scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Topic

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.


Papers
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors negotiate between two opposing standpoints, looking at a for the future of the digital revolution, to decide whether it will lead to a utopia or a dystopia.
Abstract: ‘Utopia or dystopia – to where will the “digital revolution” lead human society?’ is a question that remains unanswered. Negotiating between two opposing standpoints, this article, looking at a for...

11 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper examined the new wave of Chinese science fiction as both a subversion and variation of the genre's utopianism of the earlier age, and argued that the authors of these works made a self-conscious effort to energise the utopian/dystopian variations rather than a simple denial of utopianism or a total embrace of dystopian disillusionment.
Abstract: This paper examines the new wave of Chinese science fiction as both a subversion and variation of the genre’s utopianism of the earlier age. Wang Jinkang’s Ant Life (2007), Liu Cixin’s China 2185 (1989), the Three-Body Trilogy (2006-2010), and the short story “The Micro-Era” (1999) are the main texts this paper studies. Their reflections on utopianism speak to the post-1989 changing intellectual culture and political economy. This paper argues that the new wave of Chinese science fiction contains a self-conscious effort to energise the utopian/dystopian variations rather than a simple denial of utopianism or a total embrace of dystopian disillusionment, and this is particularly represented in Liu Cixin’s novels. The paper also provides some preliminary thoughts on the vision of a post-human future depicted in Liu Cixin’s science fiction.

11 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the dangers, demands, and opportunities common to the "consumer class" without alarmism difficult terrain to navigate and how to guide students to navigate such treacherous, shifting seas.
Abstract: students are struggling with more depression and anxiety than ever before. These are characteristic dangers of the "consumer class" 1.7 billion people worldwide who are "characterized by diets of highly processed food, desire for bigger houses, more and bigger cars, higher levels of debt, and lifestyles devoted to the accumulation of non-essential goods" (Mayell). Mindless consumerism threatens physical, social, and psychological health; total abstinence, on the other hand, means starvation. How do we guide students to navigate such treacherous, shifting seas? I teach dystopian literature, which exaggerates our modern context so that we can challenge it. Providing for its readers a glimpse into a horrifying but fully possible future, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and M. T. Anderson's Feed show how unrestrained industry often relies on manipulation and herd mentality, an unspeakably grim encroachment on the individual. When the important thing is selling and buying, the individual becomes nothing more than consumer or worker. This is where it gets tricky: Young people love advertising, consuming, entertainment, and technology. If we attack these trappings of modern life, we risk nurturing defensiveness. The challenge is to focus on the dangers, demands, and opportunities common to the "consumer class" without alarmism difficult terrain to navigate. It's a matter of human nature, not stuff: "man in using his reason to create the ultimate life of pleasure has ceased to be human" (Greenblatt 97). Dystopian literature such as Feed and Brave New World is to consuming as Frankenstein is to cloning theoretical exploration and warning. Four important traits of modern consumerism that these two novels address are powerful advertising and industry, mindless consumption based on instant gratification, reliance on technology, and the resulting atrophy of language. English teachers can explore these important concepts with their students, as I explain below. Using these texts, we can meaningfully discuss what it means to be responsible, aware, knowledgeable, and moral consumers.

11 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors address questions of solidarity in South African literature before and after the confluent endings of apartheid and the Cold War, and highlight how solidarity as a theme has emerged in different forms and narrative settings, often tied to related considerations of utopia and dystopia.
Abstract: This article addresses questions of solidarity in South African literature before and after the confluent endings of apartheid and the Cold War. Examining works by J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer and Alex La Guma, it highlights how solidarity as a theme has emerged in different forms and narrative settings, often tied to related considerations of utopia and dystopia. Alex La Guma’s travel memoir, A Soviet Journey (1978), is foregrounded in particular as a literary work examining this theme as well as symbolizing it through the Soviet Union’s support for the anti-apartheid struggle. The article concludes with a consideration of decolonial thought in Latin American studies as a contemporary set of conversations providing a potential intercontinental solidarity of the future.

11 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Battlestar Galactica series as discussed by the authors has become the highest-rated program ever to air on the Sci Fi Channel, with more than 2.8 million viewers during its first season (Drumming).
Abstract: Picture this: a white man, presumably American, in military uniform, presumably a soldier, is stranded behind enemy lines. He is aided by an Asian woman whose job, unbeknownst to him, is to seduce him and make him fall in love with her. Once they have consummated their affair, however, it is the Asian woman who falls in love with the white soldier and betrays her own people. Like Miss Saigon and Madame Butterfly before her, the Asian woman discovers that she is pregnant; she will do anything to protect her child. Wait, there's more. This old orientalist tale is given a new treatment. The white man is a lieutenant from the planet Caprica. And the Asian woman is not human; her spine glows bright red when she has sex. She is a cyborg, an exact replica of the same model that was a friend, crush, and fellow officer of the male soldier before her kind, the Cylons, attempted to destroy all of humanity. Not so familiar? This is one of the many storylines in the breakout television hit Battlestar Galactica (produced by Ronald D. Moore and David Eick), a storyline of importance as a colonialist reiteration within the contemporary moment. The Battlestar Galactica series (BSG) has become the highest-rated program ever to air on the Sci Fi Channel, with more than 2.8 million viewers during its first season (Drumming). Not just popular with audiences, the show drew comments from sources as diverse as Stephen King and indie director Kevin Smith, and official accolades from the American Film Institute and TIME Magazine's James Poniewozik, who named BSG TIME's best television show of 2005. Critics and fans agree that Battlestar's hard-hitting socio political issues (war, torture, refugees, suicide bombing, reproductive rights, religion and the state, etc.), space-battle action sequences, and PG-13 dalliances add up to a winning combination. A sudden, unexpected attack on humanity holds a particular resonance for a post-9/11 American viewing audience. Rolling Stone writer Gavin Edwards calls the show "TV's most vivid depiction of the post-9/11 world and what happens to a society at war." A growing body of academic scholarship has also materialized, most notably the recent anthology Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica (edited by Tiffany Potter and C. W. Marshall). While this is an undeniably important collection, it lacks an analysis of the character Sharon (aka "Boomer") as an Asian American figure. The essay by Robert W. Moore on Sharon does not examine issues of race, while the piece by Christopher Deis that formulates Cylons as racial others does not include Boomer. I reflect on BSG's popularity generally and the character of Boomer specifically, putting Asian American studies and science fiction discourses into conversation. I look most closely at the first two seasons of BSG, when Sharon and Boomer are interchangeable names for the Cylon Number Eight. I ask how the globalized, or post-Fordist, moment is reflected and addressed in the logics of BSG and how the character Boomer, read as an Asian American female, employs old tropes in new ways. (1) As science fiction texts shift from modern to postmodern, from utopian to dystopian, and from liberal to neoliberal, how are the constructions of "Asian" and "female" altered and reified? How are previous imperialist narratives of romancing the Asian female subject reconfigured in Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's formulation of an emergent Empire, global and de-territorialized? The character of Boomer redeploys the Madame Butterfly/Miss Saigon narrative that renders visible the colonialist connection between the Vietnam War and the War on Terror. As a new articulation of the racialized and colonized female subject, Boomer shifts the figure of the cyborg from a white signifier of the other to an Asian American representation of the other. Specifically, Boomer occupies both the metaphoric and literal positions of miscegenation, most notably in the simultaneous embodiment of adoptee and birth mother. …

11 citations


Network Information
Related Topics (5)
Narrative
64.2K papers, 1.1M citations
73% related
Politics
263.7K papers, 5.3M citations
71% related
Capitalism
27.7K papers, 858K citations
69% related
Ideology
54.2K papers, 1.1M citations
69% related
Social movement
23.1K papers, 653K citations
68% related
Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20241
2023244
2022672
202192
2020142
2019141