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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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DOI
12 Jan 2017

3 citations

Dissertation
13 Apr 2011
TL;DR: The theme and form of "wandering" in Taiwanese cinema has been examined in this article, focusing on selected films by three major Taiwanese directors: Tsai Ming-liang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Edward Yang.
Abstract: This thesis concerns the theme and form of “wandering” in Taiwanese cinema. It focuses on selected films by three major directors: Tsai Ming-liang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Edward Yang. These three directors are not only the most critically acclaimed from Taiwan, their films also share more than a few characteristics. Their narratives often involve wandering, whether it be in content or form. I argue that this wandering is presented as a way of experiencing the world that can lead to greater agency within it. In “Edward Yang’s Yi yi: Everyday Adventure in the Idyllic City”, I use Bakhtin’s chronotope to observe how wandering in the city can transform the everyday into an adventure that leads to greater knowledge and happiness. In “Tsai Ming-liang: Wandering through Dystopia”, I draw on de Certeau’s “pedestrian speech act” to contend that characters in the director’s films approach their dystopian environment from a wandering perspective, which allows them to create new possibilities within the constraining order. In “The Perpetual Present: Mythic Time in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Millennium Mambo”, I use Barthes’s concept of mythic time to claim that Hou offers a text that is already reread, thereby allowing the viewer to experience a time without before or after. In these films, urban wandering is a process of self-discovery that is necessary to determine one’s place within the surrounding community (familial or affinitive) and in the world at large.

3 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that current school policies and practices represent a utopia-gone-wrong, and argue that such a turn can best be seen and then potentially stopped via a complete dystopian theory of education grounded in John Dewey's radical aesthetics.
Abstract: In this article, we first suggest that contemporary school policies and practices represent a utopia-gone-wrong. In striving for an unattainable educational utopia—that is, all students will be proficient in math and reading by 2014—current polices and their resulting practices have brought a classic dystopian turn—the dehumanization of students, teachers, and administrators. We then argue that such a turn can best be seen and then potentially stopped via a complete dystopian theory of education grounded in John Dewey’s radical aesthetics. In utilizing Dewey’s aesthetic theory as a lens of analysis, we argue that this turn toward dystopia is resulting in an increasingly numbing, anaesthetic educational experience at best; and a dehumanizing, violent educational experience at worst. Finally, we briefly ponder an antidote for our dystopian malaise: human love.

3 citations

Dissertation
01 Mar 2015
TL;DR: The Handmaid's Tale as mentioned in this paper is a prophetic, fearfully realistic portrayal of a dystopian future in which women are forced to live in a patriarchal theocracy, Republic of Gilead.
Abstract: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a prophetic, fearfully realistic portrayal of a dystopian future in which women are forced to live in a patriarchal theocracy, Republic of Gilead. It is a fictional amalgamation of every fear of the feminist movement, as such there exists an abundance of critical work focused on the disenfranchised narrator of the tale, coupled with an exploration into the rights of woman, and how female authorship lends insight into this. This focus has given rise to a gap in critical work upon Atwood; the neglect of the critical consideration of her masculine characters, their presentation, and their function within the text as stand-alone characters. By focusing upon the masculine characters, this thesis begins to create a critical discussion upon their function outside of an oppressive back-drop for the female. This thesis demonstrates that by exploring the masculine power present in the novel, as rendered through the male characters, critical understanding of the feminine is advanced, and so a balanced, comprehensive mastery of the text is promoted.

3 citations

DOI
01 Oct 2019
TL;DR: Within the Castellsian-theoretical matrix of the fourth world and politics of identity, the authors investigates the true nature of the futuristic world Margaret Atwood has created in the MaddAddam trilogy, which literarily reflects a global crisis that ultimately leads to dystopia and the destruction of the human race.
Abstract: With the advent of the 21st century, the way characters and identities interact under the influence of dominant powers has brought a new world into existence, a world dubbed by Manuel Castells as the ‘Fourth World’. Within the Castellsian theoretical matrix of the Fourth World and politics of identity, the present study seeks to investigate the true nature of the futuristic world Margaret Atwood hascreated in the MaddAddam trilogy. The trilogy literarily reflects a global crisis that ultimately leads to dystopia and the destruction of the human race: what remains of humanity is a small group of survivors who must struggle to conserve what remains of humanity. Identity as the main determining factor in the Fourth World represents personal and public privileges, characteristics, and means of differentiating oneself from others. The Fourth World and its political peculiarities reflect contemporary powers, i.e. the power of the network society, network communication and media. Humankind, in this wheel, is just a toy in the hands of an intelligence broker. What exactly happens to human and semi-human characters in Atwood’s trilogy is the result of Fourth World structures andvalues, and how they shape and reconstruct identities to lead the world toward fabricated truths and values, and terminate in dystopia.

3 citations


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