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.

Education or Learning

Abstract: The sketches in the second chapter, ‘Education or Learning?’, address more or less explicitly the relationship between the notions of learning and education, their meanings and usages, and the tensions, entanglements, and differences between them. In order to do so, they rephrase the issues of emancipation (‘Free Hands’) and utopia (‘Utopian or Dystopian University’); particular figures (‘Living Ancestors’) and particular experiences (‘School Experience’) are invoked; the pedagogue is followed (‘Pedagogical Form(s)’); and different kinds of lines in education are described (‘Roads and Paths’).

Da utopia à distopia: a influência de aspectos culturais e históricos

Abstract: Since the publication of Utopia, by Thomas More’s Utopia, the term utopia has been used to denote the representation of a perfect place, without conflicts and egalitarian. From this, utopia became thematic present in several literary works, mainly in the period of the Renaissance. Centuries after the publication of Thomas More’s work, the thematic dystopia appears in the literature. Dystopia is antagonistic to utopia. While utopia seeks to portray a perfect place, dystopia reproduces a society in chaos, unequal. These two themes appear in the literature due to cultural and sociohistorical influences. In this sense, this article aims to survey cultural and socio-historical aspects that influenced the emergence of these themes in literature. Keywords: Utopia; Dystopia; Mimesis

Utopia, distopia... Pandemia! Os sonhos de futuro e a temporalização das imaginações do porvir

Abstract: Starting from images of contemporary future’s dream, we have historically stepped back trying to map the weakening of utopian thought and rise of dystopian imagination in our present day. From genealogical gesture, we seek to elucidate how this turn would be related to a temporal experience, and how this relationship has been fructified other future images in another historical moment such as modernity. In this sense, utopia and dystopia are not simply opposed, here they are ways of imagining future closely related to power dynamics and ways of experiencing future time in nowadays. Presentism places us isolated - physically and politically - in a present suffocated by future’s predictions that expands on today that seems to repeat itself. The present becomes the space for action, although time passage is no longer associated with reaching the best place or with modern utopia that breaks out in the future to be perfected and materialized in collective project imagined for tomorrow.

Russia in 1914: Reasons for Defeat and the Cost of Future Victories (from a Discussion of British Historians)

Abstract: In his essay “Russia in 2014: Reasons for Defeat and the Cost of Future Victories (from a discussion of British historians)” Norman Stone, an eminent specialist in Russian history, explores a key period in Russia’s fate and explains the reasons for its infamous defeats during World War I and the disastrous consequences thereof not only for the history of the Russian Empire but, ultimately, for the entire world. The author connects into a complex of factors different aspects such as the state of the country’s industry, the attitude of the imperial ruling elite, the absence of sufficiently qualified military personnel, and the officers’ conservative manner of thinking. According to the scholar, all these existed despite a relatively good state of pre-war Russian economy as a whole. Apart from a conceptual evaluation the author gives of the war events in some of his works, in the article the reader will find Stone’s recollections of debates caused by his arguing that it was wrong to compare the USSR’s victory in World War II as a result of Stalin’s regime and Russia’s defeat in World War I. Stone’s claims that Stalinism was pointless and antihuman as well as impossible to justify by means of any economic achievements or propaganda, regardless of the scale thereof, or any dystopian dreams, failed to find support of some of the pro-socialist historians of the postwar era. One of them was Stone’s main opponent Edward Carr. Being a recognized sovietologist and author of a fundamental work on the Russian revolution and Soviet history, he became a victim of Stockholm syndrome, i.e. a situation where hostages develop empathy toward the terrorists and are ready to justify their actions. The justification of Stalinism or any other type of dictatorship by any circumstances and an attempt to interpret it as something inevitable was what exasperated the new generation of historians and made them overthrow the existing authorities, and join the “angry young people”. Stone’s essay describes a single issue of academic controversy but it is of great significance for the present day world. The daring character of scholarly thought combined with loyalty to the ideas of humanism are the grounds of research that the modern humanities should be based on. At the end of his essay, Stone wittily quotes George Orwell, a genius that foresaw the collapse of totalitarianism, ‘You are always saying that it’s impossible to make an omelette without breaking eggs. So where’s the omelette?’ The view Stone expresses as a researcher and as a person is one that QR supports and we expect it to be welcomed by our multilingual readers.