Topic
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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01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: The Shape of Utopia (Elliott, 1970) and its twin counterpart, dystopia, have been, in western culture, the difficulty of finding a balance between collective and individual domains and the question of how to prescribe an evolutionary system of government for communities that, naturally, are based on evolution as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Two of the recurring debates surrounding utopia and its twin counterpart, dystopia, have been, in western culture, the difficulty of finding a balance between collective and individual domains, and the question of how to prescribe an evolutionary system of government for communities that, naturally, are based on evolution. When Elliott wrote his The Shape of Utopia (Elliott, 1970), the utopia/dystopia debate and literary production hanged, for several decades, strongly in favour of the negative view of a tightly regulated society, both as a menace for human individuality as well as for species’ survival. The few who dared to write a utopian narrative were smeared by a “disillusioned” society.
3 citations
01 Jan 1987
3 citations
Dissertation•
01 May 2011
3 citations
TL;DR: In this article, Parrinder and Amey analyse representations of dystopia in literature and film, arguing that the lack of privacy in The One State, along with a strictly imposed uniformity of actions, insures that individuals are assimilated into the collectivism in which rebellion is nearly impossible.
Abstract: In this issue of Critical Survey scholars from both Britain and North America analyse representations of dystopia in literature and film. In the keynote article, Patrick Parrinder offers an examination of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, contextualising it within the tradition of dystopian romance – which, he argues, saw a last flowering in the late nineteenth century. In a thought-provoking discussion Parrinder covers a range of utopian/dystopian narrative strategies and a selection of novels including The Time Machine, The Coming Race and A Crystal Age. In the second article Michael Amey considers Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel We through the lenses of Foucauldian and Lacanian theories. He argues that in its depiction of the regulatory power of the pervasive surveillance in The One State, Zamyatin’s We resonates with Michel Foucault’s analysis of the disciplinary regime embodied in Jeremy Bentham’s design for the Panoptican. Amey offers an engaging and astute discussion of the unremitting surveillance that in many dystopian societies forces the citizens to internalise the state’s regulatory power so that it becomes the principle of their own subjection. He argues that the lack of privacy in The One State, along with a strictly imposed uniformity of actions, insures that individuals are assimilated into the collectivism in which rebellion is nearly impossible. Amey goes on to discuss the self-conscious, reflexive gaze exhibited in the development of the identity of the protagonist, D-503. He believes that Zamyatin’s description of D-503’s development into an individual relies heavily on the imagery of mirrors and reflections, and closely matches psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan’s ‘mirror-stage’ theory. In ‘Re-membering the Future: Doris Lessing’s “Experiment in Autobiography”’, Aaron Rosenfeld argues that Doris Lessing’s Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) re-reads the future-history literary tradition, critiquing its formulation of the relationship between the individual and history and between the individual and the community.
3 citations
TL;DR: For American teenagers, Shakespeare is much more than "the guy who wrote Romeo and Juliet", as Lena Haloway innocently defines him in the dystopian novel Delirium as mentioned in this paper, and teenagers are required to engage not only with the works of the Bard but also with their modern adaptations at different stages of their education.
Abstract: For American teenagers, Shakespeare is much more than "the guy who wrote Romeo and Juliet", as Lena Haloway innocently defines him in the dystopian novel Delirium. In the US Shakespeare is still a constant fixture, "a mainstay in the curricula of America's schools and colleges, and the value of reading his work is still assumed" (Vaughan, Vaughan 2012:2); teenagers are required to engage not only with the works of the Bard but also with their modern adaptations at different stages of their education. The present paper investigates three American YA novels, published between 1999 and 2012, in which teenagers engage with Shakespeare's works. For the characters, reading is a formative experience that alleviates their pain, enables them to externalize their feelings, and to develop emotionally, psychologically and socially: texts are related to the lives of the young protagonists, questioned, challenged, moralized and used as a lens through which one can examine the teen world.
3 citations