A Glimpse of Hope at the End of the Dystopian Century

The Utopian Dimension of Critical Dystopias

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12864656
AutoresPeter Seyferth (0000-0002-6731-267X, FernUniversität in Hagen, autor de correspondencia)
Año2018
Volumen30
Número30
Fecha de publicación2018-01-22
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaILCEA (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2101-0609 • E-ISSN: 2101-0609
EditorialOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/ilcea.4454
OpenAlexW2802274182
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6
Referencias citadas11

The 20th century demonstrated that the realization of utopian plans often fosters totalitarianism. Fantastic, speculative literature mirrored this by turning from utopia to dystopia. In the hopeful 1970s, critical utopian texts revived the hope for a better world in a more complex fashion that replaced perfectionism with ambiguity and self-reflection. But neo-liberalism prevailed and other utopian hopes declined again. But a new kind of utopian text emerged in the 1980s and 1990s: the critical dystopia. Novels like Kim Stanley Robinson's The Gold Coast (1988), Marge Piercy's He, She and It (1991), and Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower (1993) depict horrible capitalist dystopian societies that almost crush the emancipatory hopes of resistance groups. But their utopian desire is not completely futile. This glimpse of hope also characterizes ambiguously utopian science fiction texts of the new millennium, e.g. Chris Carlsson's After the Deluge (2004), Neal Stephenson's Anathem (2008), and Margaret Killjoy's A Country of Ghosts (2014)

Aesthetics · Art · Dimension (graph theory) · Dystopia · Literature · Pure mathematics · Utopia · Mathematics · Philosophy · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction