In the opening book, Oryx and Crake, the two-culture war has, in our not-too-distant future, reached the unfortunate conclusion of a total separation in higher education of STEM/research and the Humanities. In fact, Atwood speculates a world completely ordered by such a spilt, where the truly privileged class (high-ranking scientists and corporate executives) live—and work—on Compounds built and run by the corporations (Corps) they work for. These Compounds are “safe,” sterilized, clean, self-sufficient, and luxurious communities protected behind high walls and a hired security force (CorpSeCorps) from the outside “pleeblands” or cities. The “accepted wisdom in the Compounds” characterizes the pleeblands as a dangerous, filthy place where the dregs of society scavenge, steal, snort, and sleep around: “there was no life of the mind. Buying and selling, plus a lot of criminal activity” (Oryx 196). Here we see founding humanist binaries at work (and, in fact, taken to extremes).

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The “two-cultures” in this war refers to the long-standing debate over the separation of the sciences and humanities as exemplified in the debate between C.P. Snow and F.R. Leavis in the 1950/60s. Though they were certainly not the first to debate the split, Snow first articulated the separation of the sciences and humanities as the splitting of one, shared culture into two cultures who, to the detriment of all, were not communicating (in his model, science was the much maligned culture which the humanities looked down its nose at. Though probably accurate from his standpoint then, as someone who teaches English at a STEM-centered research university in the twenty-first century, I would argue the tide has turned)(see Critchley for how this split effects (continental) philosophy in general). In American education—specifically public primary/secondary education—the “culture wars” (without the qualifying two) refers to the longstanding back and forth in popular and political debates between religious/secular and conservative/progressive over who gets to shape the narratives, standards, and objectives of public education (Hartman; Goldstein).These wars should not to be conflated/confused but certainly, taken together, offer a more layered understanding of how a split between the sciences and the humanities in general impacts policy and changes over time.