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 published on a yearly basis
Papers
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18 Jun 2019
10 citations
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01 Jan 2001
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the micro-political implications of the work of Gilles Deleuze (and Felix Guattari), coupled with more specific analyses of films (such as "Fight Club" and "Schindler's List") and other expressions of contemporary culture.
Abstract: This book focuses on the micro-political implications of the work of Gilles Deleuze (and Felix Guattari). General philosophical articles are coupled to more specific analyses of films (such as "Fight Club" and "Schindler's List") and other expressions of contemporary culture. The choice of giving specific attention to the analyses of images and sounds is not only related to the fact that audiovisual products are increasingly dominant in contemporary life, but also to the fact that film culture in itself is changing ("in transition") in capitalist culture. From a marginal place at the periphery of economy and culture at large, audiovisual products (ranging from art to ads) seem to have moved to the centre of the network society, as Manuel Castells calls contemporary society. Typical Deleuzian concepts such as micro-politics, the Body without Organs, becoming-minoritarian, pragmatics and immanence are explored in their philosophical implications and political force, whether utopian or dystopian. What can we do with Deleuze in contemporary media culture? A recurring issue throughout the book is the relationship between theory and practice, to which several solutions and problems are given."
10 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that post-apartheid literature bears witness to the perpetuation of a fundamentally dystopian society and that power remains in the private sphere, with space still constructed in terms of exclusion rather than inclusion.
Abstract: Starting from a reading of Damon Galgut's The Good Doctor, this article examines the changing nature of social space in South Africa since 1994 as reflected in recent writing by Galgut, Ivan Vladislavic, Jonny Steinberg, K.S. Duiker and J.M. Coetzee. Adapting Mikael Karlstrom's distinction between ‘dystopian’ and ‘eutopian’ responses to social phenomena, I argue that post-apartheid literature bears witness to the perpetuation of a fundamentally dystopian society. South Africa, by these lights, has seen no significant opening up and making public of space either physically or otherwise. Discussing the urban environment, crime, xenophobia, gender relations and sexuality, the article shows that power remains in the private sphere, with space still constructed in terms of exclusion rather than inclusion.
10 citations
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TL;DR: The authors examines instances of how and why the counter-strategy of primitivism and monstrosity has developed, and the extent to which it translates "dystopian" expressions of female sexuality in new imaginaries of 'dystopia' as a space of liberation from stultifying cultural and political norms.
Abstract: Despite the stereotypical, outsider view of Thailand as a thriving hub of international sex tourism, traditional and local constructions of Thainess instead privilege the position of the ‘good’ Thai woman—a model of sexual propriety, demure physicality and aesthetic perfection. This is the image of femininity that is heralded by Thailand’s Tourist Authority and by government agencies alike as a marketable symbol of cultural refinement and national pride. But this disturbing ‘utopian’ construction of femininity might for some be considered a dystopia shaped by forms of power centred on elite urban rule. In mainstream definitions of Thainess, the monstrous and grotesque inverses of ‘good’ womanhood are located in the ‘dystopian’ visions of rural-based folk traditions that abound with malevolent female spirits and demons, and in the contemporary Thai horror films that draw on these tropes. Adopted by Thai feminists and by street protestors in Bangkok at times of recent political unrest, portrayals of a ‘monstrous-feminine’ have been adopted as central to a carnivalesque strategy of response and resistance to elite discourses of control. Such forces serve to symbolically disturb and destabilise middle-class constructions of a utopian vision of Thainess with Bangkok as its cultural core. This paper examines instances of how and why the counter-strategy of primitivism and monstrosity has developed, and the extent to which it translates ‘dystopian’ expressions of female sexuality in new imaginaries of ‘dystopia’ as a space of liberation from stultifying cultural and political norms.
10 citations