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.

A Self-Fulfilling Dystopia

Abstract: To the extent that reductionism has never made for goodsocial science, I do not think that it is enough to suggest, asRichard Sennett (2011) has recently argued, that the storyaround the London School of Economics’ reception of adonation from the Gaddafi family ‘is all about cash’.Insociety, things are never so simple and it is in the very callof our disciplines that we ought to actively search for whatelse may have actually been going on. I should then like touse this short intervention as an opportunity to reflect onsome broader normative and epistemological questions thatI think are important to understand how recent engagementsbetween academic institutions, social scientists, andregimes with dubious normative credentials could havebeen found acceptable in the first instance.To be sure, these kind of engagements with tyrants andtheir regimes are far from new; take, for instance, therelationships between Milton Friedman and fellow econo-mists in Chicago and the Pinochet dictatorship. But currentcases may have been additionally triggered by a widespreadview in the social sciences that the social world itself is fullydevoid of any sense of normativity. Recent trends in ourdisciplines have decidedly contributed to a conceptualisationofthesocialworldaspopulatedbyactorswhoseonlyconcernis the defence of their identities and the advancement of theirmaterial interests. And the more important the promotion ofone’sowninterestbecomes,thelessthe space fornormativityin society. We have then ended up with the self-fulfillingdystopia of a social world with no place or role for thenormative.I will take sociology as my case study and proceed inthree steps:(1) Sociology has not yet fully come to terms with thecombined effects of the postmodern (gender, cultur-alist, postcolonial) and globalist critiques of the pastfew decades. While their role was crucial in trimmingdown reified presuppositions and unwarranted gener-alisations of earlier sociology, a more problematic andless noticed consequence of this double-blow has beenthat their ultimate depiction of ‘the social’ is one inwhich there is no space for serious normative consid-erations inside the social world itself.(2) Not only social scientific concepts but also thesocial world itself becomes a space with nonormativity. While this can and has been presentedas an advancement of the discipline’s scientificmaturity, it also creates a severe void in ourunderstanding of social relations. This inability tograsp the role of the normative in social lifedramatically backfires when the discipline itself iscalled to reflect on trends and events in which themost challenging questions refer precisely to thosenormative dimensions that are no longer conceived asa real aspect of the social world.(3) Yet the attempt to recover a sense of normativity undercurrent conditions of global modernity comes at aprice: it requires us to re-engage with the universalisticthrust that actually underpins some of the very ideasand ideals that this affair have brought into question:the extent to which such issues as democracy, freedomor human dignity have really become a commonproperty of humanity. Several difficulties and chal-lenges follow from this, of course – not least, whetherthis can be done without resorting back to precisely

Doomed Mythic Artist: Sam Shepard’s Angel City

Abstract: Sam Shepard is one of the most popular postmodern playwrights. His plays have a mythic quality. The myths he creates are considered as postmodern; they are parodic by nature and emblematic of American pop culture. “Myth of the artist” is highlighted in many of his plays concerned with the notion of art. Angel City hinges on the corruption of the artistic imagination and the doom of the American dream; on the whole, it is a postmodern sublime-- a parody of the modernist apocalyptic vision or dystopia. This play, like Shepard’s other plays, is considered historiographic in that it deals with the past representations and attempts at reviewing and questioning the past. This article addresses the historiographic quality of Shepard’s Angel City, with emphasis on Linda Hutcheon's poetics of postmodern historiography and Roland Barth’s conception of modern myths in relation to patterns of culture. The parodic aspect of the play, it is argued, poses a critical stance vis-a-vis the past representations of the myths and the elitist approach of modernist art. In this study, the aim is to show how Shepard has questioned notions such as the myth of capitalism, myth of origin, myth of the savior, myth of the American dream, and myth of mission in the context of art and how the old myths of hero turn into myths of anti-hero in postmodern drama.

Panic on the streets of London: Tourism and British dystopian cinema

Abstract: This article examines the link between tourism studies and dystopian sf cinema, placing particular emphasis upon the concept of ‘authenticity’. Arguing that both fields share similar concerns, chief amongst them being the construction and understanding of space, both physical and imagined, it will seek to decode cultural, political and economic binaries that modulate popular conceptions of location and travel. Such an approach, it will be argued, can allow for new analyses of dystopian narratives, as will be illustrated with reference to prominent contemporary examples of the genre. Framing its argument within sociological and historical contexts, the article will combine tourism theory with textual analysis to shed fresh light on these productions and the film industry at large. In combining these two levels of discussion, the article will evaluate the mutation of tourist tropes in popular British cinema when continually exposed to defining external events.