans.). Schocken Books. (Original work
published 1925). https://lust-for-life.org/Lust-For-Life/_Textual/FranzKafka_TheTrial_228pp/FranzKafka_TheTrial_228pp.pdf
Marx, K., &
Engels, F. (1848/2024). The Communist Manifesto. Marxists.org. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/
Mbembe, A.
(2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), 11–40. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-15-1-11
Orwell, G.
(1949/2021). Nineteen eighty-four. Penguin Classics.
Salgado, W.
(2025). Subject 221 – The Human Obsolescence Company. Unpublished manuscript. https://es.scribd.com/document/965237896/The-Human-Obsolescence-Company
Zimmer, D.
(2018). The power to kill life itself: Michel Foucault, biopolitics and the
political challenge of human extinction. Perspectives on Politics. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592718001562
Short Story by Wilbert Salgado: Subject 221 - The Human Obsolescence Company
Handout: Reading Wilbert Salgado’s “the Human Obsolescence Company”
Sample Creative Writing: Dramatized Script - “After the Fulfilled Report”
A Marxist, Technocritical, And Necropolitical Reading of Wilbert Salgado’s “the Human Obsolescence Company” by Jonathan Acuña
