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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TL;DR: For instance, the authors argues that reading 1984 evokes the ultimate triumph of totalizing doctrines eschewing social change or readjustment and the futility of individual resistance against repressive structures and ideologies.
Abstract: Reading 1984 fifty years after its first publication, one is still embar? rassed by Orwell's grim enactment of utopia as a closed and nightmarish system of manipulative structures beyond human agency or remedy. More than any other literary text in the Western world, this novel evokes the ultimate triumph of totalizing doctrines eschewing social change or readjustment and the futility of individual resistance against repressive structures and ideologies.1 In his seminal study The Womb of Space (1983), Caribbean writer Wilson Harris has challenged the legacy of Orwellian dystopianism and the "claustrophobic ritual" emerging from it, the ongoing tendency, that is, to fashion either crudely apocalyptic or purely scientific versions of the future:
10 citations
TL;DR: The Lamb of Comstock as discussed by the authors defined the difficult term "dystopia", introduced the four dystopian video games, and demonstrated the importance of religion within the four game narratives, sometimes supporting the dystopian scenery of the game, sometimes opposing it.
Abstract: In the article ‘‘The Lamb of Comstock’. Dystopia and Religion in Video Games’ I will introduce four high quality, commercially successful videogames: Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, Dishonored and Brink . All these four games present a dystopian scenery as a background for an intelligent plot to criticizes distinct modern political, philosophical and economical theories and practices: respectively the ‘hyper-capitalism’ of the Russian-American philosopher Ayn Rand, the idea of religion based American Exceptionalism, idealized industrialization and rationalism, and an ecological Apocalypse. Within these four games, religion – primarily different branches of Christianity – plays an important but often implicit role in the game narrative, sometimes supporting the dystopian scenery of the game, sometimes opposing it. In this article I will give a definition of the difficult term ‘dystopia’, introduce the four dystopian video games and demonstrate the importance of religion within the four game narratives.
10 citations
Book•
23 Jun 2015
TL;DR: The Imagining Surveillance project as discussed by the authors explores the long history of surveillance in creative texts well before and after George Orwell's iconic Nineteen Eighty Four, focusing on the utopian genre (which includes positive and negative worlds), offers an in depth account of the ways in which the most creative writers, filmmakers and thinkers have envisioned alternative worlds in which surveillance in various forms plays a key concern.
Abstract: Critically assesses how literary and cinematic utopias and dystopias have imagined and evaluated surveillance. Imagining Surveillance presents the first full length study of the depiction and assessment of surveillance in literature and film. Focusing on the utopian genre (which includes positive and negative worlds), this book offers an in depth account of the ways in which the most creative writers, filmmakers and thinkers have envisioned alternative worlds in which surveillance in various forms plays a key concern. Ranging from Thomas More's genre defining Utopia to Spike Jones' provocative film Her, Imagining Surveillance explores the long history of surveillance in creative texts well before and after George Orwell's iconic Nineteen Eighty Four. It fits that key novel into a five hundred year narrative that includes some of the most provocative and inventive accounts of surveillance as it is and as it might be in the future. The book explains the sustained use of these works by surveillance scholars, but goes much further and deeper in explicating their brilliant and challenging diversity. With chapters on surveillance studies, surveillance in utopias before Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four itself, and utopian texts post Orwell that deal with visibility, spaces, identity, technology and the shape of things to come, Imagining Surveillance sits firmly in the emerging cultural studies of surveillance. The first sustained account of the representation of surveillance in utopian and dystopian literature and film; charts surveillance's historical development and creative responses to that development; provides a detailed critical account of the ways that surveillance studies has utilised utopias to formulate its ideas and offers new readings of literary texts and films from More's Utopia through George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four to Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy and films from Fritz Lang's Metropolis to Niel Blomkamp's Elysium.
10 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: Part 1: Politics of Fantasy 1. Introduction to the Politics of Fear 2. Post-Democracy and the War on Terror 3. The Investment of Desire: Deleuze, Guattari and the Capitalisation of Fear 4. All Power to the Imagination? Ernst Bloch and the Spirit of Utopia Today.
Abstract: Part 1: Politics of Fantasy 1. Introduction to the Politics of Fear 2. Post-Democracy and the War on Terror 3. The Investment of Desire: Deleuze, Guattari and the Capitalisation of Fear 4. Accidents Waiting to Happen: Politics of Fear as Eschatological Fantasy Part II: Politics of Imagination 5. All Power to the Imagination? Ernst Bloch and the Spirit of Utopia Today 6. Eschatology as Radical Waiting: Barth, Rahner and the Politics of 'in between' Time 7. Apocalypse as Radical Seeing: Antonio Negri and the Politics of Kairos Time 8. Derrida and the To Come: Postmodern Reflections on Apocalypse and Activism Part III: Experiments in Hope 9. The Performance of Dissent: Utopian and Dystopian Expressions in Radical Street Protest 10. How to be Common: Universality and Difference in Global Protest Movements 11. Bodies of Resistance: the Future of Civil Disobedience.
10 citations