Hypercapitalism and Ecological Breakdown: An Eco-Marxist Study of Nieva's Dengue Boy

Abstract

Environmental breakdown under late capitalism has accelerated the commodification of nature, disease, and human life, yet the interrelationship between environmental degradation, biocapitalism, and capitalist expansion remains under-explored in contemporary literary studies. In dystopian fiction, environmental crises are often analyzed independently, while their structural connection with capitalist modernity receives limited critical attention. Building on the critical framework of Eco-Marxism, particularly Karl Marx’s notion of the metabolic rift and its later development by John Bellamy Foster, along with Kaushik Sunder Rajan’s concepts about biocapitalism and the political economy of human life and health. This study interrogates how Michel Nieva’s novel Dengue Boy depicts ecological collapse not as an external ecological catastrophe but as a systemic outcome of global capitalism that turns nature into an asset of economic gain and capitalist accumulation. It further investigates how environmental exploitation, technological developments, and biocapitalist systems support bodily experimentation and the commodification of health and disease, while capitalist ideology hides the material outcomes of ecological devastation. Furthermore, the study demonstrates the uneven division of ecological ruin and climate apartheid, highlighting how elites and privileged groups remain protected while marginalized communities face the burden of climate vulnerability. Thus, the study analyzes that Dengue Boy shows a powerful Eco-Marxist critique of capitalism, revealing environmental devastation as an essential condition for the reproduction and expansion of the capitalist structure.

Keywords: Biocapitalsim; Disease Commodification; Eco-Marxism; Environmental Breakdown; Environmental Apartheid   Hyper Capitalism.