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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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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Patrick Ness as mentioned in this paper explored normative and transgressive embodiments of masculinity in his dystopian Chaos Walking series for young adults, which powerfully addressed tensions between power and vulnerability, autonomy and conformity, and concepts of boyhood and manhood.
Abstract: To date, studies of gender issues in young adult dystopian novels have been dominated by a focus on constructions of female subjectivity, girlhood, and the potential for female empowerment. However, little critical attention has been correspondingly dedicated to examining how regimes of masculinity, traditional privileges of male power, and male adolescence are represented and mediated in dystopian fiction for teenagers. Patrick Ness’s exploration of normative and transgressive embodiments of masculinity in his dystopian Chaos Walking series for young adults powerfully addresses tensions between power and vulnerability, autonomy and conformity, and concepts of boyhood and manhood. Through their experiences with the possibilities of telepathy, biotechnology, and interspecies relationships, Ness’s protagonists must negotiate with the simultaneous attraction of the fragmented self and its threat to the regulation of conventional manhood, as male characters struggle to sustain their inherited understa...

2 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: The second book of 'Utopia' articulates the very invention of space in this historical period, as Europe moved from feudalism to capitalism, and the topography of Book Two was the imaginary accompaniment to the reality of unemployment described in Book One, as dispossession and homelessness turn an immersion in place into a new idea of space as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: From its very inception, utopian spatialization has not been kind to Indigenous people. Anticipating a program of colonial violence in centuries to come, Thomas More's original utopian society is only founded after the conquest of a foreign land Thus the foundation of 'Utopia' is a hypocritical one, as the peaceable lives of its citizens are only secured as a result of violence towards other lives. The injustices of 16th-century capitalism, outlined in the first book, are only resolved in the second by a further injustice. The imperial logic at work here is but a simulation of one of capitalism's principal effects, this being the conquest and colonization of space. Indeed, as Christopher Kendrick argues, the second book of 'Utopia' articulates the very invention of space in this historical period. Amidst changing economic regimes, as Europe moved from feudalism to capitalism, space was a way of conceptualizing the experience of displacement. The topography of Book Two was the imaginary accompaniment to the reality of unemployment described in Book One, as dispossession and homelessness turn an immersion in place into a new idea of space. That violence may well be inherent to the program of utopian spatialization was fore grounded centuries later by dystopian and critical utopian writers, whose imaginary topographies were often tarnished by totalitarian regimes or hegemonic cultures. Yet these were largely representations of those living inside utopian, dystopian or revolutionary situations, and were not concerned with those whose difference disqualified them from the political consensus. It is instead science fiction, with its aliens and humanoids, that analogizes imperial and colonial history. One of the founding texts of the genre, H. G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds', displays a capacity for working through the historical conditions of its imagination.

2 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
11 Apr 2011-Critique
TL;DR: The authors argue that Marx and Engels were great utopians, that utopianism needs to be seen as a broad method of social investigation, and that socialism is and always has been impoverished by attempts at discursive closure or, as the dystopian Zamyatin would put it, Fantasiectomy.
Abstract: This article argues for utopianism, an activity which has all too often been denigrated by socialists. Its starting point is Donnachie and Mooney's article for issue 35(2) of Critique on the connection between Robert Owen and Tony Blair, in which their shared utopianism is viewed as a key element in their class collaborations and flight from the reality of capitalism's voracities. Whilst I do not argue against most of the criticisms made of Owen and Blair, I take issue with the implied anti-utopianism of Donnachie and Mooney's critique, a position they draw on from Marx and Engels. In contrasdistinction I argue that Marx and Engels (in spite of themselves) were great utopians, that utopianism needs to be seen as a broad method of social investigation (being counter-revolutionary as well as revolutionary but ground worth fighting for—not just a flight of fancy), and that socialism is and always has been impoverished by attempts at discursive closure or, as the dystopian Zamyatin would put it, Fantasiectomy...

2 citations


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