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.

Globalization, Technology, and Human Development

Abstract: There are two recent films that capture the essence of how globalization and technology have impacted human development: Andrew Stanton’s Wall-E (2008) and Jennifer Baichwal’s Manufactured Landscapes (2006) These works of cinema are quite distinct in their genre, approach, and intended audience: The former is an animated Hollywood blockbuster about robot romance in a dystopian future, while the latter is an “indie” documentary about a Canadian photographer shooting landscapes of the locations most heavily hit by the forces of globalization And yet, both offer similarly incisive critiques of the developmental cost brought about by the globalized and increasingly technocratic systems of production and consumption in contemporary society

Introduction: Race and the Fantastic

Abstract: The 2010 International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts was devoted to the theme of Race and the Fantastic. The response at the conference was so strong that we have devoted an entire issue of the Journal to the same theme. While it might seem (to those who don't know the field) that fantasy is merely an escape from real-world conflicts such as racial strife, it became clear in conference sessions, special events, and conversations poolside that the fantastic is a powerful tool for examining all things human, including our tendency to gang up on one another based on any perceived physical or cultural dissimilarity. Though race is a bogus category biologically, we tend to act and speak and write as if it were real, which makes races at least as real as, say, genres. Within science fiction and fantasy, the title of Benedict Anderson's influential study Imagined Communities (1991) takes on a new and literal meaning. Anderson was talking primarily about nationhood; his thesis has to do with the way we maintain the illusion of shared communal life by identifying with those unmet others who are bathed in the same media signals (print or electronic) as ourselves. Yet his approach is also useful in talking about race, and especially the kinds of racial identities found within science fiction. In many sf texts, of course, communities are not just imagined but wholly imaginary, and, not surprisingly, there is another book, by Philip E. Wegner, called Imaginary Communities (2002). The subject of that study is not the fantastic per se, but a related and overlapping mode, utopia. Sfs depictions of race can be utopian, as in Star Trek, where alien races serve together in relative harmony on the starship Enterprise. They can also be dystopian, although it is hard to imagine racial interactions more horrific than those found in the real world. Most often, they are simply different: viewed at a distance with the aid of such distorting lenses as alien worlds and artificial life forms. Robots are often the racial other in Isaac Asimov's stories; so are Martians in some of Ray Bradbury's chronicles. The alien-as-racial-other metaphor is employed with satire and a measure of hope in Alien Nation (1988 movie and 1989 TV series) and with devastating specificity in 2009's District 9. The latter film plays on the ultimate racist fear, that the other will turn out to be oneself. Fantasy has an odder relationship with race than does sf because its races are not so much biological as theological. They are usually presented as originary, ordained by whatever Powers-That-Be may preside in the fantasy world. There were always Elves, Dwarves, and Men, or, in E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros (1922), Witches, Pixies, and Demons. These races differ physically and psychically. They have their own languages, spaces, traditions, and habits of thought, going back to time immemorial. This view of race reflects some of the roots of fantasy in Romantic mythography and philology. Eddison and J. R. R. Tolkien were not the first to combine interests in the origins of languages and myths, and to turn those interests into fantastic narrative. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were searching not just for household tales and Germanic sound shifts, but for the mythic soul of the German people. Race played a big part in nineteenth-century thinking about culture and the past, from folklore studies to cranial measurements, and the races imagined were legion. The Celts were a race; so were the Slavs, the Balts, and the Mediterraneans and, against all historical evidence, the English. The more innocent by-products of this kind of racial thinking include the reconstruction of proto-Germanic and Indo-European languages and the rediscovery (in the West) of the great Sanskrit scriptures. Combined with European voyages of discovery and colonialism, racial theory produced the somewhat sinister lost world romances of H. Rider Haggard, Talbot Mundy, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, which had a big impact on twentieth-century fantasy. …

Perhaps imagining a child to come? commentary on "motherhood along three generations of brazilian mothers: what has changed?"

Abstract: In this commentary of “Motherhood along three generations of Brazilian mothers: what has changed?” (see this present issue of JISS), I first highlight the qualities of the paper as attempt to capture various levels of temporality in a developmental perspective. However, the description proposed by the authors seems rather dystopian. Drawing on a research on naming practices, I suggest that an analysis that would account for different spheres of experience of these women, as well as their processes of imagination, might bring to alternative interpretations.

La traducción y recepción en España de Nosotros, de Evgueni Ivánovich Zamiatin

Abstract: In 1921 Evgeny Zamyatin wrote We. This novel, which was a forerunner of the dystopian genre, was censored by Soviet authorities because of its satire of totalitarian regimes. Although Zamyatin’s novel inspired Orwell and Huxley, the Russian writer does not enjoy the same acknowledgment that these British authors. In addition to explaining the reasons for this lack of recognition, we have conducted a contrastive analysis between the Russian novel and four Spanish translations. This analysis shows that Zamyatin’s avant-garde style has been translated by a functional and transparent prose in the Spanish versions. The fact that the novel has been traditionally considered as science fiction could explain why translators have removed some of its striking formal features for the sake of the fluency that characterizes popular literary genres. The way in which a novel is translated depends sometimes on the genre in which it is classified.

A clockwork orange : authoritative text backgrounds and contexts criticism

Abstract: A terrifying tale about good and evil and the meaning of human freedom, A Clockwork Orange became an instant classic when it was published in 1962 and has remained so ever since. Anthony Burgess takes us on a journey to a nightmarish future where sociopathic criminals rule the night. Brilliantly told in harsh invented slang by the novel's main character and merciless droog, fifteen-year-old Alex, this influential novel is now available in a student edition. The Norton Critical Edition of A Clockwork Orange is based on the first British edition and includes Burgess's original final chapter. It is accompanied by Mark Rawlinson's preface, explanatory annotations, and textual notes. A glossary of the Russian-origin terms that inspired Alex's dialect is provided to illustrate the process by which Burgess arrived at the distinctive style of this novel. "Backgrounds and Contexts" presents a wealth of materials chosen by the editor to enrich the reader's understanding of this unforgettable work, many of them by Burgess himself. Burgess's views on writing A Clockwork Orange, its philosophical issues, and the debates over the British edition versus the American edition and the novel versus the film adaptation are all included. Related writings that speak to some of the novel's central issues-youthful style, behavior modification, and art versus morality-are provided by Paul Rock and Stanley Cohen, B. F. Skinner, John R. Platt, Joost A. M. Meerloo, William Sargent, and George Steiner. "Criticism" is divided into two sections, one addressing the novel and the other Stanley Kubrick's film version. Five major reviews of the novel are reprinted along with a wide range of scholarly commentary, including, among others, David Lodge on the American reader; Julie Carson on linguistic invention; Zinovy Zinik on Burgess and the Russian language; Geoffrey Sharpless on education, masculinity, and violence; Shirley Chew on circularity; Patrick Parrinder on dystopias; Robbie B. H. Goh on language and social control; and Steven M. Cahn on freedom. A thorough analysis of the film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange is provided in reviews by Vincent Canby, Pauline Kael, and Christopher Ricks; in Philip Strick and Penelope Houston's interview with Stanley Kubrick; and in interpretive essays by Don Daniels, Alexander Walker, Philip French, Thomas Elsaesser, Tom Dewe Mathews, and Julian Petley. A Selected Bibliography is also included.