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.

Worlds Apart?: Dualism and Transgression in Contemporary Female Dystopias

Abstract: Literary critics and scholars have written extensively on the demise of the ?utopian spirit? in the modern novel. What has often been overlooked is the emergence of a new hybrid subgenre, particularly in science fiction and fantasy, which incorporates utopian strategies within the dystopian narrative, particularly in the feminist dystopias of the 1980s and 1990s. The author names this new subgenre ?transgressive utopian dystopias.? Suzette Haden Elgin's "Native Tongue" trilogy, Suzy McKee Charna's "Holdfast" series, and Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" are thoroughly analyzed within the context of this this new subgenre of ?transgressive utopian dystopias.? Analysis focuses particularly on how these works cover the interrelated categories of gender, race and class, along with their relationship to classic literary dualism and the dystopian narrative. Without completely dissolving the dualistic order, the feminist dystopias studied here contest the notions of unambiguity and authenticity that are generally part of the canon.

Being Marshallese and Christian: A case of multiple identities and contradictory beliefs

Abstract: Using ethnographic data from the Marshall Islands, I argue that clashing identities may give rise to paradoxical belief systems. Marshall Islanders consider themselves both authentically Marshallese and devoutly Christian, causing a schism of belief and identity that is most starkly visible in historical narratives. When asked generally about the past, locals describe a utopia of traditional peace; but when asked specifically about life before Christian missionaries arrived, locals describe a dystopia of heathen barbarism. Interviewees are usually unable to reconcile these two accounts, showing that they are as paradoxical to locals as they are to outsiders. Researchers who are desirous of tidy analyses or wary of implying that their informants are irrational may downplay such dilemmas in the societies they study. Yet, far from demonstrating the futility of analysis, admitting the existence of contradiction in social life allows for a richer and more insightful view of culture, religion, belief and identity.

Violence, Home, and Comrmnunity in Toni Morrison's Beloved

Abstract: he terms home and community are frequently uttered with reverence by feminists, non-feminists, and anti-feminists alike. These terms and the spaces they conjure up are invoked as the cure to no end of social ills, from stress and malaise to crack addiction and corporate downsizing. Calls for the return to home and to community are both nostalgic and utopian. In "Coming Home," Carol Pearson discusses a feminist utopian narrative through which, "A . . upon discovering a sexually egalitarian society, the narrators have a sense of coming home to a nurturing, liberating environment" (63). Other feminist theorists of utopia, such as Lucy Sargisson, worry that such blueprints represent an "inappropriate closure" to feminist utopian imaginings. Because domestic spaces have worked out for many women as places to be domesticated and/or to be a domestic, it is not surprising that most have mixed feelings about a structure that contains the often unfulfilled dream of possession and the lived experience of servitude. Beloved, a novel published during the domestic retrenchments and anti-feminist "backlash" of the 1980s, shows both the dystopian and utopian properties of the space named "home"