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Dystopia

About: Dystopia is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2146 publications have been published within this topic receiving 15163 citations. The topic is also known as: cacotopia.


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Dissertation
01 Jan 2011
TL;DR: In this article, the authors of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Slaughterhouse-Five in the tradition of dystopian literature have been compared, and the authors attempt to link the authors as American satirists and explore where the satire of Twain and Vonnegut overlap and where it diverges.
Abstract: Many critics have noticed the ties linking the satirical novels of Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut. This is not surprising as Twain's influence on Vonnegut's work is virtually inescapable. However thus far critics have not conducted any rigorous sustained attempts to analyze the works of both authors together. Comparisons of the authors have thus far been casual insubstantial references made in passing. This thesis will attempt to link the authors as American satirists and explore where the satire of Twain and Vonnegut overlaps and where it diverges. This discussion of the satirical voice of Twain and Vonnegut leads into a discussion of their protagonists Hank Morgan and Billy Pilgrim. There have been a wide range of interpretations of both authors ranging from analyses describing the protagonists as heroes while others assume that they were created to ridicule societal problems. This thesis will attempt to shed light on this debate by placing A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Slaughterhouse-Five within the tradition of dystopian literature thereby changing the parameters of the debate and creating a new reading of both novels.

5 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
06 Nov 2019
TL;DR: The dark and catastrophic futures of dystopian and post-apocalyptic YA fiction are often perceived of as critiques of late capitalist society, presenting an alternative to the status quo of what Ma...
Abstract: The dark and catastrophic futures of dystopian and post-apocalyptic YA fiction are often perceived of as critiques of late capitalist society, presenting an alternative to the status quo of what Ma ...

5 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the concept of science fiction with a dystopian world as a genre in children's literature and demonstrate the narrative strategies that are employed to construct the main protagonist, within a dystopian society by using Nikolajeva's model of characterization.
Abstract: Dystopian world in young adults literature can be found in science fiction genre such as M.T. Anderson’s Feed (2002). The dystopia in this young adults text reveals that there is no hope anymore on Earth because everything living and beautiful has been dead. In this situation, there is an internet chip called ‘feed’ implanted into humans’ brain. It becomes everything for people and it has taken control over the world. In Anderson’s Feed, two teenagers, Titus and Violet, are struggling to find themselves in the world which has been dominated and occupied by technology as well as corporate. This research paper discusses the concept of science fiction with a dystopian world as a genre in children’s literature. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the narrative strategies that are employed to construct the main protagonist, within a dystopian society by using Nikolajeva’s model of characterization; and to discuss the readers positioning based on point of view, focalisation and characterization as part of narrative strategies which significantly function in inviting the readers to engage with the narrative as well as to position the readers in young adults text. It is found that the homodiegetic narrator and another focalising agent in Anderson’s Feed informs the readers that futuristic universe which is maintained through technological and corporate control will cause the worst effect to humans. By using multiple characters’ focalisation, Anderson’s Feed situates the implied readers into various and challenging positions.

5 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the Xenogenesis trilogy is ambiguous about the idea of better bodies while also articulating the foundation for fruitful community, arguing that the Oankali are neither saviors nor demons, and the humans in the narrative are neither victims nor heroes.
Abstract: Octavia Butler's trilogy Xenogenesis is a useful text for opening a conversation between scholars of utopia and scholars of disability. By reading Xenogenesis as a critical utopia, the article argues that the trilogy is ambiguous about the idea of better bodies while also articulating the foundation for fruitful community. The argument is that the Oankali are neither saviors nor demons, and the humans in the narrative are neither victims nor heroes. Instead, the main characters in each of the three novels-Lilith in the first, Akin in the second, and Jodahs in the third-think through the ways in which their identities intersect with their bodies, their abilities, their families, and their desires.IntroductionAs a political theorist I am interested in the utopian effort of imagining better ways of living together. Utopian and dystopian accounts provide useful experimental spaces for these imaginings and bringing them into conversation with disability studies scholarship reveals spaces for new imaginative possibilities. And just as utopian scholars are working through how to find "better" and more "hopeful" spaces of living together, so too it seems to me that disability studies is in its own moment of wrestling with the ideas of "better" and "hopeful."Utopia,1 as a genre, is animated by a desire to bring about productive change. Utopias and dystopias diagnose current social problems and prescribe potentially "better" futures, from the standpoint of the author and (often) from that of the reader. Utopian accounts can describe better systems of government or economics, better organizations of education or family life, better relationships with the natural world or with religion. Some utopias2 seek to better humanity itself. A spirit of eugenics3 thus animates many utopian accounts. This eugenic spirit is not uniform. It runs the gamut from Plato's technologically crude, negative eugenic call for infanticide of "defective" infants in the Republic (380 BCE) to the positive eugenics that purportedly would follow the free choice of marriage in Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888). Even utopian novels written in the latter half of the twentieth century include clear eugenic messages; for instance, Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) includes a system for the production of genetically engineered children.4Utopian accounts have relied on eugenic practices and some dystopias critique the idea of eugenics by presenting eugenic practices as a sign of dystopia.5 But the mere presence of eugenic dystopias is not sufficient evidence that we as a society are ready to reject what Rosemarie Garland-Thomson calls "eugenic logic," which she defines as "a utopian effort to improve the social order" ("The Case" 240). I contend that scholars need to give more attention to utopian accounts that celebrate a wide variety of bodies and minds,6 and must begin to analyze how bodily improvement in utopian and dystopian accounts can confirm stereotypical notions of eugenic cure and challenge the foundation of cure and improvement itself. This article focuses on the latter issue. Can we begin to imagine a better world without creating that world out of seemingly improved human bodies? What is the place of "cure" in this better world? I recognize that utopian accounts, and thus utopian effort itself, is implicated in eugenic logic. However, I disagree with Garland-Thompson's sweeping dismissal of utopian effort. A utopian "logic" need not be eugenic. Instead, the effort invoked in this utopian logic imagines ways to improve the world in which we live while questioning how we value different kinds of bodies and minds. Disability studies is itself a utopian effort, one that seeks not just to explain and analyze the idea of disability but also to change the way people in our society think about disability.This article argues that we can maintain a utopian logic, necessary to imagine a world different than our own, by wrestling with a critical utopian text that is filled with the potentially problematic language of cure. …

5 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20241
2023244
2022672
202192
2020142
2019141