Showing papers on "Dystopia published in 2003"

Defamiliarizing the Mundane Roadscape

Abstract: It is a popular and academic notion that routine driving along motorways signifies contemporary alienation through a kind of serial “non-space.”The author counters these dystopian assumptions about the character of this everyday pursuit by exploring his own experience of driving along England’s M6 motorway, showing how roads are enmeshed within unpredictable, multiple flows of ideas, sensations, other spaces and times, narratives, and socialities. By critiquing notions that autospace is inherently linear and featureless, that driving is asocial and desensitizing, and that the quotidian is a realm of unthinking and automatic behavior, he shows how it is precisely in the realm of mundane space-time that both homely familiarities and imaginative connections can be fostered.

Utopian and dystopian writing for children and young adults

Abstract: Foreword, by Jack Zipes Introduction Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Utopia in Transit "Getting to Utopia: Railways and Heterotopia in Children's Literature," by Alice Jenkins "American Boys' Series: Books and the Utopia of the Air," by Fred Arisman "Travels through Dystopia: H.G. Wells and The Island of Dr. Moreau, " by Alberto Manguel Community and Socialism "Sarah Fielding's Childhood Utopia," by Sara Gadeken "Tinklers and Time Machines: Time Travel in the Social Fantasy of E. Nesbit and H.G. Wells," by Cathrine Frank "The Writing on the Wall of Redwall," by Holly V. Blackford "'Joy but not Peace': Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Green-sky Trilogy," by Carrie Hintz "Terrible Lizard Dream Kingdom," by James Gurney "Bridge to Utopia," by Katherine Paterson Child Power "Suffering in Utopia: Testing the Limits in Young Adult Novels," by Rebecca Carol Noel Totaro "Educating Desire: Magic, Power and Control in Tanith Lee's Unicorn Trilogy," by Maureen F. Moran "The Struggle Between Utopia and Dystopia in Writing for Children," by Monica Hughes From The Wreckage:Post World War Two Dystopias and Utopias "Presenting the Case for Social Change: The Creative Dilemma of Dystopian Fiction for Children," by Kay Sambell "The Quest for the Perfect Planet: The British Secondary World as Utopia and Dystopia, 1945-1999," by Karen Sands-O'Connor Interview with Lois Lowry, author of iThe Giver Annotated Bibliography Afterword by Lyman Tower Sargent Index

Feminist implications of anti-leisure in dystopian fiction.

Abstract: This essay provides a feminist perspective on dystopian anti-leisure. Dystopias are futuristic anti-utopias where leisure is distorted and individuals are manipulated to further the agenda of the politically powerful (Rabkin, 1983). The purpose of this essay is to illustrate how women in dystopian societies are subjected to anti-leisure as evidenced by the devaluation of their personal leisure spaces. A feminist definition of leisure is used to guide a poststructuralist feminist analysis of four dystopian novels: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano and George Orwell's 1984. Synopsis and discussion are then employed to demonstrate how two binary oppositions of female disempowerment are evidenced in the novels and to consider how these same forces operate in reality to jeopardize women's personal leisure spaces.

Violence and the body : race, gender, and the state

Abstract: Foreword: The Red and the Black Alfred ArteagaViolence, Bodies, and the Color of Fear: An Introduction Arturo J. AldamaPart One. Global Crossings: Racialized and Sexualized Conflicts1. Borders, Violence and the Struggles for Chicana/o Subjectivity Arturo J. Aldama2. Petrarchan Patriarchal: Poetic Nationalism or National Pornography in Hungary? Aniko Imre3. Militarization of the Feminine Body: Women's Participation in the Tamil Nationalist Struggle Yamuna Sangarasivam4. Blood and Dirt: Politics of Women's Protest in Armagh Prison, North Ireland Leila Neti5. Bodily Metaphors, Material Exclusions: The Sexual and Racial Politics of Domestic Partnership in France Catherine Raissiguier6. Mattering National Bodies and Sexualities: Corporeal Contest in Marcos and Brocka Rolando B. Tolentino7. The Time of Violence. Deconstruction and Value Elizabeth GroszPart Two. Coloniality and the Consumption of the Other8. Consuming Cannibalism: The Body in Australia's Pacific Archive Mike Hayes9. Isolates of Historic Interest' (IHSs): On Biocolonialism and Global Genocide of Indigenous Peoples by the Genome Diversity Agenda Annette Jaimes Guerrero10. Angola, Convict Lease, and the Annulment of Freedom: The Vectors of Architectural and Discursive Violence in the U.S. "Slavery of Prison" Dennis Childs11. Bernhard Goetz and the Politics of Fear Jonathan Markovitz12. Pierced Tongues: Language and Violence in Carmen Boullosa's Dystopia Margarita SaonaPart Three. Performing Race, Gender and Sexuality13. Constituting Transgressive Interiorities: Psychiatric Readings of Morally Mad Bodies Heidi Rimke14. When Electrolysis Proxies for the Existential: A Somewhat Sordid Meditation on What Might Occur If Fanon, Castellanos, Derrida, Spivak, and Cisneros Asked Rita Hayworth Her Name William Anthony Nerricio15. Double Cross: FTMs of Color, Asian American Gendering and the Illogics of Masculine Identification in the TransVideos of Christopher Lee Sel J. Wahng16 Teumsae-eso: Korean American Women Between Feminism and Nationalism Elaine Kim17. Gendered Spirits in Shamanic Bodies: Colonization, Resistance and Creation in Mapuche Gendered Healing Ana Mariella BacigalupoPart Four. Understanding "Trauma": The Psychic Effects of Material Violence18. Re/membering the body: Latina Testimonies of Social and Family Violence Yvette Flores-Ortiz19. Sita's War and the Body Politic: Violence and Abuse in the Lives of South Asian Women Sunita Peacock20. La Japonesita's Body as Site of Contention in the Inscription of Homoerotic Discourse in "el lugar sin l'mites" by Arturo Ripstein David William Foster21. Medicalizing Human Rights, Domesticating Violence in Postdictatorship Market-States Lessie Jo Frazier22. Las Super Madres de Latino America: Transforming Motherhood and Houseskirts by Challenging Violence in Juarez, Mexico, Argentina and El Salvador Cindy BejaranoContributors Index

Utopias, dystopias, and abjection: pathways for society's others in George Eliot's major fictions

Abstract: Bibliography: p. 250-270.%%%%Introduction – Female subjectivity, abjection, and agency in Scenes of clerical life – A questionable Utopia: Adam Bede – Dystopia and the frustration of agency in the double Bildungsroman of The mill on the floss – Abjection and exile in Silas Marner – Justice and feminist Utopia in Romola – Radicalism as Utopianism in Felix Holt, the radical – The pursuit of what is good: Utopian impulses in Middlemarch – Nationalism and multiculturalism: shaping the future as transformative Utopia in Daniel Deronda.%%%%Within a framework based on Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogism and Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection, this thesis investigates how Utopian impulses are manifested in George Eliot's novels. Eliot's utopianism is presented first by a critique of dystopian elements in society and later by placing such elements in a dialogic relationship with utopian ideas articulated by leading characters. Each novel includes characters who are abjected because they have different ideas from the social norms, and such characters are silenced and expelled because society evaluates these differences in terms of its gender, class and racial prejudices. Dystopia is thus constituted as a resolution of the conflict between individual and society by the imposition of monologic values. Dialogic possibilities are explored by patterned character configurations and by the cultivation of ironical narrators' voices which enfold character focalization within strategic deployment of free indirect discourse. – Eliot's early works, from Scenes of Clerical Life to Silas Marner, focus their dystopian elements as a critique of a monologic British society intolerant of multiple consciousnesses, and which consigns "other" voices to abjection and thereby precludes social progress by rejecting these "other" voices. In her later novels, from Romola to Daniel Deronda, Eliot presents concrete model utopian societies that foreshadow progressive changes to the depicted, existing society. Such an imagined society incorporates different consciousnesses and hence admits abject characters, who otherwise would have been regarded as merely transgressive, and thus silenced or eliminated. Abjected characters in Eliot's fiction tend also to be utopists, and hence have potential for positively transforming the world. Where they are depicted as gaining agency, they also in actuality or by implication bring about change in society, the nation and the wider world. – An underlying assumption is that history can be changed for the better, so that utopian ideals can be actualized by means of human agency rather than by attributing teleological processes to supernatural forces. When a protagonist's utopian impulses fail, it is both because of dystopian elements of society and because of individual human weaknesses. In arguably her most utopian works, Romola and Daniel Deronda, Eliot creates ideal protagonists, one of whom remains in the domestic sphere because of gender, and another who is (albeit voluntarily) removed from British society because…

Dystopian Nightmares and Educated Hopes: The Return of the Pedagogical and the Promise of Democracy:

Abstract: This article examines how the political, economic, and ideological policies under neoliberalism in the United States are being used to wage a war against almost every facet of American life not directly governed by the logic and values of the market. War has become the central motif of the dystopian vision of neoliberalism and the effects of such an assault on the domestic front have been overshadowed by the war in Iraq. The article further argues that it is crucial that educators reclaim a revitalized notion of politics that gets beyond the discourse of critique, one which all too often in reductionistic fashion emphasizes either the crushing effects of domination or views people largely as victims. A more radical politics must consider embracing a notion of hope rooted in pedagogical work that both extends the sites of pedagogy and recognizes the importance of cultural politics as a preconditions for both creating revitalized democratic public spaces, social movements, and the possibility of social acti...

Does the Categorical Imperative Give Rise to a Contradiction in the Will

Abstract: The Brave New World-style utilitarian dystopia is a familiar feature of the cultural landscape; Kantian dystopias are harder to come by, perhaps because, until Rawls, Kantian morality presented itself as a primarily personal rather than political program. This asymmetry is peculiar for formal reasons, because one phase of the deliberative process on which Kant insists is to ask what the world at large would be like if everyone did whatever it is one is thinking of doing. I do not propose to write a Kantian Brave New World myself, but I am going to ask, of what these days is called "the CI-procedure," what would happen if everybody followed it. I will argue that if the CI-procedure works as advertised, it exposes a practical incoherence in the commitment to having it govern one's actions: in the Kantian vocabulary that goes with the territory, that the Categorical Imperative gives rise to a contradiction in the will. (Less formally, that it is self-refuting.) My target will be a recently influential interpretation of Kant, due primarily to John Rawls and a number of his students, most prominently Onora O'Neill, Christine Korsgaard, and Barbara Herman, a group I will for convenience refer to as the New Kantians.1 Although it does draw on earlier interpretative work, this body of writing is relatively self-contained, and manageable in a way that the Kant literature as a whole no longer is. I don't myself wish to take a stand on whether the New Kantian reading is exegetically correct; it suffices for present purposes that it has proven itself interesting, plausible, and powerful enough to have moved Kantian moral philosophy back from the marginalized position it occupied a little over a quarter-century ago to the center of contemporary ethics. I will begin by rehearsing the CI-procedure and the theory that accompanies it; the reader is warned that the setup will take more time than is usual in papers of this kind. Kant himself used the label 'Categorical Imperative' to mark three ideas that he thought were at bottom the same: the practical priority of universalizability, of respect for persons, and of autonomy. They are, however, at any rate on the surface, rather different, and in order to sidestep the issue of whether the different versions of the Categorical Imperative are in fact equivalent, I

From Irony to Affiliation in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale

Abstract: Since its publication in the mid-l980s, some readers have objected to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale on political grounds. One version of this objection asserts that the novel is not simply dystopian but antiutopian in that the novel's ironized ending, the “Historical Notes,” shortcircuits any hope for political effectiveness that Offred's open-ended conclusion might hold out.

Janus-Faced Fictions: Socialism as Utopia and Dystopia in William Morris and George Orwell *

Abstract: Consider the following plot scenario for a literary work. A married Englishman of strong left-wing views, who has partly earned his bread as a journalist, arrives by train at a revolutionary city on the Continent, and wit nesses a society transformed. Red flags are flying, the people are happy, a feeling of fellowship inspires him with hope for a better day, although the country is involved in a larger war which it is destined to lose. But in the city, the forces of reaction launch an attack against the revolutionary ele ments. Our hero participates in the street fighting, is later wounded, and having recovered is amazed to learn that his comrades are dead or impris oned, and he must flee for his life. He crosses the border in the guise of a respectable English visitor and escapes to the green fields of his home. But despite the failure of the revolution, his socialist zeal remains undimin ished.... The author of this piece was a man awakened to political con sciousness by his opposition to British imperialism, and was himself, among other things, a journalist and a revolutionary socialist. By the end of his life he had despaired of the imminence of the revolution and moved toward a greater accommodation with existing political institutions, but his belief in the necessity and desirability of the socialist ideal never faltered. Finally, his most famous and arguably greatest work was in the Utopian genre. This description, surprisingly at first sight, fits William Morris and his 1885 poem about the Paris Commune, The Pilgrims of Hope, as well as it does George Orwell and his Spanish Civil War documentary Homage to Catalonia, published in 1938. But short of drawing parallels where none exist, there can be no question of any direct influence by Morris upon Orwell. Morris is rarely mentioned in Orwell's writings, and when he does appear it is either as a "dull, empty windbag" and patron saint of "the outer-suburban creeping Jesus," in The Road to Wigan Pier (162), or, at a later stage of Orwell's political development, as a valuable reminder of socialism's "orig inal, half-forgotten objective of human brotherhood" ("Review: The Soul of Man" 428) and an admirable "Utopian dreamer" (qtd. in Crick, "Orwell" 18, from the 1946 review "What is Socialism?"). Orwell's positive refer ences to the concept of the earthly paradise and specifically to News from Nowhere in these reviews of the late 1940s show not only a surface famil iarity with but a newfound esteem for Morris's work, although general stabs at "wooly-minded Utopianism" (qtd. in Ward 40, from the 1948 Observer

Human Nature in Utopia: Zamyatin's "We"

Abstract: Brett Cooke. Human Nature in Utopia: Zamyatin's "We", Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2002. xi, 221 pp. Notes. Works Cited. Index. $79.95, cloth.In his monograph on Zamyatin's novel, Brett Cooke concentrates on the manner in which We illustrates the conflict between the Utopian ideal, on the one hand, and human needs and aspirations on the other. Professor Cooke is cognizant of the work's Russian literary roots as well as of the manner in which it exposed totalitarian aspects of the then-new Soviet regime. At the same time, in examining the failure of We 's "Single State" to construct a society that fully wins over its inhabitants, he casts his eye broadly to the dystopian novel in general and also to a variety of secondary sources in psychology, sociology, and other disciplines. The specific themes he addresses will generally be familiar to those who have studied the novel; these range from the manner in which mathematics and logic (and, by extension, reason) supposedly replace human emotion in the Single State, to the function of food (and dining) within a dystopia, to the manner in which sexual attraction subverts the state's efforts to maintain total control. However, no previous study attempts to examine such a broad range of the novel's themes in the depth that is provided here.The monograph is at its strongest when the focus is more closely on the novel itself. In these pages Professor Cooke often provides sharp individual insights or fills in gaps left by previous investigations. For instance, he notes that the book's narrator, D-503, for all his abilities as the creator of the rocket ship that was to allow the Single State to extend its reach into space, makes a surprising number of outright errors in his arithmetic and his logic (pp. 75-76). The failure of readers, and of many scholars who have written on this novel, to detect all the flaws in D-503's reasoning and in the Single State lead Professor Cooke to conclude that Zamyatin may well have "miscalculated" (p. 122); the undercutting of the regime and of the narrator seems to have proved too subtle. Equally strong are sections that deal with the prevalence of writing in the novel and with the references to children and childhood. The discussion of writing, in the ninth and final chapter, explores D-503's composing of his journal, describes the role that the physical manuscript he creates plays in the plot, and also points to other authors in the text: the poet R-13 of course, and, more subtly, D-503's neighbour, who is often seen writing. …

New Terrains and New Chronologies: The Interwar Period through the Lens of Population Politics

Abstract: All three articles in this Forum concern themselves both with the impact of state policies on space and peoples and with the lived experience that resulted for indi- viduals who partook in such policies, either as its agents or objects. Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell examine the post-1917 state-building projects in the territories of the former Russian empire, including those states that did not enter into the Soviet Union. They treat the societies and citizens that resulted from the ex- tended experience of war, revolution, and displacement as well as from the self- conscious attempts to forge new societies by both the Soviet "revolutionizing" and newly-independent "nationalizing" states. Lynne Viola examines the dy- namic between fastidious utopian planning and its dystopian, untidy results in the 1930s, with particular attention to the "special settlements" for dekulakized peasants. Alfred Rieber views the wartime and postwar conflict in the "border- lands" through the lens of civil war, thus relating the experience of Nazi occupa- tion with postwar Soviet "pacification" as well as situating this convulsion of vio- lence within the broader sweep of the history of imperial borderlands. In terms of periodization, the articles by Baron and Gatrell and by Rieber also seek to reconfigure traditional chronological parameters. They do so by moving beyond recognized events and examining broader processes. Both articles demonstrate the extent to which waging and experiencing war became trans- formed into revolutionary processes. 1 Baron and Gatrell productively treat the period of World War I, revolution, civil war, and subsequent consolidation of new states and societies as a dynamic continuum rather than discrete events. Alfred Rieber places wartime occupation and postwar strife firmly within the am- bit of Soviet history and indeed situates this episode within a much longer his- tory of state conflict and social violence in the imperial borderlands. The ten- dency to treat wars - and especially World War II - as discrete events, extracted

Computers in society : privacy, ethics, and the Internet

Abstract: Preface. Introduction to Book. I. COMPUTERS IN SOCIETY. Introduction to Part I. George, J.F. "Introduction to the Social Issues of Computing." Views of Computing. Shapiro, A.L. 1999. The Control Revolution, Chapter 3. New York: Public Affairs, 25-33. Fisher, D.R. & L.M. Wright. 2001. "On Utopias and Dystopias: Toward an Understanding of the Discourse Surrounding the Internet." JCMC 6(2). Anderson, D.P. & J. Kubiatowicz. 2002. "The Worldwide Computer." Scientific American, 286(3), March, 28-35. The Information Society. Porat, M.U. 1978. "Global Implications of the Information Society." Journal of Communication 28(1), 70-80. Lyon, D. 1986. "From 'Post-Industrialism' to 'Information Society': A New Social Transformation?" Sociology, 20(4), 577-588. Computers & Organizations. Brynjolfsson, Erik 1993. "The Productivity Paradox of Information Technology." Communications of the ACM, 36(12): 66-77. Brynjolfsson, Erik and Lorin M. Hitt. 1998. "Beyond the Productivity Paradox: Computers Are the Catalyst for Bigger Changes." Communications of the ACM, August, 49-55. Dedrick, J. and Kraemer, K.L. 2000. "The Productivity Paradox: Is it Resolved? Is There a New One? What Does It All Mean for Managers?" CRITO, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA. Available at www.crito.uci.edu. Sawyer, S. and Tapia, A. "The Computerization of Work: A Social Informatics Perspective." Computer-Based Monitoring. George, J.F. & Carter, P. "Computer-Based Performance Monitoring". Griffith, T.L. "Social and Technical Aspects of Electronic Monitoring: To Protect and To Serve." Simmers, C.A. 2002. "Aligning Internet Usage with Business Priorities." Communications of the ACM, 45(1), 71-74. Security and Reliability. Littman, J. 1996. The Fugitive Game. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., pp. 25-32. Excerpts from Power, R. 2002. 2002 CSI/FBI Computer Crime & Security Survey. Computer Security Issues & Trends, 8(2), Spring. Burgoon, J., Marett, K.L., and Blair, P. "Detecting Deception in Computer-Mediated Communication." II. PRIVACY. Introduction to Part II. Culnan, M.J. "Information Privacy: Technology and Policy." Hoffman, D.L., Novak, T.P., and Peralta, M. 1999. "Building Consumer Trust Online." Communications of the ACM, 42(4), 80-85. Excerpts from Fox, S, et al. 2000. "Trust and Privacy Online: Why Americans Want to Rewrite the Rules." The Pew Internet and American Life Project, Washington, D.C., pp. 5-17. "Online Privacy: It's Time for Rules in Wonderland." 2000. Business Week. March 20, 83-88, 92, 94, 96. "Privacy in an Age of Terror." 2001. Business Week. Nov. 5. 83-88. III. ETHICS. Introduction to Part III. Nancy Leveson, N. 1995. "Medical Devices: The Therac-25." Smith, H.J. & J. Hasnas. 1999. "Ethics and Information Systems: The Corporate Domain." MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 109-127. Oz, E. 2002. "Ethical Issues." Encyclopedia of Information Systems. Academic Press. Excerpts from "Self-Assessment Procedure XXII: Ethical Values in Computer Professions." Communications of the ACM, 33(11), Nov. 1990, 110-132. IV. THE INTERNET. Introduction to Part IV. The Internet in the US and the World. Excerpts from Whinston, A. & A. Barua. 2001. Measuring the Internet Economy. Center for Research in Electronic Commerce, Graduate School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, TX. www.internetindicators.com, January, pp. 1-17. Wolcott, Peter, Larry Press, William McHenry, Seymour E Goodman, William Foster, "A Framework for Assessing the Global Diffusion of the Internet", Journal of the AIS, November, 2001, v. 2 article 6. Social Implications of Internet Use. Kraut, R., Lundmark, V., Patterson, M., Kiesler, S., Mukopadhyay, T., and Scherlis, W. 1998. Internet Paradox: A Social Technology That Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being? American Psychologist, 53(9), 1017-1031. Kraut, R., Kiesler, S., Boneva, B., Cummings, J., Helgeson, V. & Crawford, A. 2002. "Internet Paradox Revisited." Journal of Social Issues, 58, 49-74. The Internet, Government, & the Law. Excerpts from Branscomb, A.W. 1996. "Cyberspaces: Familiar Territory or Lawless Frontiers," JCMC, 2(1). Thompson, K.M., McClure, C.R. & Jaeger, P.T. "Evaluating Federal Websites: Improving e-Government for the People." Digital Divides. Hoffman, D.L. and Novak, T.P. 1998. "Bridging the Digital Divide on the Internet." Science, April 17, 390-391. Eastin, M.S. & R. LaRose. 2000. "Internet Self-Efficacy and the Psychology of the Digital Divide." JCMC 6(1). Boneva, B., Kraut, R., and Frohlich, D. 2001. "Using E-mail for Personal Relationships: The Difference Gender Makes." American Behavioral Scientist. Special Issue on The Internet and Everyday Life, 45(3), 530-549. Free Speech & the Internet. Davenport, D. 2002. "Anonymity on the Internet: Why the Price May Be Too High." Communications of the ACM, 45(4), 33-35. American Library Association. 1948. "Library Bill of Rights." Lessig, L. 1999. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Ch. 12. NY: Basic Books, 164-85.

A world of alienation and pain: an existentialist reading of Graham Green's novels

Abstract: Since literature often reflects the mood of its age and enabling context, it is the contention of this paper that Greene’s fiction dwells on the conflicts and pains of the modern world. How does he approach this artistic feat? What are the ideological thrusts of his art? These and many other critical issues constitute the research focus of this paper. The paper argues that Greene’s fiction takes on pervasive tones of irony and intensity, and expresses moods of sobriety and pathos that are intrinsic to the human condition in the modern world. Thus, in the world of Greene’s novels, man is dumped in a setting which is unfriendly and harsh to him. The society flows with tears and bile for the occupants. The prospect for the modern man is portrayed as very bleak, and his life is marked by spiritual sterility, boredom, pain and alienation. His bright hope is all too easily repealed by cynicism and consciousness of failure. Hence, in every corner of the Greenean world, despair is written in the face of the characters. In fact, not only the people, but also the whole society of Greene’s fiction stinks of degeneration. It is also the argument of this paper that the allegorical period of Greene’s fiction is the world-war years and after. Devastation, bloodshed, emotional and spiritual barrenness, the waste of modern civilization, etc signify this. Greene, in the two selected novels, depicts struggling men who end up being alienated and disillusioned. In sum, the paper reveals that the modern world, which is, by inference, the referent society of Greene’s fiction, is marked by depersonalized cruelty, mutual animosity, absence of love and community; it is a world where man’s struggle always ends up in vain. The concept of Dystopian Fiction refers to the attempt by a novelist to portray a ‘bad place’. Among others, such fiction depicts a world that is very unpleasant. It pictures the ominous tendencies of the world’s contemporary socio-political and technological order. It is predicated on the impossibility of a perfect existence for man, and it is antithetical to utopian fiction’s vision of the world in which man learns to live at peace with himself in a federation of the world. In contradistinction to such utopian novels, like Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), Hilton’s Lost Horizon (1934) and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), the dystopian novel sees man in a corrupted state, a community bedevilled with historical evils that man has always suffered. It also centres on the impossibility of growth without conflicts and the unfeasibility of a homogeneous society – a society of equality and symmetry. Indeed, this type of novel portrays a world of social disorder and a valley of tears. Among the readily available examples of dystopian novels are Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1945) and Huxley’s Brave New World. Most of Greene’s novels also fall into this canon. In dystopian fiction, the novelist is always blunt; s/he uses the

Confucian Harmonizing: Utopia, Dystopia and Heterotopia in Chinese Thought

Abstract: (2003). Confucian Harmonizing: Utopia, Dystopia and Heterotopia in Chinese Thought. Journal of Comparative Asian Development: Vol. 2, Utopianism in Chinese Thought, pp. 233-257.

Who's Afraid of the Brave New World?

Abstract: The bioethicist Leon R. Kass, who has been one of the most persistent opponents of human cloning, argues that we must ban it totally as a tactical step to head off the emergence of a truly horrible society something like that depicted in Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New World (1932). For Kass, it is not enough to ban reproductive cloning; to ensure that this cannot be done; we must also ban any creation of human embryos by somatic cell nuclear transfer, even for research or therapeutic purposes. In a lengthy article in the May 2001 issue of the New Republic, he argues that, should we take any other approach, we risk sliding into a Brave New World of eugenics and a 'post-human' future.

Narratology and Text: Subjectivity and Identity in New France and Québécois Literature

Abstract: In Narratology and Text, Paul Perron examines the role that literature plays in the formation of French Canadian identity. Perron presents a narratological and semiotic analysis of canonical non-fictional and fictional texts from New France and Quebec, and illustrates how citizens of French Catholic origins living in Canada have constructed their identity by defining the self as part of a closed community founded in race, language, and religion, and as radically opposed to the other, constituted as an omnipresent heterogeneous threat to the homogenous group. The first section of Perron's study is devoted to an historico-notional overview of some of the major contributors to the theory of narrative, especially that of A.J. Greimas. The second and third parts initially examine the primary and founding texts of first encounters, Jacques Cartier's Voyages of 1534 and 1535, and the Jesuit Relations, and then turn to discussions of six representative Quebecois novels from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the Duplessis era. Each work is examined in terms of its definitions of the self, the other, the group, the nation, language, race, and religion, as well as its treatment of the idea of place - the utopian here as opposed to a dystopian there or elsewhere. Fusing semiotics, narratology, stylistics, and literary and cultural theory with one of the only English-language studies on Greimas, this important work offers an original and thought-provoking contribution to studies of literature and semiotics.

Utopian, Anti-Utopian and Dystopian Ideas in Philosophical Daoism

Abstract: This article attempts to link certain aspects of philosophical Daoism of the late Zhou (c. 4th-3rd centuries BCE.) and Wei-Jin (c. 3rd4th century CE) periods to the idea of utopianism. Elsewhere I have compared philosophical Daoism to western strands of anarchism (see Rapp, 1998, passim). Whether or not one accepts this comparison, it should be much less debatable whether philosophical Daoists share with western anarchists an ambivalent attitude toward utopianism, as I will show in this article. On the one hand, many students of anarchism and many anarchists themselves note the \"utopian\" aspects of anarchism, if by \"utopia\" one means the depiction of an ideal society.' In this sense, anarchists in their writings and political activities try to get people to reach beyond the flawed and imperfect society in which they live and start to construct a new society along the ideal lines the anarchists suggest. In the same way, philosophical Daoists from the late Zhou period to the Wei-Jin era also had a consistent utopian ideal that they used to challenge both existing social mores and what they saw as dangerous trends in the society and government of their day, as we will see below. On the other hand, as at least one historian of anarchism has noted, anarchists also have a negative attitude toward the whole concept of utopia, if that term is meant, as it was by Plato and More, to describe an ideal government. As George Woodcock puts it,

Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English

Abstract: John Humphrys, Britain's best-loved radio journalist, introduces a new edition of this waspish review of the massacre of the Queen's English. This handy guide is a valiant attempt to salvage some pearts of good usage from the linguistic dystopia of modern Britain. For the most part, the examples of bad English come from people in the public eye who consider themselves educated and who ought to know better. Between You and I should be the constant bedside companion of any person of sensibility who, against all odds, wants to save our language.

The curse of Frankenstein: visions of technology and society in the debate over new reproductive technologies

Abstract: At each successive moment in their development new reproductive technologies have provided the occasion for virulent argument about the role of technology in human affairs. And more generally, technoscientific knowledge has long been held both in awe and suspicion, with the latter acting as a kind of counterbalance to the continuing cultural investment in the image of scientific knowledge as empowerment, as the motive force of beneficial change. Given this cultural ambivalence the paper focuses on media representations of cloning and the 'designer baby' (with the latter enveloping a debate that has run for almost a decade now) and explores the ways utopian images of a world rendered ever more amenable to human desires have been closely shadowed by just as compelling dystopian visions which are nevertheless constructed from the same cultural material. Figures of occidental folklore such as Frankenstein (or Jeckyll or Brave New World), thus function as something of a convenient shorthand for articulating unease with the direction and pace of technological development, or even voicing loss of confidence in the modernist technoscientific project of instrumental control. In these circumstances, the chimeric notions of the 'designer baby' or the human 'clone' appear Janus-faced, concurrently representing the powers of human creativity as well as the monstrous progeny of an excessive epistemophilia. They are in this sense potent metaphors for the biotechnological revolution's declared power to re-shape both nature and society - for 'good' or 'ill'.

Postmodern Subjects: On Lyman's Sociology of the Absurd

Abstract: According to Stanford Lyman, a specter continues to haunt social theory in the United States and that specter is "postmodernism" In Roads to Dystopia,2 Lyman continues3 a critical engagement with postmodern theory?especially that work which has been most influential with, and appropriated by, American sociologists Although critical of postmodern thought, Lyman is never dismissive of his subject4 Indeed, Lyman expresses a certain sympathy with some arguments within postmodernism because much is familiar to him5 In his existentialist sociology of the absurd, an intellectual project first articulated by Lyman and others more than a quar ter century ago,6 several recognizably "postmodern" themes, he maintains, can be found Lyman accepts that we live in postmodern times, a condition characterized, he suggests, by alienation and despair It is because of this, however, that he ultimately rejects the postmodernist's response Reflecting on our present historical condition, Lyman observes that it is "no wonder, then, that the present millennial moment is conceptualized as one 'in between' another, as one whose condition can only be designated as post-modernity, with no name for the age and situation that will follow"7 He concedes that our sense of time, our social and cultural memory, and even our abilities for self-expression, are all subject to ever-increasing fragmen tation Although our traditional landmarks are now blurred and shifting, Lyman refuses to acquiesce to other claims of postmodernism: namely, that

The Quest for Community in American Postmodern Fiction

Abstract: The good intentions, and good deeds, of liberalism and the contemporary liberal state notwithstanding, there have been myriad countervailing pressures working against the formation of communities in postmodern America, and it is on two of these that I wish to focus here: first, assaults on community formation by governmental and corporate entities; and, second, assaults on community formation by the ever-accelerating embourgeoisement of American culture. The novels of Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Norman Mailer, John Edgar Wideman, Don DeLillo, Kathy Acker, and Richard Ford, among a number of others, provide rich illustrations of the entropy of community in contemporary America, and the analyses offered here will draw from this important body of literature as well as from contemporary political theory. In The End of History (1992), Francis Fukuyama advances the view that history is "directional," and that its directional bias in the late twentieth century leads inexorably to political liberalism. (1) Fukuyama claims that liberalism has proven more adept than any other political system at satisfying "the whole man simultaneously, his mason, his desire, and thymos." (2) A term drawn from Plato's Republic, "thymos" refers to people's self-esteem, to their "innate sense of justice." Thymos creates in people a "desire for recognition." (3) Even if Fukuyama is correct and liberalism can be said to have vanquished its ideological antagonists--notably communitarianism, in both its right- and left-wing modalities, and libertarianism--those countries that unambiguously embrace this political form are hardly utopias, and the United States is clearly not one. Indeed, no less a student of contemporary American society than William Jefferson Clinton has called attention to the fragmentation of the national soul. Addressing party delegates at the 1996 Democratic National Convention in his nomination acceptance speech, Clinton issued a challenge to himself and all Americans: "We must make the basic bargain of responsibility and opportunity real for all Americans and we must build a strong and united American community." (4) One might be tempted to see this call for a refurbished notion of American community or, better, "alliance of communities," as Peter Simpson calls the liberal state, as nothing more than hollow, self-promotional political oratory. (5) Taken in isolation, and cynically, Clinton's hortatory sentiments might well be summarily dismissed on these grounds alone. Yet, in these early years of the twenty-first century, the United States is indeed preoccupied with community, with its loss, with the need for its conceptual and social renovation, and Clinton's concern is also the nation's. Certainly, in postmodern America, the thymos of many social theorists, philosophers, and novelists is affronted by historical circumstance. As Fukuyama himself is well aware, the "end of history" has not been marked by the end of human suffering. Consequently, several questions come immediately to the fore here. How can what is arguably the best "actually existent" political system that humankind has ever conjured up be so demonstrably imperfect, even dystopian in the minds of some? Is a system that has, again arguably, won the endgame of a complex and protracted ideological match capable of metacritical reflection, of self-correctional gesture? Is justice itself an inherently contestable concept under liberalism and hence not subject to any definitive codification? Finally, and crucially, what vision of futurity does American liberalism embrace? Robert Bellah and his colleagues provide us with what seems a serviceable definition of community in Habits of the Heart, their influential study of individualism and social morality in America: "a community is a group of people who are socially interdependent, who participate together in discussion and decision making, and who share certain practices ... that both define the community and are nurtured by it. …

Introduction a critique of posthuman futures

Abstract: F rancis Fukuyama's latest book, Our Posthuman Future: Conse- quences of the Biotechnology Revolution, opens with a description of Aldous Huxley's scientiWcally engineered dystopia in Brave New World. "The aim of this book," states Fukuyama, "is to argue that Huxley was right, that the most signiWcant threat posed by contem- porary biotechnology is the possibility that it will alter human nature and thereby move us into a 'posthuman' stage of history" (7). Both sympathetic and critical readers of Fukuyama's previous work may be able to discern how the book proceeds; it is an impassioned de- fense of liberal humanism against contemporary cultures of laissez- faire individualism and unregulated corporate technoscience. While scientiWc progress is needed and desired for the good of all, if un- checked that progress threatens to alter the conditions of our com- mon humanity with the prospect of terrible social costs. The threat here is fundamental for Fukuyama; genetic technologies will alter the material and biological basis of the natural human equality that serves as the basis of political equality and human rights. Fukuyama asks, "(W)hat will happen to political rights once we are able to, in effect, breed some people with saddles on their backs, and others with boots and spurs?" (9-10). Fukuyama's book is timely, not for the persuasiveness of his arguments, but for his staunch defense of the state regulation of biotechnology grounded in an Enlightenment narrative of a shared and inviolable human essence. In a world increasingly populated with genetically modiWed organisms and artiWcial life of all kinds, including the practical and potential manipulation of the biology of