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.

Science, Myth and Utopia

Abstract: Insofar as it embodies the myth of progress, the dream of utopia is arguably the most characteristic, certainly the most appropriate, literary expression of a scientific culture. Yet it is not surprising that the twentieth century, plagued by two World Wars and a succession of escalating regional conflicts, by totalitarian regimes and existential Angst, has been more notable for its deeply pessimistic dystopias than for its utopian visions. Scientific method and reductionism, which encourage the refuting of propositions and promote cynicism about ideals and values, have further deterred many writers from utopian fantasy which depends on positing viable alternatives to the actual, and hence involves genuine creativity de novo. It has been much easier — and more intellectually respectable — to envision dystopias which require merely selective extrapolation from actuality.

The Walking Dead: Zombie's Celluloid Community

Abstract: Hispanet Journal 5 (April 2012) The Walking Dead: Zombie’s Celluloid Community Becky Boling Carleton College A postmodern novel about zombies, but not the traditional Hollywood variety, Zombie by Mike Wilson Reginato, takes place in an unidentified country at an unspecified time. 1 The premise of the novel is the end of the world as witnessed and survived by an agglomeration of children and adolescents in a “plastic” suburb modeled on film images of suburbia in the U.S. Through the perspective of key characters, the novel offers an extreme allegory of the alienation of youth within a global system of manufactured signs. The failure of traditional forms of community creates a dystopia, one founded on and through a virtual and global exchange of images. In “Situating Knowledges: Latin American Readings of Postmodernism,” Laura Garcia-Moreno states that postmodernism renounces the claim to utopian projects and directionality “in favor of indeterminacy and multiplicity.” It transcends “notions of nationalism and the nation” and “highlight[s] hybridity, textuality, and ambivalence” (64). In this essay, I intend to explore how Wilson‟s novel erases borders and inserts itself within the complex flow of images of a global market, especially but not exclusively film images. Similar to the

The Bodypolitics of Feminist Science Fiction: Elisabeth Vonarburg’s Le Silence de la cité

Abstract: The Bodypolitics of Feminist Science Fiction: Elisabeth Vonarburg's Le Silence de la cite Lorie Sauble-Otto Whether Utopian or dystopian, feminist science fiction is an emerging field of interest in Cultural and Literary Studies, as well as Women's Studies, and to use Jenny Wolmark's phrase, is at the cutting edge of culture (113)^ From freedom of sexuality to pregnancy and childbirth, feminist science fiction writers are exploring the female body in space and imagining its liberty, and sometimes in Dystopia, its bondage This essay centers around the emergence of feminist science fiction as the realm wherein women writers reinvent themselves and their bodies, thus the process of reproduction This theme of reproduction as oppression is what Sara Lefanu calls the hallmark of the feminist incursion into science fiction (57) Also, I would like to promote, as does Marleen Barr in Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction, the canoniza- tion of what she calls feminist fabulation, and correspondingly, the instructional validity of the genre^ chy continues to define feminists As Barr states: patriar- and threatening texts (espe- cially science fiction written by women and men) as second-class (15) If, as Barr elaborates, feminist fabulation is a springboard for subversive thought, a literary space of personal transformation which can inspire social and cultural transformation, then it could serve as an empowering experience in the classroom (227) The theme of appropriation of women's bodies, procreative and their offspring is central to Elisabeth Vonarburg's fiction In Le Silence de la cite, Vonarburg ventures into a realm where total metamorphosis is a reality and parthenogenetic con- ception of children becomes the key to survival in a post-apocalyp- tic world This essay will pinpoint a few of the specific ways in which the author's writing calls into question or problematizes the discourse of male-dominated reproductive technology As Emily capacity Martin has suggested in The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, feminist reconstructions of the discourse of repro- ductive technology can be empowering: Imagining technology being used to control those who ordinarily use it to control others throws the power relationships into focus (58)

Travel Gone Awry: Cosmopolitan Love and Female Ordeals in Games Women Play (2005)

Abstract: the designation of the present age as a "restless epoch" is evident in many ways across space, but it is perhaps best validated in the unique form of cosmopolitanism that African citizens exhibit particularly in their travel and quest for survival in the West. Against this backdrop, this article first reflects on the socioeconomic crisis of the 1980s and how it laid the foundation for the mass exodus of Africans to the West. It explores further how this exodus in turn today provides a false sense of cosmopolitanism to a number of Africans, as they try to cope with the treacherous and precarious situations of economic survival in the West and the constitutive elements of instability and mobility of locale. Turning to the Nigerian movie industry, the article focuses on Games Women Play (2005) and contends that Emerald's (Stella Damasus-Aboderin) ordeals in the movie should be seen not as direct consequences of the "games women play," but instead as the awry fallouts of the overwhelming but deceptive allure of migration, especially of the cosmopolitan strand. This view is underscored by the way young Africans are taken by the prospects of living fulfilled career lives in the West, without any knowledge of the migratory imagination and its contradictory realities. I argue that if the socioeconomic conditions of the homeland and its attendant dystopia are vectors for migration of Africans (male and female) to the West, the envisaged largess of utopia in the West is mostly elusive, making a pawn of African migrants from both ends of the travel spectrum. However, it is the female gender, as in the case of Emerald, that is at the worst receiving end when travel goes awry. Therefore, Emerald's plight is evident in the multiple scandals of her double marriage to two friends in Northern Ireland and the United States. The traumatic consequences of the friends' eventual knowledge of this on return to Nigeria should not be seen as an attempt to be smart, as suggested by the title of the movie, but must be conceived as a culmination of the socioeconomic ramifications of migration for the African female folk within the logic of contemporary travel and return.The global transformation brought about in screen art has meant a major push for the extension of Africa's horizon of mimetic performance in a manner that places it on an accelerated track. The evidence of the transformation is the invention and development of the nowcelebrated Nigerian movie industry, whose critical reception within a relatively infant evolution places it in the class of the big three in the world-Hollywood, Nollywood, and Bollywood.1 This Nigerian movie industry, better known as Nollywood, continues to exhibit various tendencies-ranging from generic delineation to thematic preoccupation. The tendencies, in so many instances, instantiate a form of fidelity to various African cultural worldviews. Nevertheless, a number of other such tendencies instantiate the connectivity of the movie industry to issues that continue to have ramifications for humanity, irrespective of location. In the particular case of the film under study, perhaps a convenient point of departure will be the explication from the outset that Games Women Play is easily located in the genre of love and romance. Nevertheless, for greater critical clarity, it is better understood when more specifically designated as playing out against the backdrop of cosmopolitanism.To that extent, the film touches on one of the issues that have ramifications for people all over the world, no matter where they are located; this is the contemporary understanding of cosmopolitanism. There is, moreover, a strong reason to include cosmopolitanism in the list of concepts that touch us all also because of its capacity to involve all categories of humanity, whether as willing or reluctant participants. As a phenomenon reputed for manifesting both idealism and materiality, cosmopolitanism references all endeavors of human activities and thoughts. …