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.

The Warning Function of Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction

Abstract: In 1974, the board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday clock, using the imagery of apocalypse (symbolised by midnight) and a nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to demonstrate how close we are to destroying our civilization with dangerous technologies of our own making. The closer to midnight we are, the more danger we face. In 2019, according to the Doomsday Clock, it’s two minutes to midnight. Now, in the Anthropocene, the Age of the Human, we have a significant impact on ecosystems and the Earth. From the perspective of the early twenty-first century, the future of civilization looks grim due to an ecological, geopolitical and economic crisis. The aim of this study is to describe and analyse the contribution of dystopian and post-apocalyptic literature to this debate. Can the post-apocalyptic novels be used as mediums to warn and educate society about climate changes, ecological dangers, risks of technology or social issues? How does post-apocalyptic fiction help people to realize their position and impact in the epoch of the Anthropocene? How does fiction reflect the threats to humanity from the nineteenth century to the present? These are the questions discussed in the present study.

Vernacular workplace culture : the ghosts of collectivity haunt the future

Abstract: This is an essay and a collection of photographs of British industrial ruins taken between 2002 and 2004 that features fragments of a vanished industrial workplace, replete with its modes of conviviality, having fun and sharing enthusiasms. The photographs hint at a working class culture that is rapidly disappearing in the UK, but they cannot capture it. Yet they offer images for conjecture about a recent past, with its traces of collectivity, humour and solidarity that haunts a potentially more dystopian future, and aim to honour a history that is in danger of being marginalised.

Revisiting Dystopia: the Reality Show Biopolitics of "The Hunger Games"

Abstract: This paper explores the dystopian imaginaries of the recent popular novel trilogy The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and its film adaptations. Having put the narrative into a genealogy of dystopian fiction concerned with the historical nation-state totalitarianisms, I ask what is specifically contemporary about The Hunger Games . I explore this by focusing on the functioning of the reality show format in the narrative, which I link to G. Agamben’s understanding of the spectacle, as part of his wider biopolitical theories. I apply an Agambenian biopolitical reading to the narrative, seeing it as a production of bare life through the camp of the reality show arena. I suggest that The Hunger Games offer a critique of contemporary liberal democracies by calling attention to their production of underclassed and expendable life, which is imagined as an eruption of the nation-state right to kill, similarly as in Agamben’s theories.