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 2016
TL;DR: The authors argue that the accepted meaning of any text is a product of the inter pretive institutions and communities acting upon it, and that we can never really find textual meaning as a "thing-in-itself." But they also argue that some interpretations, for a variety of reasons, succeed so well that we no longer view them as arguement about the meaning of a work, but instead take them as simple asser tion(s) about the world.
Abstract: have argued that the accepted meaning of any text is a product of the inter pretive institutions and communities acting upon it. Fredric Jameson sug gests that we can never really find textual meaning as a "thing-in-itself." "Rather," he writes, "texts come before us as the always-already-read; we apprehend them through sedimented layers of previous interpretations, or? if the text is brand-new?through sedimented reading habits and categories developed by those inherited interpretive traditions" (The Political Uncon scious, 9). And, as Stanley Fish elsewhere argues, some interpretations, for a variety of reasons, succeed so well that we no longer view them as argu ments about the meaning of a work, but instead take them as "simple asser tion(s) about the world" itself (194). Such sedimented reading habits have long shaped the way readers approach Yevgeny Zamyatin's powerful evocation of the future, We (1921). It has become something of a critical commonplace, for example, to regard We as one of the first and most successful of the twentieth century's antior dys-topias. Indeed, in Western Europe and the United States, We has come to be known primarily as the model for the bleak masterpiece of the dystopian form, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.1 (Of course, the critical rewrit ing of We followed a quite different trajectory in the former Soviet Union, where the text was not officially published until 1988 and had previously circulated primarily in the clandestine samizdat press.) The Anglo-Ameri can treatment of We as a dystopia most likely arose from a number of sources: it might well have begun with Orwell's own discussion of the text and, later, would have been bolstered by efforts to recover literary precur sors to Cold War attitudes toward socialism2?for the dystopia always already seemed especially amiable to the most violently reactionary politi cal agendas, as any study of the early uses of Orwell's narrative bears out. However, even in our own post-Cold War universe, where these older polit ical struggles no longer seem to have the same urgency, reading We as a dystopia still has its attractions, for such an interpretation creates a version of the text consonant with our contemporary fin-de-si?cle attitude toward the various Utopian projects of the earlier part of this century. Indeed, the dystopian narrative form seems especially amenable to a historical moment like our own in which we have become deeply suspicious of even the hope
3 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that a novel may be classified as dystopian if it fulfills certain factors that posit language and discourse as fundamental devices of power, such as the establishment of an official, totalitarian language, evidence of opposing discourses, and the representation of the characters as a figure who deconstruct social reality.
Abstract: This article explores the effect of power and language in dystopian society. I attempt to show that a novel may be classified as dystopian if it fulfills certain factors that posit language and discourse as fundamental devices of power. These three main factors are as follows: the establishment of an official, totalitarian language, evidence of opposing discourses, and the representation of the characters as a figure who deconstruct social reality. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2013.v3n7p610
3 citations
TL;DR: The authors provide a captivating examination into bleak, futuristic societies, while simultaneously encouraging their audiences to draw comparisons between the fictional dystopia and real-world reality, and the real world.
Abstract: Critical dystopian narratives provide a captivating examination into bleak, futuristic societies, while simultaneously encouraging their audiences to draw comparisons between the fictional dystopia...
3 citations
01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: Sattarvandi et al. as discussed by the authors map a post-modern dystopia by locating a few male protagonists in the suburb of Hagalund, which is located outside the capital Stockholm.
Abstract: In his novel Still (2008), the author Sattarvandi maps a postmodern dystopia by locating a few male protagonists in the suburb of Hagalund, which is located outside the capital Stockholm. The place depicted is a space of exile and confinement that is socially deprived and culturally appropriated. The inhabitants are disconnected from the city and the nation, and are instead positioned according to a local-global scale creating a space of interstitiality. When acknowledged as a historical site, Sattarvandi’s dystopian version of this particular suburb emerges as a complex urban space in transformation informed by its early modern, modern as well as postmodern cultural, historical and political contexts.
3 citations