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.
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Journal Article•
TL;DR: The authors examine three textual mythologies regarding China's evolving present: an Orwellian world of covert and overt state control; a Brave New World dystopia where the spirit of the people is subsumed in hedonistic distractions; and finally, assess the progress towards the official vision of the current Beijing authorities: the "harmonious society".
Abstract: In this paper I examine three textual mythologies regarding China's evolving present. These are an Orwellian world of covert and overt state control; a Brave New World dystopia where the spirit of the people is subsumed in hedonistic distractions; and finally I assess the progress towards the official vision of the current Beijing authorities: the ”harmonious society”. These three ”pulls” of the future are juxtaposed with certain key ”pushes” and ”weights”, and I explore their interplay within a ”futures triangle”. Finally, I suggest whether any of these mythologies is likely play a significant role in the possible futures of China.
11 citations
Book•
31 Jan 2020
TL;DR: Cosmopolitan Dystopia as discussed by the authors shows that rather than populists or authoritarian great powers, it is cosmopolitan liberals who have done the most to subvert the liberal international order.
Abstract: Cosmopolitan Dystopia shows that rather than populists or authoritarian great powers it is cosmopolitan liberals who have done the most to subvert the liberal international order. Cosmopolitan Dystopia explains how liberal cosmopolitanism has led us to treat new humanitarian crises as unprecedented demands for military action, thereby trapping us in a loop of endless war. Attempts to normalize humanitarian emergency through the doctrine of the 'responsibility to protect' has made for a paternalist understanding of state power that undercuts the representative functions of state sovereignty. The legacy of liberal intervention is a cosmopolitan dystopia of permanent war, insurrection by cosmopolitan jihadis and a new authoritarian vision of sovereignty in which states are responsible for their peoples rather than responsible to them. This book will be of vital interest to scholars and students of international relations, IR theory and human rights.
11 citations
TL;DR: Carlyle was the first historian in the nineteenth century to recognize and to re-create the French Revolution as a spiritual as well as a political phenomenon as discussed by the authors, and his name became associated with the worst excesses of mechanistic social engineering that he had so memorably denounced in his greatest history.
Abstract: Thomas Carlyle occupies a highly unusual place in any discussion of twentieth-century totalitarian political religions. He was the first historian in the nineteenth century to recognize and to re-create the French Revolution as a spiritual as well as a political phenomenon. Well before Alexis de Tocqueville and Jules Michelet, Carlyle understood that the most salient aspect of the Sansculottes' "Gospel according to Jean-Jacques" was its absolute repudiation of the past and its messianic embrace of a purified future, worshipped and sanctified in popular public rituals, symbols, and liturgies (Works 2: 54). (1) In The French Revolution, he unfolded with an equal mixture of scorn and pity the tragic consequences of the Jacobins' brutal attempts to harness the inchoate religious sentiments of "le peuple" towards the creation of a "new Political Evangel" (Works 2: 128). Yet, by the conclusion of the twentieth century, Carlyle--the first and most prescient prophet of "the totalitarian temptation" (2)--was himself bracketed with those "heroic vitalists" who had inspired Nazi and Bolshevik projectors to realize their respective versions of an earthly paradise through unprecedented mass indoctrination and violence. (3) His name became associated with the worst excesses of mechanistic social engineering that he had so memorably denounced in his greatest history. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, those who still believed in Carlyle's message were at an obvious disadvantage in their bids to defend him. His notorious views on slavery, democracy, Negroes, Jews, and Irish Catholics inevitably linked him to the diabolical forces that had ravaged Europe. At best, he could be defended as a misanthropic opponent of Benthamite liberalism who thrived on paradox and Swiftian satire, and who deliberately used inflammatory language to stimulate his opponents and to generate debate. The German philosopher Ernst Cassirer, (4) one of his subtlest advocates, pointed out in his posthumously published The Myth of the State that to "read into Carlyle's work ... a definite philosophical construction of the historical process ... or a definite political program is precarious and illusive" (191). Others tried to isolate Carlyle from what Michael Burleigh has called the "dystopian stain" of twentieth-century political religions by confining him in a Victorian context (xi). According to this thesis, he could not have foreseen how the widespread longing for political harmony in his own century would later be exploited and perverted by those who misused science and technology to cleanse history of human-perceived imperfection. Like Nietzsche, with whom he has often been compared, Carlyle could not be blamed for how his writings were interpreted in either Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. Of Nietzsche, Karl Lowith has asserted that the attempt to unburden [him] of ... intellectual "guilt," or even to claim his support against what he brought about is just as unfounded as the reverse effort to make him the advocate of a matter over which he sits in judgment. Both [arguments] crumble before the historical insight that "forerunners" have ever prepared roads for others which they themselves did not travel. (200) In the twenty-first century, such arguments themselves tend to "crumble" under the weight of accumulated barbarism, particularly when they are employed in relation to Carlyle. Responding to the example of Nietzsche, the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski has shrewdly observed, The Nazis told their supermen to read The Will to Power , and it is no good saying that this was a mere chance.... It is not a question of establishing the "guilt" of Nietzsche, who as an individual was not responsible for the use made of his writings; nevertheless, the fact that they were so used is bound to cause alarm and cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to the understanding of what was in his mind. (7-8)(5) The Nazis also instructed their followers to read Carlyle, whom the American-born Anglophone fascist William Joyce called "the great pioneer of National-Socialist philosophy" (36). …
11 citations
Book•
01 Mar 2018
TL;DR: In this paper, an innovative new anthology explores how science fiction can motivate new approaches to economics and provides surprising new syntheses, merging social science with fiction, design with politics, scholarship with experimental forms.
Abstract: An innovative new anthology exploring how science fiction can motivate new approaches to economics.From the libertarian economics of Ayn Rand to Aldous Huxley's consumerist dystopias, economics and science fiction have often orbited each other. In Economic Science Fictions, editor William Davies has deliberately merged the two worlds, asking how we might harness the power of the utopian imagination to revitalize economic thinking.Rooted in the sense that our current economic reality is no longer credible or viable, this collection treats our economy as a series of fictions and science fiction as a means of anticipating different economic futures. It asks how science fiction can motivate new approaches to economics and provides surprising new syntheses, merging social science with fiction, design with politics, scholarship with experimental forms. With an opening chapter from Ha-Joon Chang as well as theory, short stories, and reflections on design, this book from Goldsmiths Press challenges and changes the notion that economics and science fiction are worlds apart. The result is a wealth of fresh and unusual perspectives for anyone who believes the economy is too important to be left solely to economists.ContributorsAUDINT, Khairani Barokka, Carina Brand, Ha-Joon Chang, Miriam Cherry, William Davies, Mark Fisher, Dan Gavshon-Brady and James Pockson, Owen Hatherley, Laura Horn, Tim Jackson, Mark Johnson, Bastien Kerspern, Nora O Murchu, Tobias Revell et al., Judy Thorne, Sherryl Vint, Joseph Walton, Brian Willems
11 citations
01 Jan 1984
TL;DR: The expression of such ideas and reactions to them have been diverse, embracing both the brightest Utopian and darkest dystopian themes, and discussions are found in many different contexts, ranging from myth to critiques of current technology as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Ideas of artificial men or thinking machines have pervaded legend and literature from the earliest times (1) It is perhaps only in the last twenty years or so, however, that technologies such as industrial robots and artificial intelligence have been developed which appear to have the potential to realize these ideas (2) The expression of such ideas and reactions to them have been diverse, embracing both the brightest Utopian and darkest dystopian themes, and discussions are found in many different contexts, ranging from myth to critiques of current technology
11 citations