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 Future of Work: New Underclass, Dystopian Reality?

Abstract: RSIS Commentary is a platform to provide timely and, where appropriate, policy-relevant commentary and analysis of topical and contemporary issues. The authors’ views are their own and do not represent the official position of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, NTU. These commentaries may be reproduced electronically or in print with prior permission from RSIS and due recognition to the author(s) and RSIS. Please email your feedback to Mr Yang Razali Kassim, Editor RSIS Commentary at RSISPublications@ntu.edu.sg.

Rethinking survival: Metaphors of hope and peaceful conflict resolution methods during crisis times.

Abstract: Introduction This paper is about the literary representation of the persistence of hope during times of political repression and ways of negotiating survival, as well as peacefully coping with perceived tyrannical regimes. As a form of rhetoric of hope and a way of imagining a peaceful future, the paper assumes an ideologically progressive strand that questions the status quo and yet invites the reader through exposure to the short stories, to consider alternatives to the existing order as a means of coping. The paper explores how short, imaginative narratives mirror the desirability of peace, the innovative ways to prevent violence and the democratisation processes ordinary people hope for. The axiom which states that the pen is mightier than the sword finds home in the form of literary analyses like the one attempted in this paper. This remark is particularly insightful in the wake of the Arab spring uprisings that have rocked North Africa, the Kenyan post-election violence and the incessant wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, to mention but a few. The present analysis can be understood to be falling into the realm of progressive literature, which is a way of interrogating life and its attendant contradictions in a hopeful manner. This form of literary analysis is ultimately valorising peaceful and peace-oriented coping mechanisms, though at the same time without silencing activism, as these short stories demonstrate. In the words of a renowned critic of Zimbabwean and African literature, Ngara (n.d), creativity and responsibility are Siamese twins in art. Taking the thread of argument from Ngara, therefore, the submission being made here is also that in the literature explored in this paper, what we see is a commitment by the writers to boldly and critically examine the political ground in troubled Zimbabwe and to do so with plausibility, passion and responsibility. The underlying principle is couched on how people devise mechanisms to survive, which can be summed up by the popular expression of the day tofira mutrial. This is a popular colloquialism which, when literally translated, means "we will die trying". This has become the de facto modus operandi and in this paper the central concern is on how the people cope with and survive the political onslaught they face. In other words the major concern in this paper is on protest literature and its relevance in times of political crisis as the Zimbabwean one in question, inviting the reader to experience moments of recognition, revelation, protest and rebellion alongside the characters, and thereby participate in that rebellion through the act of reading. To fully explore and appreciate what these short stories are communicating in the context of the political survival and coping mechanisms of the ordinary people, there is a need to briefly explain what chronotope means. The chronotope emphasises the interpretation of texts as determined, shaped and informed by the time and space interplay in the story. The guiding principle in this paper is a Zimbabwean setting of political upheaval which can also be described as a dystopian chronotope. A literary representation of a dystopian chronotope therefore in this paper is captured here and this is corroborated by a concept that will be termed dystopian hope. To clarify and justify these two concepts (dystopian chronotope and dystopian hope) in relation to this paper, first there is a need to capture the basic tenets of what dystopia in fiction means. A form of negative utopia, dystopia is characterised by a community or society that is in some way undesirable or frightening; where dehumanisation, totalitarian governments, poverty, political repression, societal collapse are evident, and where humanity suffers from a lack of true freedom and liberty (Baccolini, 2008). Dystopian hope means a positive interpretation of the representation of nightmarish societies, hegemonic and totalitarian governments, in a hopeful manner (Baccolini, 2008). …

Transnational Gothic: Literary and Social Exchanges in the Long Nineteenth Century

Abstract: Monika Elbert and Bridget M. Marshall (eds), Transnational Gothic: Literary and Social Exchanges in the Long Nineteenth Century. Farnham and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2013, pp.xxii + 269. Hardback £58.50, ISBN 9781409447702.As its title indicates, this is a genre- rather than author-based work. In fourteen essays, grouped in four sections, it discusses a variety of texts which maybe consid- ered 'Gothic'; it argues that it is breaking new ground in moving away from the national polarisation set up by critics of the genre. There are two main elements in this approach, both of which are problematic. First is the question of 'transna- tional'. The work claims to 'eschew national borders' (p. 1) in its exploration of the Gothic, a genre in which cross-cultural exchange played a central role. As several of the essays show, for example, Old World generic traditions and New World material fertilised each other in the nineteenth century to create a new, enriched literary production. But it goes further than this: in rejecting earlier studies as too nation or period specific, this book - as indicated in its first, introductory chapter - also claims that it will analyse global' Gothic, showing how what the editors call 'a global malaise related to ever-changing notions about social order' is revealed through 'the haunting of the Gothic' (p. 13). Despite opening with the announce- ment that British, American, Continental, Caribbean and Asian Gothic will be discussed in the following essays, however, the book focuses most extensively on American writers and texts. Indeed, it often seems as if the terms 'transatlantic' and 'transnational' have been conflated. There are brief discussions of 'Monk' Lewis, Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe and Charles Maturin as progenitors of the Gothic tradition, and a passing reference to German Romantic texts; Frances and Anthony Trollope get a chapter to themselves; and there are chapters wholly or in part on Coleridge, World War I poetry, Gaskell, Kipling and Lafcadio Hearn, and three white Jamaican novelists spanning one hundred and fifty years. Otherwise all the authors treated are American, and the global' is represented by content alone: a Caribbean woman in Louisa Alcott's Moods, a West Indian setting in Harriet Spofford's The Amber Gods, and the Cuban background of Mary Peabody Mann's Juanita, for instance. This is not to dismiss the value of these discussions; inter- esting cultural connections and suggestive comparisons between British and American texts are made in several of the essays. Nevertheless, this can hardly be considered a global' approach.The second problem lies in the term 'Gothic' itself. As Sian Silyn Roberts notes in her essay on American Gothic criticism, 'the Gothic is notoriously resistant to generic classification [...,] in short, one of literary criticism's most expansive concepts' (p. 21). This expansiveness, however, generates one of the book's weak- nesses. Its aim is to widen the range of subject-matter generally regarded as part of the genre so as to include religious and social issues (often with a socio-polit- ical slant), economic and financial matters, and questions of developing nation- hood. The result is that 'Gothic' becomes a kind of envelope into which almost anything can be stuffed - attitudes to landscape, captivity narratives, representa- tions of Catholicism, links between British actors touring America in the nine- teenth century, Civil War and World War I poetry, and concerns about colonisa- tion and imperialism. Many of the essays are critically illuminating, but Gothicism becomes almost irrelevant to the argument. A case in point is the piece on the Trollopes: the discussion of how Fanny's and her son Anthony's representations of the American West embody national anxieties about the newly-emergent United States is insightful, but the fictional elements focussed on - American financial roguery and the dystopia of the frontier - do not seem intrinsically part of a Gothic context, despite the author's claims that novels by both Trollopes implement 'tradi- tional Gothic figures' (e. …

Raag Darbari as a Rural Dystopia

Abstract: A dystopia is a community or society that is in some important way undesirable or ugly and frightening. Dystopias are often characterized by dehumanization, totalitarian governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society. Raag Darbari is also a fine example of dystopian fiction. It is a novel on declining values in the village life of post-independence India. It exposes the powerlessness of intellectuals in the face of a strong and corrupt nexus between criminals, businessmen, police and politicians prevalent in the society. The novel is a satirical take on the plight of the common man as society is made subservient by the corruption of the people in power.

The Future’s Reverse: Dystopia and Precarity in Adirley Queirós’s Cinema

Abstract: The staging of uncertain present scenarios and the speculation of “future times” have become ways for contemporary Brazilian cinema to color its dystopian representations of the country’s big cities experiences in postapocalyptic tones. Testimonies and other documentary formats coexist with fictional treatments, including a deliberately precarious dialogue with classical genres. Some films present an intricate time construction, in which the “present” is between present reality and a speculation about the future, and the past, if it is ever there, comes in the form of ruins and objects of obsolete technology which remain in the filmed locations. This chapter looks at the work of Adirley Queiros, a filmmaker from Ceilândia (a satellite town created in 1971 to house slum dwellers removed from Brasilia), focusing on A cidade e uma so? (2012), Branco sai, preto fica (2014). In these films, the dystopian speculation comes as a response to concrete historical events: the planning, construction, and occupation of the Brazilian capital. Contrary to the aesthetics of erasure and the decontextualizing break with the past of Brasilia’s modern urban ideals, the cinema of Queiros turns itself towards the recovery of History, taking detours through fiction, which becomes in turn the preferred space for testimonies and archive images. In his films, the inventive appropriation of archive footage, classic film genres and real memories allows for the narrative development of what remains of the past, as well as of the precarious present of Ceilândia’s experience.