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.

Where Dystopia Becomes Reality and Utopia Never Comes

Abstract: The article Where Dystopia Becomes Reality and Utopia Never Comes draws a comparison between utopian and dystopian visions of the world described in two works by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963): Brave New World and Island and a fine line where the author’s farsightedness crosses over the boundaries of imagination and turns into reality of the twentyfirst century. Composed as a satire of the world in the 1930s and as a response to H. G. Wells’ “utopias of horror”, Brave New World displays Huxley’s ingenuity in being a sharp and articulate critic of the contemporary society; warning of the dangers of abuse of science in hands of unconstrained establishments of power; and perspicuity of ideologies, mass consumerism, and influences of the media. Prophecies of Brave New World have become realities of our time in many instances, whereas ideals of Island are still in the dreamtime. Oz Gerceklesen Distopya Fakat Asla Gerceklesmeyen Utopya baslikli bu makale, Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) tarafindan kaleme alinan Cesur Yeni Dunya ve Ada adli romanlarinda ortaya konan utopya ve distopya kavramlarini karsilastirmaktadir. Yazarin uzak goruslulugu tahayyul sinirlarini asarak yirmibirinci yuzyilda gercege donusur. 1930’larin dunyasina bir elestiri olarak yazilan ve H. G. Wells’in dehset utopyasina bir cevap olan Cesur Yeni Dunya, Huxley’in cagdas toplumun ustalikli ve kesin bir elestirisini, kontrolsuz gucun elinde bilmin kotu amaclar icin kullanilma tehlikesini, belli ideolojileri, kitle tuketimlerini ve medyanin etkilerini gozler onune serer. Cesur Yeni Dunya’nin kehanette bulundugu bir cok olay gunumuzde gerceklemisken, Ada’da ortaya konan idealler hala hayal olmaktan oteye gidememistir.

The Death and Life of a Chicago Edifice: Gwendolyn Brooks's "In the Mecca"

Abstract: Isolation, stratification, fixation, regimentation, standardization, militarization--one or more of these attributes enter into the conception of the utopian city, as expounded by the Greeks. And these same features remain, in open or disguised form, even in the supposedly more democratic utopias of the nineteenth century, such as Bellamy's Looking Backward. In the end, utopia merges into the dystopia of the twentieth century; and one suddenly realizes that the distance between the positive ideal and the negative one was never so great as the advocates or admirers of utopia had professed. --Lewis Mumford, "Utopia, the City and the Machine" Sit where the light corrupts your face. Mies Van der Rohe retires from grace. And the fair fables fall.--Gwendolyn Brooks, In the Mecca As Lewis Mumford explains, urban utopias of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries "merge" into the dystopia of the twentieth century because urban utopias rely on a specific way of ordering space, usually maintaining the established order by subtle and less subtle strategies of compulsion. In other words, to achieve an ideal urban society, urban utopias promote the sense that people are a chaotic mass that needs to be ordered through the control of space. In the twentieth century, the negative idealism of urban planning present in ancient urban utopias resurfaces as a response to the sense that the modern city is a dystopia that can only be redeemed by violent reshaping. One of the most extreme cases of reforming undesirable, unbeautiful, and poverty-stricken segments of urban space involves urban planners' response to the "urban decline" of American cities. In response to this decline, mid-twentieth-century planners proposed the "urban renewal" that erased entire neighborhoods and further deepened residential segregation, urban poverty, and racism. Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, in their landmark study on residential segregation, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, explain the growing racist response to inner cities in the twentieth century by illuminating the facts of residential segregation. The authors unambiguously indict white public institutions for the construction of racially segregated areas within cities: "The evolution of segregated, all-black neighborhoods.., was not the result of impersonal market forces .... On the contrary, [they were] constructed through a series of well-defined institutional practices, private behaviors, and public policies by which whites sought to contain growing urban black populations" (Massey and Denton 10). In the 1950s in particular, housing segregation reached its peak deepening the decline of inner city neighborhoods. (1) As the above quotation shows, urban planners and ideologues reinforced the ancient idea of "regimentation" and "stratification" that Mumford mentions, but also translated it into a modern version of urban idealism called "residential segregation" to achieve and protect upper- and middle-class white urban utopias. The discourses with which the planners, designers, architects, and ideologues justified these racially exclusive modern urban utopias, however, did not always contain the word "segregation." These particular positions in urban discourse used terms such as "urban decline" and "urban renewal" instead to raze whole neighborhoods and erect housing projects in the same racially segregated areas. The discourse on "urban decline" and "urban renewal" therefore not only used the neglected areas of the cities as a metaphor for everything that was wrong with them. Furthermore, it effectively disguised housing segregarion and racial discrimination. Displaced residents of the declining urban areas, however, began challenging "urban decline" as an appropriate representation of their lives. As Robert Beauregard notes, the term "urban renewal" was parodied among blacks as "Negro removal" in the 1960s because the urban discourse that disguised acute racial discrimination culminated at this time (164-65). …

Postcards from the future: Utopian north, dystopian south

Abstract: This article contemplates the way Northern and Southern California have been used in science fiction films since the 1970s. Continuing a trend the author traces to the 1940s novels Earth Abides and Ape and Essence , Northern California represents possible utopian futures while Southern California represents dystopia. The article includes a photo essay featuring science fiction film stills held up against their filming locations in Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

The Tyranny of Cybernetics in Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano

Abstract: Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano (1952) illustrates people who become enslaved to a controlling system of cybernetics that enhances its power through computer, consumer culture, and advertising industry in postwar America. In this study, I investigate Player Piano through the idea of cybernetics that reduces human beings into intelligent machines and mindless bodies. Player Piano constitutes an effort to make sense of powerful systems through the metaphors of the machine. It is a struggle to illustrate a deterministic attitude of the universe that leaves human with no choice.

"Typescript of the Second Origin" and Current YA Dystopian and Post-Apocalypse Fiction in English: Prefiguring the Female Hero

Abstract: YA post-apocalypse and dystopian novels formulate alternative realities where traditional gender roles and conceptions of masculinity and femininity can be contested and/or re-invented. Manuel de Pedrolo’s novel Typescript of the Second Origin (1974) is a case in point since, in the aftermath of a devastating alien attack, the fate of the human species is left in the hands of a resourceful teenager, Alba. Through the application of sheer determination and common sense, Alba manages to survive apocalypse, keeps her male child companion alive long enough to be impregnated by him, and becomes the herald of a new, more equalitarian society. However, Pedrolo does not envision a new post-apocalyptic body and ultimately reduces Alba’s stature and sense of purpose to her ability to reproduce and become ‘the mother’ of humanity. Contemporary YA fiction written in the last decade also provides readers with powerful teenage heroines who, like Alba, face dangers, defeat enemies and confront threats. This article analyses some contemporary dystopian and post-apocalypse trilogies for young adults, especially Rick Yancey’s ‘The 5th Wave’ trilogy (2013-2016), alongside Pedrolo’s Typescript to explore the extent of the authors’ success in the creation of young heroines as agents of change able to resist the limitations of gender and re-create the worlds in which they live in more progressive terms. The article argues that, in spite of the changes in the presentation of female heroism, contemporary YA dystopia and post-apocalypse narratives fall short of articulating a fully feminist discourse and, like Pedrolo’s novel, ultimately fail to envision female futures.