Stacey Abbott
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748694907
- eISBN:
- 9781474426725
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748694907.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Twenty-first century film and television is overwhelmed with images of the undead. Vampires and zombies have often been seen as oppositional: one alluring, the other repellent; one seductive, the ...
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Twenty-first century film and television is overwhelmed with images of the undead. Vampires and zombies have often been seen as oppositional: one alluring, the other repellent; one seductive, the other infectious. With case studies of films like I Am Legend, Daybreakers, and 28 Days Later, as well as television programmes like Angel, In the Flesh, and The Walking Dead, this book challenges these popular assumptions and reveals the increasing interconnection of undead genres. Exploring how the figure of the vampire has been infused with the language of science, disease, and apocalypse, while the zombie text has increasingly been influenced by the trope of the ‘reluctant’ vampire, this book shows how both archetypes are actually two sides of the same undead coin. When considered together they present a dystopian, sometimes apocalyptic, vision of twenty-first century existence.Less
Twenty-first century film and television is overwhelmed with images of the undead. Vampires and zombies have often been seen as oppositional: one alluring, the other repellent; one seductive, the other infectious. With case studies of films like I Am Legend, Daybreakers, and 28 Days Later, as well as television programmes like Angel, In the Flesh, and The Walking Dead, this book challenges these popular assumptions and reveals the increasing interconnection of undead genres. Exploring how the figure of the vampire has been infused with the language of science, disease, and apocalypse, while the zombie text has increasingly been influenced by the trope of the ‘reluctant’ vampire, this book shows how both archetypes are actually two sides of the same undead coin. When considered together they present a dystopian, sometimes apocalyptic, vision of twenty-first century existence.
Peter Marks
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474400190
- eISBN:
- 9781474412339
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474400190.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Imagining Surveillance provides the first extensive and intensive study of surveillance as depicted and assessed in literature and film. Focusing on the utopian genre (which includes positive ...
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Imagining Surveillance provides the first extensive and intensive study of surveillance as depicted and assessed in literature and film. Focusing on the utopian genre (which includes positive eutopias and negative dystopias), this book offers an in-depth account of how creative writers, filmmakers and thinkers have envisioned other worlds in which surveillance operates, for good and ill. It explores how surveillance scholars have utilized these fictional works in understanding the myriad implications of surveillance in the contemporary world. From Thomas More’s Utopia to recent novels and films such as Dave Eggers’ The Circle and Spike Jonze’s Her, Imagining Surveillance traces the long history of surveillance in imaginative texts well before and after George Orwell’s iconic Nineteen Eighty-Four. The book argues that creative texts have long offered subtle, complex and provocative readings of surveillance that investigate the human dimension of this fast-developing, at times invisible, and undoubtedly transformative element of twenty-first century life. Novels and films supply scenarios and narratives that prompt readers and viewers to consider the personal, ethical, social and political questions proliferating surveillance raises. With chapters on the relationships between surveillance and visibility, spaces, identities, technologies, and the shape of things to come, Imagining Surveillance establishes itself at the leading edge of the emerging cultural studies of surveillance.Less
Imagining Surveillance provides the first extensive and intensive study of surveillance as depicted and assessed in literature and film. Focusing on the utopian genre (which includes positive eutopias and negative dystopias), this book offers an in-depth account of how creative writers, filmmakers and thinkers have envisioned other worlds in which surveillance operates, for good and ill. It explores how surveillance scholars have utilized these fictional works in understanding the myriad implications of surveillance in the contemporary world. From Thomas More’s Utopia to recent novels and films such as Dave Eggers’ The Circle and Spike Jonze’s Her, Imagining Surveillance traces the long history of surveillance in imaginative texts well before and after George Orwell’s iconic Nineteen Eighty-Four. The book argues that creative texts have long offered subtle, complex and provocative readings of surveillance that investigate the human dimension of this fast-developing, at times invisible, and undoubtedly transformative element of twenty-first century life. Novels and films supply scenarios and narratives that prompt readers and viewers to consider the personal, ethical, social and political questions proliferating surveillance raises. With chapters on the relationships between surveillance and visibility, spaces, identities, technologies, and the shape of things to come, Imagining Surveillance establishes itself at the leading edge of the emerging cultural studies of surveillance.
Tom Shippey
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781382615
- eISBN:
- 9781786945167
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382615.003.0027
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter opens with a study of Robert Heinlein, an author at once extremely patriotic and extremely critical, whose works often display a violent switch of direction: apparently because ...
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This chapter opens with a study of Robert Heinlein, an author at once extremely patriotic and extremely critical, whose works often display a violent switch of direction: apparently because Heinlein’s core belief was that the American way, while often at fault, was inherently self-correcting. His work was carefully noted and built on by Kim Stanley Robinson, whose “Orange County” trilogy offers three views of a future America: apocalypse, dystopian capitalism, and utopian socialism. Two other works by Tom Disch and Geoff Ryman move the critique of America into the regions of fantasy and perhaps allegory. All the later works demonstrate science fiction’s increasing sophistication in terms of narrative structure.Less
This chapter opens with a study of Robert Heinlein, an author at once extremely patriotic and extremely critical, whose works often display a violent switch of direction: apparently because Heinlein’s core belief was that the American way, while often at fault, was inherently self-correcting. His work was carefully noted and built on by Kim Stanley Robinson, whose “Orange County” trilogy offers three views of a future America: apocalypse, dystopian capitalism, and utopian socialism. Two other works by Tom Disch and Geoff Ryman move the critique of America into the regions of fantasy and perhaps allegory. All the later works demonstrate science fiction’s increasing sophistication in terms of narrative structure.
Roberta Seelinger Trites
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496813800
- eISBN:
- 9781496813848
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496813800.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
YA dystopias frequently investigate what it means to inhabit a human body; dystopias and other speculative fictions often track how turmoil in the body politic effects subsequent turmoil for the ...
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YA dystopias frequently investigate what it means to inhabit a human body; dystopias and other speculative fictions often track how turmoil in the body politic effects subsequent turmoil for the human body itself. This chapter thus relies on material feminism, including ecofeminism, to explore embodiment in literature for the young, and the chapter also examines the nuances of neoliberalism as a concept that complicates twenty-first century feminisms in adolescent literature. This chapter traces a range of novels that follow a spectrum from predictable (and not particularly successful) feminism to more innovative forms of feminism. This chapter thus moves from an examination of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, to Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Lissa Price’s Starters, Adam Rex’s The True Meaning of Smekday, and Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans.Less
YA dystopias frequently investigate what it means to inhabit a human body; dystopias and other speculative fictions often track how turmoil in the body politic effects subsequent turmoil for the human body itself. This chapter thus relies on material feminism, including ecofeminism, to explore embodiment in literature for the young, and the chapter also examines the nuances of neoliberalism as a concept that complicates twenty-first century feminisms in adolescent literature. This chapter traces a range of novels that follow a spectrum from predictable (and not particularly successful) feminism to more innovative forms of feminism. This chapter thus moves from an examination of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, to Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Lissa Price’s Starters, Adam Rex’s The True Meaning of Smekday, and Sherri L. Smith’s Orleans.
Jeshua Enriquez
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496811523
- eISBN:
- 9781496811561
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496811523.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Jeshua Enriquez, in “Crossing the Threshold of B-Mor: Instrumental Commodification and the Model Minority in Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea,” examines how Lee’s 2014 novel presents an acutely ...
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Jeshua Enriquez, in “Crossing the Threshold of B-Mor: Instrumental Commodification and the Model Minority in Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea,” examines how Lee’s 2014 novel presents an acutely globalized and market-driven dystopian vision. In the aftermath of a national collapse, American civilization rearranges itself into stratified sub-societies—Charters, Facilities, and Open Counties—with B-Mor (formerly Baltimore) the ultimate example. Consequently, Enriquez provides a nuanced reading of Asian American commodification as the model minority and the importance of communal story-telling in defeating an oppression generated by racial framing as social control through the novel’s key figure-Fan.Less
Jeshua Enriquez, in “Crossing the Threshold of B-Mor: Instrumental Commodification and the Model Minority in Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea,” examines how Lee’s 2014 novel presents an acutely globalized and market-driven dystopian vision. In the aftermath of a national collapse, American civilization rearranges itself into stratified sub-societies—Charters, Facilities, and Open Counties—with B-Mor (formerly Baltimore) the ultimate example. Consequently, Enriquez provides a nuanced reading of Asian American commodification as the model minority and the importance of communal story-telling in defeating an oppression generated by racial framing as social control through the novel’s key figure-Fan.
Suparno Banerjee
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496811523
- eISBN:
- 9781496811561
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496811523.003.0016
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
With “India, Geopolitics, and Future Wars,” Suparno Banerjee demonstrates the importance of future-war narratives in the shifting geopolitical posture of India by exploring the genre, origins, and ...
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With “India, Geopolitics, and Future Wars,” Suparno Banerjee demonstrates the importance of future-war narratives in the shifting geopolitical posture of India by exploring the genre, origins, and patterns of this SF motif. With particular attention paid to Humphrey Hawksley’s Dragon Fire (2000) and Ruchir Joshi’s The Last Jet-Engine Laugh (2001), Banerjee focuses on perceptions of India by Western as well as Indian authors as they speculate about future-wars, highlighting the disillusionment of a postcolonial nation discarding its utopian ideals by involving itself in regional power-struggles. Banerjee effectively illustrates the different patterns that such contemporary future-war narratives create.Less
With “India, Geopolitics, and Future Wars,” Suparno Banerjee demonstrates the importance of future-war narratives in the shifting geopolitical posture of India by exploring the genre, origins, and patterns of this SF motif. With particular attention paid to Humphrey Hawksley’s Dragon Fire (2000) and Ruchir Joshi’s The Last Jet-Engine Laugh (2001), Banerjee focuses on perceptions of India by Western as well as Indian authors as they speculate about future-wars, highlighting the disillusionment of a postcolonial nation discarding its utopian ideals by involving itself in regional power-struggles. Banerjee effectively illustrates the different patterns that such contemporary future-war narratives create.
Birgit Lang
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719099434
- eISBN:
- 9781526124098
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099434.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
Late nineteenth-century and fin-de-siècle writers first engaged with the case study genre in its psychiatric and psychoanalytic manifestations by means of satire, as recounted in Chapter 3. This ...
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Late nineteenth-century and fin-de-siècle writers first engaged with the case study genre in its psychiatric and psychoanalytic manifestations by means of satire, as recounted in Chapter 3. This chapter contrasts the interpretative powers of modern sexual publics and professional elites with the agency of the writer. It does so through enquiry into Panizza’s satirical and delusional negotiation of the boundaries between the two ‘cultures’ of art and science (pace C. P. Snow). Panizza’s first exposure to the case study genre was in the context of his training as a psychiatrist. More than a decade before Freud’s elaborations on the psychoanalytic case, Panizza made the human case study a central form in his literary oeuvre. Panizza anti-psychiatric dystopian work Psichopatia criminalis, represents the only persiflage of a medical case study compilation in European literature. Yet his engagement with the case study genre remains haunted by his own unruly psyche.Less
Late nineteenth-century and fin-de-siècle writers first engaged with the case study genre in its psychiatric and psychoanalytic manifestations by means of satire, as recounted in Chapter 3. This chapter contrasts the interpretative powers of modern sexual publics and professional elites with the agency of the writer. It does so through enquiry into Panizza’s satirical and delusional negotiation of the boundaries between the two ‘cultures’ of art and science (pace C. P. Snow). Panizza’s first exposure to the case study genre was in the context of his training as a psychiatrist. More than a decade before Freud’s elaborations on the psychoanalytic case, Panizza made the human case study a central form in his literary oeuvre. Panizza anti-psychiatric dystopian work Psichopatia criminalis, represents the only persiflage of a medical case study compilation in European literature. Yet his engagement with the case study genre remains haunted by his own unruly psyche.
Katia Pizzi
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780719097096
- eISBN:
- 9781526146694
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526121219
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This is the first interdisciplinary exploration of machine culture in Italian futurism after the First World War. The machine was a primary concern for the futuristi. As well as being a material tool ...
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This is the first interdisciplinary exploration of machine culture in Italian futurism after the First World War. The machine was a primary concern for the futuristi. As well as being a material tool in the factory it was a social and political agent, an aesthetic emblem, a metonymy of modernity and international circulation and a living symbol of past crafts and technologies. Exploring literature, the visual and performing arts, photography, music and film, the book uses the lens of European machine culture to elucidate the work of a broad set of artists and practitioners, including Censi, Depero, Marinetti, Munari and Prampolini. The machine emerges here as an archaeology of technology in modernity: the time machine of futurism.Less
This is the first interdisciplinary exploration of machine culture in Italian futurism after the First World War. The machine was a primary concern for the futuristi. As well as being a material tool in the factory it was a social and political agent, an aesthetic emblem, a metonymy of modernity and international circulation and a living symbol of past crafts and technologies. Exploring literature, the visual and performing arts, photography, music and film, the book uses the lens of European machine culture to elucidate the work of a broad set of artists and practitioners, including Censi, Depero, Marinetti, Munari and Prampolini. The machine emerges here as an archaeology of technology in modernity: the time machine of futurism.
Lars Schmeink
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781781383766
- eISBN:
- 9781786944115
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781383766.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Chapter 2 provides an inventory of the theoretical strains pertinent to the discussion and elaborates the concepts introduced. Starting from the premise of science fiction as a cultural mode that is ...
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Chapter 2 provides an inventory of the theoretical strains pertinent to the discussion and elaborates the concepts introduced. Starting from the premise of science fiction as a cultural mode that is ideally suited to negotiate technoscience and its influence of socio-political structures, the chapter introduces and defines the cultural formation of 'biopunk' from its pre-cursor cyberpunk. Then, biopunk will be situated as a creative intervention into posthuman discourses by elaborating the origin and use of the 'posthuman,' anchoring it in discussions differentiating between transhumanism and critical posthumanism as two oppositional theoretical positions. Further, the chapter establishes the sociological frame, positing contemporary society as formed by 'liquid modernity.' The chapter elaborates the dissolution of social institutions and the shifting of focus from public debate onto private life-choices, the global dimension of current political issues and, in contrast, the individualization of solutions to those issues. Liquid modernity, as critical dystopian present, consequently demands to be understood as warning about current tendencies in society, as criticism and even more importantly as an education of society in regards to its own needs and desires. In reviewing the utopian imagination, the chapter concludes the theoretical frame, in which to read contemporary biopunk culture.Less
Chapter 2 provides an inventory of the theoretical strains pertinent to the discussion and elaborates the concepts introduced. Starting from the premise of science fiction as a cultural mode that is ideally suited to negotiate technoscience and its influence of socio-political structures, the chapter introduces and defines the cultural formation of 'biopunk' from its pre-cursor cyberpunk. Then, biopunk will be situated as a creative intervention into posthuman discourses by elaborating the origin and use of the 'posthuman,' anchoring it in discussions differentiating between transhumanism and critical posthumanism as two oppositional theoretical positions. Further, the chapter establishes the sociological frame, positing contemporary society as formed by 'liquid modernity.' The chapter elaborates the dissolution of social institutions and the shifting of focus from public debate onto private life-choices, the global dimension of current political issues and, in contrast, the individualization of solutions to those issues. Liquid modernity, as critical dystopian present, consequently demands to be understood as warning about current tendencies in society, as criticism and even more importantly as an education of society in regards to its own needs and desires. In reviewing the utopian imagination, the chapter concludes the theoretical frame, in which to read contemporary biopunk culture.
Susan Stanford Friedman
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231170901
- eISBN:
- 9780231539470
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231170901.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The chapter takes a keyword approach using figures of modernity to supplement the narrative approach of Chapter 3 to rethinking modernity. It argues against terms like alternate, other, minor, and ...
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The chapter takes a keyword approach using figures of modernity to supplement the narrative approach of Chapter 3 to rethinking modernity. It argues against terms like alternate, other, minor, and marginal and argues for terms like multiple, plural, and recurrent. It proposes clusters of relational keywords to characterize planetary modernities across time: rupture, conjuncture, vortex; sped, acceleration, velocity; network, system; circulation, route, contact; utopia, dystopia, heterotopia. Examples taken from world history in the longue durée and from the arts accompany each keyword.Less
The chapter takes a keyword approach using figures of modernity to supplement the narrative approach of Chapter 3 to rethinking modernity. It argues against terms like alternate, other, minor, and marginal and argues for terms like multiple, plural, and recurrent. It proposes clusters of relational keywords to characterize planetary modernities across time: rupture, conjuncture, vortex; sped, acceleration, velocity; network, system; circulation, route, contact; utopia, dystopia, heterotopia. Examples taken from world history in the longue durée and from the arts accompany each keyword.
Susan Hayward
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748691104
- eISBN:
- 9781474406437
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748691104.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This essay focuses on what can be considered as French Film Noir in its purist form. Thus I am deliberately limiting the choice of films in terms of time-scale and their adherence to the definitions ...
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This essay focuses on what can be considered as French Film Noir in its purist form. Thus I am deliberately limiting the choice of films in terms of time-scale and their adherence to the definitions that, to my mind, embody the spirit of this generic typology. This means leaving réalisme noir films and most gangster films to one side (whilst acknowledging that a looser definition of noir might encompass them). I begin, therefore, in 1947 with Clouzot’s Quai des Orfèvres and end, in 1979, with Série noire. This has produced a selection of 17 films which offer an interesting arc when examined against the evolving economic climate of this thirty-year period as France moves from its post-war trauma through the so-called trente-glorieuses years of economic recovery.Less
This essay focuses on what can be considered as French Film Noir in its purist form. Thus I am deliberately limiting the choice of films in terms of time-scale and their adherence to the definitions that, to my mind, embody the spirit of this generic typology. This means leaving réalisme noir films and most gangster films to one side (whilst acknowledging that a looser definition of noir might encompass them). I begin, therefore, in 1947 with Clouzot’s Quai des Orfèvres and end, in 1979, with Série noire. This has produced a selection of 17 films which offer an interesting arc when examined against the evolving economic climate of this thirty-year period as France moves from its post-war trauma through the so-called trente-glorieuses years of economic recovery.
Brendan Baber
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846310577
- eISBN:
- 9781846314056
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846310577.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Wolfe's informal, relaxed dialogue with Baber sharpens Wolfe's radical perspective on fantastic literature as ‘the truth of the human experience’ and his penetrating criticism of realism and ...
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Wolfe's informal, relaxed dialogue with Baber sharpens Wolfe's radical perspective on fantastic literature as ‘the truth of the human experience’ and his penetrating criticism of realism and materialist philosophy in favour of living ‘on the animal level’. Wolfe's preferences for seeing things as they are, for understanding clearly the nature of objects and relationships, is valid advice for anyone wishing to analyse Wolfe's work and the elaborate philosophical, textual and intertextual relationships that exist within it.Less
Wolfe's informal, relaxed dialogue with Baber sharpens Wolfe's radical perspective on fantastic literature as ‘the truth of the human experience’ and his penetrating criticism of realism and materialist philosophy in favour of living ‘on the animal level’. Wolfe's preferences for seeing things as they are, for understanding clearly the nature of objects and relationships, is valid advice for anyone wishing to analyse Wolfe's work and the elaborate philosophical, textual and intertextual relationships that exist within it.
Chris Pak
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781382844
- eISBN:
- 9781786945426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382844.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter analyses the American Pastoral in the first terraforming boom of the 1950s. Referencing Ernest J. Yanarella’s discussion of terraforming in The Cross, the Plow and the Skyline: ...
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This chapter analyses the American Pastoral in the first terraforming boom of the 1950s. Referencing Ernest J. Yanarella’s discussion of terraforming in The Cross, the Plow and the Skyline: Contemporary Science Fiction and the Ecological Imagination, this chapter begins with the image of the pioneer farmer that attracted westward expansion and its obverse, the portrayal of dystopian societies where the promise of the pastoral is co-opted. This section recalls the “Garden of the Chattel” image of American colonialism, in which pastoral themes sublimate and so conceal the historic fact of slavery that underlay agricultural production in the American South. The final section considers the propensity to extend human moral systems to aliens and how the pastoral and elements of the sublime converge to offer counter-narratives highlighting the ecological devastation caused by the human expansion into space.Less
This chapter analyses the American Pastoral in the first terraforming boom of the 1950s. Referencing Ernest J. Yanarella’s discussion of terraforming in The Cross, the Plow and the Skyline: Contemporary Science Fiction and the Ecological Imagination, this chapter begins with the image of the pioneer farmer that attracted westward expansion and its obverse, the portrayal of dystopian societies where the promise of the pastoral is co-opted. This section recalls the “Garden of the Chattel” image of American colonialism, in which pastoral themes sublimate and so conceal the historic fact of slavery that underlay agricultural production in the American South. The final section considers the propensity to extend human moral systems to aliens and how the pastoral and elements of the sublime converge to offer counter-narratives highlighting the ecological devastation caused by the human expansion into space.
Lizzie Seal and Maggie O’Neill
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781529202687
- eISBN:
- 9781529202717
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529202687.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance
This chapter discusses how it is notable that ‘speculative fiction’ – fiction that creates alternative worlds – frequently addresses themes of deviance, transgression and ordering. It identifies ...
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This chapter discusses how it is notable that ‘speculative fiction’ – fiction that creates alternative worlds – frequently addresses themes of deviance, transgression and ordering. It identifies themes of surveillance and spectacle; hyperreality and virtual reality; memory and the suppression of history; and hierarchy and difference in dystopian fiction aimed at young adults – The Hunger Games (Collins, 2008), The Maze Runner (Dashner, 2009), Divergent (Roth, 2011) and Red Rising (Brown, 2014). The chapter explores the role of this fiction in cultural imaginings of social control, repression and resistance, and argues for greater criminological attention to novels, including bestselling fiction.Less
This chapter discusses how it is notable that ‘speculative fiction’ – fiction that creates alternative worlds – frequently addresses themes of deviance, transgression and ordering. It identifies themes of surveillance and spectacle; hyperreality and virtual reality; memory and the suppression of history; and hierarchy and difference in dystopian fiction aimed at young adults – The Hunger Games (Collins, 2008), The Maze Runner (Dashner, 2009), Divergent (Roth, 2011) and Red Rising (Brown, 2014). The chapter explores the role of this fiction in cultural imaginings of social control, repression and resistance, and argues for greater criminological attention to novels, including bestselling fiction.
Joshua Armstrong
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781786942012
- eISBN:
- 9781789629897
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786942012.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The Conclusion summarizes the most prominent aspects of the spatial crisis of globalized capitalism, as these have been encountered in the corpus. It draws parallels between these and current ...
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The Conclusion summarizes the most prominent aspects of the spatial crisis of globalized capitalism, as these have been encountered in the corpus. It draws parallels between these and current events—including U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate, and his creation of a Space Force. It draws the conclusion that French novels written in the second decade of the new millennium—post-2008-recession, perhaps—become increasingly dystopian, as they move away from the personal existential crises of protagonists finding themselves awkwardly lost in translation toward portraits of societies at large facing more palpably existential threats (financial collapse, war). Indeed, a host of more recent novels depict the near-future demise of the Fifth Republic, if not of France (as a nation) itself. However, these near-future dystopian versions of France also become the occasion for social awakenings and revolution. This is demonstrated by a brief reading of Marie Darriuessecq’s Notre vie dans les forêts (2017).Less
The Conclusion summarizes the most prominent aspects of the spatial crisis of globalized capitalism, as these have been encountered in the corpus. It draws parallels between these and current events—including U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate, and his creation of a Space Force. It draws the conclusion that French novels written in the second decade of the new millennium—post-2008-recession, perhaps—become increasingly dystopian, as they move away from the personal existential crises of protagonists finding themselves awkwardly lost in translation toward portraits of societies at large facing more palpably existential threats (financial collapse, war). Indeed, a host of more recent novels depict the near-future demise of the Fifth Republic, if not of France (as a nation) itself. However, these near-future dystopian versions of France also become the occasion for social awakenings and revolution. This is demonstrated by a brief reading of Marie Darriuessecq’s Notre vie dans les forêts (2017).
Andrew Thacker
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780748633470
- eISBN:
- 9781474459754
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633470.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter analyses how modernism in Berlin vacillates between utopian and dystopian modes and moods from the end of the nineteenth century to the conclusion of the Weimar years in 1933. It argues ...
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This chapter analyses how modernism in Berlin vacillates between utopian and dystopian modes and moods from the end of the nineteenth century to the conclusion of the Weimar years in 1933. It argues that the culture of modernism in the city is marked by the twin features of spaciousness and restlessness. It analyses the rise of Expressionism as a dominant form in the city, linking its particular mood to the technological modernity embraced by Berlin in the early twentieth century. It illustrates these arguments by considering how Expressionist artists (e.g. Ludwig Meidner) represented a particular space in the city (Potsdamer Platz), before discussing work by Walter Ruttmann, Alfred Döblin, the expatriate Russian community (e.g. Viktor Shklovsky), and the American magazine, Broom. It then discusses cafés and queer spaces in work by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. It concludes by analysing the geographical emotions prompted by Berlin in two important memoirs by English visitors to the city: Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin and Bryher’s The Heart to Artemis.Less
This chapter analyses how modernism in Berlin vacillates between utopian and dystopian modes and moods from the end of the nineteenth century to the conclusion of the Weimar years in 1933. It argues that the culture of modernism in the city is marked by the twin features of spaciousness and restlessness. It analyses the rise of Expressionism as a dominant form in the city, linking its particular mood to the technological modernity embraced by Berlin in the early twentieth century. It illustrates these arguments by considering how Expressionist artists (e.g. Ludwig Meidner) represented a particular space in the city (Potsdamer Platz), before discussing work by Walter Ruttmann, Alfred Döblin, the expatriate Russian community (e.g. Viktor Shklovsky), and the American magazine, Broom. It then discusses cafés and queer spaces in work by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. It concludes by analysing the geographical emotions prompted by Berlin in two important memoirs by English visitors to the city: Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin and Bryher’s The Heart to Artemis.
