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.

I Sing the Body Dystopic: Utopia and Posthuman Corporeality in P.D. James's The Children of Men

Abstract: The resurgence of novels dealing with dystopian cosmogonies since the 1990s may reveal a new trend in Utopian Studies. If classical dystopia was defined by the imposition of collective political and social structures upon the individual and out of which there was no escape (as constructed, mainly, by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four), these contemporary dystopian novels critically construct posthuman societies where the focus is on the development of the dystopian body, which questions and reinvents the very definitions of humanity. This article aims at examining the effects of posthuman critique upon the construction of the dystopian body in P.D. James's novel The Children of Men.

(un)natural Bodies, Endangered Species, And Embodied Others In Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake

Abstract: The developing knowledge of life sciences is at the crux of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake as she examines human promise gone awry in a near-future dystopia. This thesis examines aspects of posthumanism, ecocriticism, and feminism in the novel's scientific, cultural, and environmental projections. Through the trope of extinction, Atwood's text foregrounds the effects of human exceptionalism and instrumentalism in relation to the natural world, and engenders an analysis of human identity through its biological and cultural aspects. Extinction thus serves as a metaphor for both human development and human excesses, redefining the idea of human within the context of vulnerable species. Oryx and Crake reveals humanity's organic connections with non-human others through interspecies gene-splicing and the ensuing hybridity. In this perspective, Atwood's text provides a dialogue on humankind's alienation from the natural world and synchronic connections to the animal other, and poses timely questions for twenty-first century consumerism, globalism, and humanist approaches to nature. The loss of balance provoked by the apocalyptic situation in Oryx and Crake challenges commonplace attitudes toward beneficial progress. This imbalance signals the need for a new narrative: A consilient reimagining of humanity's role on earth as an integrated organism rather than an intellectual singularity.

Dirty Harriet/ Blue Steel : Feminist Theory Goes to Hollywood

Abstract: In a 1989 made-for-TV movie, Prime Target , veteran policewoman Angie Dickinson, on the track of a serial killer who is knocking off one young female rookie after another, grimly practices her marksmanship on the precinct target. Behind her an avuncular, grey-haired senior cop looks on. "Who do you think you are," he growls, "Dirty Harriet?" If "Dirty Harriet" is what our Angie, who has grown up, grown old, and got rich playing women agents of the state, now thinks she is, she has come a long way from the days when she, Sharon Gless, and others were still unlined, and television's women cops symbolized the rule-bound but humanist face of policing rather than its violent, retributive, even anarchic profile. In that favored and rapidly mutating fantasy narrative, generated by and responding to the discourses and internal debates of second-wave feminism, the presence and power of female police were at first represented as a positive effect of feminism, taking neglected women's issues onto the streets and into the courts. And although the story lines often opened up another, more unfinished and clouded reality, highlighting the uneven development of sexual politics in the maledominated force, it was through women's affirmative presence there that these scripts textualized the possibility of a Utopian balance between equality and difference under the law. "Dirty Harriet" films, on the other hand, belong to a later, still current, and distinctly dystopian staging of both feminism and its eighties backlash, holding hands across genres to create a daisy chain of films which depict women as actively, even pleasurably, violent,

Major Themes in Renaissance Utopias

Abstract: Utopian themes reflect the spirit of the age which produces them, and echo its problems, ailments and concerns. Ages of helplessness and despair produce myths of wishful thinking and escape, such as, the myths of the Golden Age and the Earthly Paradise. An age of social instability and widespread discontent and frustration begets literary social utopias of social stability and universal contentment, such as, More's Utopia and other Renaissance utopias. An age of steady progress and prosperity inspires utopias of ambitious hopes of perfection as H.G. Well's Men like Gods and William Morris' News from Nowhere. The twentieth century in which change has madly pace and the necessary adjustments have a frustrating slow pace has created either utopias of men like gods or dystopia of men like beasts, such as, Zamyatin's We, and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. This paper intends to deal with the major themes of the Renaissance utopias which are often called social utopias, such as Thomas More's Utopia (1516), Francois Rabelais' Abbev of Theleme (1534), Thomas Campanella's The City of the Sum (1613-14), Valentine Andrea's Christianopolis (1619), and Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1623).

Remix utopia: eleven propositions on design and social fantasy

Abstract: “Dystopian fiction’s popularity is a warning sign for the future” worries renowned author and cultural critic Naomi Klein (2014a). For Klein, human made climate change does not call for adaptation or mitigation; it is a civilizational wake-up call. Confronting the apocalypse is not about “changing light bulbs” - it is about change, about transforming the “social system” causing human extinction, about revolting against capitalism (2014b). Dystopian scenarios do not leave much scope for this. In the face of climatic catastrophe, sci-fi authors tend to affirm the inevitable, leaving room only for either apathy or individualist survivalism, stockpiling food and fuel. Climatic change may be a civilizational wake-up call, one of several possible dystopian futures. How do we as a species confront the threat of global population growth and food production collapsing? Of asteroids and comets smashing into Earth? Of the aging sun inevitably eating its planets? Saving humanity is certainly not about changing light bulbs or other technical fixes. “Dad says that there is nothing to do” the frightened child resigns, as apocalypse is fast approaching in the shape of the planet Melancholia, set on its predestined course towards Earth. In von Trier’s film a dramatic galactic dance of death begins when a new solar system emerges in the dark night sky. The Antares system, with its orbiting planet Melancholia, is on its course towards Earth, destined to pass right in front of Justine and her family shortly after her wedding, presenting them with the ”most beautiful sight ever”. As Melancholia approaches, Justine falls into a melancholic mood, anticipating things to come. As the deadly dance of the celestial bodies unfold, the red star Antares is eclipsed by the planet revolving around it. Melancholia is drawn into orbit by the gravity of Earth and after days of hope and despair it becomes evident that the blue planet Melancholia will collide with the equally blue planet Earth. In the opening and closing sequences of the film Gaia and Melancholia melt together, leaving no room for doubt that life as we know it will be destroyed. Still Justine comforts the child. “If your daddy says this, then he has forgotten something. He has forgotten about the magic cave.” And without hesitation she walks off to the woods together with the child, to build a magic cave that might save them from their destined demise. With this contribution we attempt to build “a magic cave”, a blend of utopian-speculative-exploration strategies that deploy an active approach to collaborative future-making. Recognizing that our future may be lost, but that many prospects (Latour 2010: 485) are there to be explored, we combine Latour’s compositionist perspective and Dunne & Raby’s speculative way of imagining preferable futures (2013) with Ernst Bloch’s philosophy of concrete utopias as immanent and open elements of the real existing world (1959). In doing this we ground our argument on speculation as well as materialised design projects realised by the authors or in close collaboration with them.