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.

The politics of the (im)possible : utopia and dystopia reconsidered

Abstract: Introduction - Barnita Bagchi PART ONE: UTOPIA AND DYSTOPIA: DEBATES AND RESONANCES Utopia: Future and/or Alterity? - Miguel Abensour Echo of an Impossible Return: An Essay Concerning Fredric Jameson's Utopian Thought and Gathering and Hunting Social Relations - Peter Kulchyski Radicalism in Early Modern England: Innovation or Reformation? - Rachel Foxley Dystopia, Utopia, and Akhtaruzzaman Elias's Novel Khowabnam - Subhoranjan Dasgupta Palestine: Land of Utopias - Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun PART TWO: ENGENDERING UTOPIA AND DYSTOPIA 'One Darling though Terrific Theme': Anna Wheeler and the Rights of Women - Theresa Moriarty A Parliament of Women: Dystopia in Nineteenth-century Bengali Imagination - Samita Sen 'Empire Builder': A Utopian Alternative to Citizenship for Early 20th Century British 'Ladies' - Martine Spensky Ladylands and Sacrificial Holes: Utopias and Dystopias in Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's Writings - Barnita Bagchi Utopia in the Subjunctive Mood: Bessie Head's When Rain Clouds Gather - Modhumita Roy PART THREE: CONCLUSION Globalization, Development and Resistance of Utopian Dreams to the Praxis of Dystopian Utopia - Marie-Claire Caloz-Tschopp Index

Transhumanist Dreams and/as Posthuman Nightmares in Black Mirror

Abstract: This paper analyses a TV series Black Mirror in relation to transhumanism, a philosophical movement that endorses (bio)technological augmentation as a means whereby mankind will transcend its current biological limitations and reach a new, posthuman stage in its evolution. Taking tendencies observable in contemporary Western societies as the starting point for its depiction of the near future, Black Mirror gives fictional representation to such transhumanist concepts as disembodied, transferable consciousness and enhanced cognition, and suggests that more often than not they may give rise to posthuman dystopia rather than utopia, envisioned by transhumanism.

Ecocriticism, Humanism, Eschatological Jouissance: J. G. Ballard and the Ends of the World

Abstract: Eschatological jouissance is defined here as a grim pleasure in the failure of the world. It is a feature of J. G. Ballard's prescient ecological disaster fiction of the 1960s as well as of the sardonic treatment of ecological idealism in his later fiction. Expressions of pleasure in the end of the world can be seen as forming a counter genre to utopia and, in philosophical terms, as a refusal of humanism. Humanism is defined here as the insistence to see the world from a human point of view. Anti-humanism and a concurring openness to eschatological jouissance are elements of existentialism and of poststructuralism, together with Marxism the main alternatives to humanism proposed in the twentieth century. Ecocriticism, in some of its strands, is another such replacement of humanism in which eschatological jouissance plays a significant role. Humanism may not seem a promising attitude for dealing with the ecological disasters we face, concerned as it is in the first place with the comfort of human beings. Still, it is argued here that humanism includes an awareness of the parochialism of human sympathies and that an appeal to the need to extend its sympathies to non-human sharers of the planet might well be heeded. Eschatological jouissance, as a feature of dystopian fiction and imagination, will provide the needed shudder to nudge us into such an extension of our sympathies.