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Tom Moylan

Bio: Tom Moylan is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Utopia & Dystopia. The author has an hindex of 9, co-authored 26 publications receiving 869 citations.

Papers
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Book
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: In Scraps of the Untainted Sky as discussed by the authors, Tom Moylan offers a thorough investigation of the history and aesthetics of dystopia, focusing on the new science-fictional dystopias that emerged in the context of the economic, political, and cultural convulsions of the 1980s and 1990s.
Abstract: Dystopian narrative is a product of the social ferment of the twentieth century. A hundred years of war, famine, disease, state terror, genocide, ecocide, and the depletion of humanity through the buying and selling of everyday life provided fertile ground for this fictive underside of the utopian imagination. From the classical works by E. M. Forster, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Margaret Atwood, through the new maps of hell in postwar science fiction, and most recently in the dystopian turn of the 1980s and 1990s, this narrative machine has produced challenging cognitive maps of the given historical situation by way of imaginary societies which are even worse than those that lie outside their authors' and readers' doors.In Scraps of the Untainted Sky , Tom Moylan offers a thorough investigation of the history and aesthetics of dystopia. To situate his study, Moylan sets out the methodological paradigm that developed within the interdisciplinary fields of science fiction studies and utopian studies as they grow out of the oppositional political culture of the 1960 and 1970s (the context that produced the project of cultural studies itself). He then presents a thorough account of the textual structure and formal operations of the dystopian text. From there, he focuses on the new science-fictional dystopias that emerged in the context of the economic, political, and cultural convulsions of the 1980s and 1990s, and he examines in detail three of these new "critical dystopias:" Kim Stanley Robinson's The Gold Coast, Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower , and Marge Piercy's He, She, and It .With its detailed, documented, and yet accessible presentation, Scraps of the Untainted Sky will be of interest to established scholars as well as students and general readers who are seeking an in-depth introduction to this important area of cultural production.

260 citations

Book
18 Jun 2014
TL;DR: The Critical Utopian Imagination - The Literary Utopia - Joanna Russ, The Female Man - Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed - Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time - Samuel R. Delany, Triton - "And we are here as on a darkling plain": Reconsidering Utopia in Huxley's Island - Reflections on Demand the Impossible as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Contents: The Critical Utopia - The Utopian Imagination - The Literary Utopia - Joanna Russ, The Female Man - Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed - Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time - Samuel R. Delany, Triton - "And we are here as on a darkling plain": Reconsidering Utopia in Huxley's Island - Reflections on Demand the Impossible.

204 citations

Book
01 Jan 1986

81 citations

01 Jan 2007
TL;DR: Utopia Method Vision as discussed by the authors is a collection of contributors to the Utopian Method Vision project, which addresses the ways in which the contributors approach their study of the objects and practices of utopianism (understood as social anticipations and visions produced through texts and social experiments).
Abstract: Informed by feminist, Marxist, ethnographic, and post-structuralist frameworks, Utopia Method Vision makes a unique contribution to international debates in cultural, literary, sociological, and political studies of utopian theory, texts, and practices. The collection addresses the ways in which the contributors approach their study of the objects and practices of utopianism (understood as social anticipations and visions produced through texts and social experiments) and of how, in turn, those objects and practices have shaped their intellectual work in general and their research perspectives in particular. In so doing, the contributors develop a larger, self-critical look at the limits and potential of the entire paradigm by which utopianism is known, studied, critiqued, created, and received.

49 citations


Cited by
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01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: Fukuyama's seminal work "The End of History and the Last Man" as discussed by the authors was the first book to offer a picture of what the new century would look like, outlining the challenges and problems to face modern liberal democracies, and speculated what was going to come next.
Abstract: 20th anniversary edition of "The End of History and the Last Man", a landmark of political philosophy by Francis Fukuyama, author of "The Origins of Political Order". With the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989 the threat of the Cold War which had dominated the second half of the twentieth century vanished. And with it the West looked to the future with optimism but renewed uncertainty. "The End of History and the Last Man" was the first book to offer a picture of what the new century would look like. Boldly outlining the challenges and problems to face modern liberal democracies, Frances Fukuyama examined what had just happened and then speculated what was going to come next. Tackling religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes and war, "The End of History and the Last Man" remains a compelling work to this day, provoking argument and debate among its readers. "Awesome ...a landmark ...profoundly realistic and important ...supremely timely and cogent ...the first book to fully fathom the depth and range of the changes now sweeping through the world." (George Gilder, "The Washington"). Post Francis Fukuyama was born in Chicago in 1952. His work includes "America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy" and "After the Neo Cons: Where the Right went Wrong". He now lives in Washington D.C. with his wife and children, where he also works as a part time photographer.

235 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Nov 2004-Geoforum
TL;DR: Plaice et al. as discussed by the authors argue that boredom takes place as a suspension of a body's capacities to affect and be affected forged through an incapacity in habit, and that the new materialisms that increasingly populate social and cultural geography struggle to discern the affectivity of profane social-life and cannot conceive of the risk of depletion that boredom, via its connection to meaninglessness and indifference, exemplifies.

165 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Mar 2006-Antipode
TL;DR: In this paper, the concept of uncommon ground is introduced to highlight the entrenched nature of many social roles, and possible connections open up by highlighting how they are always emotionally laden, relationally negotiated, hybrid, corporeal and contingent.
Abstract: This article reflects on a politics of hope, silence and commonality through some extended conversations with members of the public during a demonstration which shut down an oil refinery in Nottingham. My reflections concern the concept of uncommon ground, where there are encounters between activists and their others. While conversations on uncommon ground highlight the entrenched nature of many social roles, possible connections open up by highlighting how they are always emotionally laden, relationally negotiated, hybrid, corporeal and contingent. Hence, the paper addresses the potentialities for extending dialogue on uncommon ground into common places. A key element relates to the need to transcend the role of the activist, to literally give up activism. This article builds upon normative, participatory and libertarian approaches in Geography which propose what could become possible by working with others towards mutual aid and self-management. In essence, learning to walk with others helps us to counteract universalist solutions and instead assemble toolkits for developing contextualised and workable alternatives to life under capitalism.

155 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that co-production might be understood as a utopian method, which both attends to and works against dominant inequalities in academia and society more broadly, and suggest that it might be positioned "within, against, and beyond" current configurations of power in academia.
Abstract: This article outlines how co-production might be understood as a utopian method, which both attends to and works against dominant inequalities. It suggests that it might be positioned ‘within, against, and beyond’ current configurations of power in academia and society more broadly. It develops this argument by drawing on recent research funded through the UK’s Connected Communities programme, led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council; and by attending to arguments from the field of Utopian Studies. It explores particular issues of power and control within the field of co-production, acknowledging that neoliberalism both constrains and co-opts such practice; and explores methodological and infrastructural issues such that its utopian potential might be realised.

123 citations