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.

Dystopia, Utopia, and "Home" in Toni Morrison's Home

Abstract: abstract:This article argues that there is a utopian impulse animating the work of Toni Morrison that is best manifest in the figure of “home.” It turns to utopian scholars, Morrison scholars, and Morrison herself to theorize home-as-utopia in Morrison’s work and discusses the novel in which it finds its fullest expression, 2012’s Home. It explicates how, against a demythologizing dystopian portrayal of 1950s America, Morrison posits utopia not as an ideal or blueprint, or as an enclave or other space, but instead as an everyday ethical practice. It links Morrison’s idea of home to Ernst Bloch’s concept of heimat as well as what Lucy Sargisson describes as “a system of social exchange . . . marked by the desire to give.” It thus sheds light on the “home” that, according to Evelyn Jaffe Schreiber, “has provided an ongoing hopeful thread interweaving [Morrison’s] novels” and defines Morrison’s search for “paradise.”

James Bond and the End of the World

Abstract: This article explores Ian Fleming’s fluctuating views on technology and his disillusionment with scientific work following the Second World War. Focusing on the James Bond novels, in which Fleming nursed his fears of a post-Cold War, dystopian future, it configures Bond himself as a cypher for human agency in negotiating the technological changes of the twentieth century – a triumphant symbol of Fleming’s belief in the ingenuity of the individual. This article also reads the Cold War context of mutually assured technological destruction (in which Fleming set most of his novels) against the contemporary context of the Covid-19 pandemic, a biological threat of global proportions which is interpreted, here, within a Bondian framework.

A looming dystopia: Feminism, aging, and community-based long-term care

Abstract: Old age often brings with it chronic conditions that make it difficult to handle the activities of daily life. In the United States, unpaid family caregivers, predominantly women, provide most of this care. I explore why this situation has come about and persists and further ground my image of a dystopian future in neoliberalism, the policymaking process, and contemporary politics. I then offer an ethical and policy foundation for an alternative approach to providing needed long-term care services and make provisional suggestions for actions that ought to be taken now and in the near future to avoid this dystopian future.