FROM COMPASSION TO COERCION: INVERSION OF ANTINATALISM IN THE OFFSET
FROM COMPASSION TO COERCION: INVERSION OF ANTINATALISM IN THE OFFSET

Summary/Abstract: The Offset (2021), cowritten by Emma Szewczak and Natasha Calder, is a work of cli-fi dystopia that is set on a near-future dying Earth where ecological collapse has led to a draconian offset ceremony to discourage procreation and control the population. In this world, every person, when they are of age, must “offset” the carbon cost of their existence by choosing one of their parents to be executed in an institutionalized ritual of ecological atonement. The government operates through technocratic authoritarianism, and the setting exposes how moral absolutism and survivalism converge in a dystopian world. Ethical decisions become data-driven, leaving no room for compassion and reproductive freedom. The novel engages with antinatalist philosophy, but it does so by inverting its moral core. Antinatalism, a philosophy that argues procreation is always wrong because of the inevitable suffering it exposes the potential offspring to, is transformed into a violent ideology that enforces death through state doctrine. We are presented with an authoritarian caricature of antinatalist philosophy, stripped of its compassionate grounds. The state in effect colonizes its subjects’ consent. The Offset uses a moral philosophy as a narrative metaphor, risking misrepresentation. I will trace this misrepresentation to question whether it functions as a warning for when moral absolutism becomes weaponized under an authoritarian regime.

• Details
• Contents