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Anticapitalist Utopias and Neotopias

Geoff Mulgan

in The Locust and the Bee: Predators and Creators in Capitalism's Future

This chapter studies the radical alternatives that can be found in the traditions of utopian thinking that have offered fully formed alternatives to a flawed present, from Thomas More to Ursula ... More

This chapter studies the radical alternatives that can be found in the traditions of utopian thinking that have offered fully formed alternatives to a flawed present, from Thomas More to Ursula LeGuin, and from William Morris to Ivan Efremov. Utopias are one of the ways societies imagine alternative futures, and many utopians put their ideas into practice too, creating islands of the future. Then as now they were healthy antidotes to the lazy pessimism which claims that all attempts at progress are futile. If utopias are worlds where predators have been eliminated, dystopias are ones where they rule. But utopias both promise too much and deliver too little, their greatest weakness now as in the past being that they lack an account of how change will happen.Less

Kingdoms of This World: Millennial Literature as Reflective Dissonance

Thomas O Beebee

in Millennial Literatures of the Americas, 1492-2002

Literature has not neglected the fact that millennial expectations have hitherto always been defeated. Leon Festinger developed his theory of cognitive dissonance in part to explain the persistence ... More

Literature has not neglected the fact that millennial expectations have hitherto always been defeated. Leon Festinger developed his theory of cognitive dissonance in part to explain the persistence of belief in the face of disconfirmed prophecy. This chapter examines numerous literary examples of defeated millennium under the hypothesis that literature replaces cognitive dissonance with what I call reflective dissonance. It analyzes fictional texts’ rhetorics of reflection vs. persuasion, the types of possible worlds they construct, and the contribution these make to millennial discourse in the Americas. Three types of millennial defeat are posited: 1) defeated millennium nearly always takes historical examples as its objects of mimesis, and thus simply documents the defeats of millennial outbreaks by real-world forces; 2) pseudo-millennium shrinks millennial activity down to a simulation exercise, as in Ahab’s elevation of a whale hunt to a “final battle” between good and evil; and 3) dystopic millennium allows the millennial movement to “succeed,” but with a result far from the joy and plenitude promised by Revelation, and with the eschatechnologies of the New Order resembling those of a prison.Less

Toward a Fascist Culture

Ruth Ben-Ghiat

in Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945

This chapter discusses the evolution of the Benito Mussolini regime's patronage structure and examines how Italians' critiques of foreign mass societies played a role in the definition of fascist ... More

This chapter discusses the evolution of the Benito Mussolini regime's patronage structure and examines how Italians' critiques of foreign mass societies played a role in the definition of fascist models of modernity. Mussolini's 1927 Ascension Day speech clarified the larger goals that inspired visions of collective change in Italy, presenting domestic and foreign policy measures as two sides of one totalitarian vision of national regeneration. The concern with degeneration that pervades this speech also stemmed from Mussolini's fears of a subversion of racial hierarchies. This chapter suggests that it was the dystopias of Russia, America, and Germany that Italians hoped to avoid.Less

Epilogue: Presentist Dystopias or the Case for Environmental Humanities

Anne Fuchs

in Precarious Times: Temporality and History in Modern German Culture

This epilogue connects the analysis of time and temporality with a broader perspective on the future direction of the humanities. In 2017, the renowned German writer Juli Zeh published Leere Herzen ... More

This epilogue connects the analysis of time and temporality with a broader perspective on the future direction of the humanities. In 2017, the renowned German writer Juli Zeh published Leere Herzen (Empty Hearts), a dystopian novel that imagines life in postdemocratic Germany and Europe. Zeh's novel does not rank among her highest literary achievements. From a temporal perspective, however, Leere Herzen is an intriguing novel: it places what one might call a “plausible dystopia” within close reach of the disillusioned age. Dystopia no longer designates the final apocalyptic catastrophe that dramatically unfolds in the distant future but rather the gradual erosion of democracy in the here and now. By radically shrinking the temporal gap between now and the future, Zeh's dystopia suspends the future perfect as an enabling perspective that can mobilize preventative action. By contrast to the apocalyptic staging of the tipping point that terminates life on this planet, presentist dystopias envisage the future as unfolding incrementally and cumulatively in the extended present.Less

The Dawn of Quantum Information

Gershon Kurizki and Goren Gordon

in The Quantum Matrix: Henry Bar's Perilous Struggle for Quantum Coherence

Henry and Eve have finally tested their quantum computer (QC) with resounding success! It may enable much faster and better modelling of complex pharmaceutical designs, long-term weather forecasts or ... More

Henry and Eve have finally tested their quantum computer (QC) with resounding success! It may enable much faster and better modelling of complex pharmaceutical designs, long-term weather forecasts or brain process simulations than classical computers. A 1,000-qubit QC can process in a single step 21000 possible superposition states: its speedup is exponential in the number of qubits. Yet this wondrous promise requires overcoming the enormous hurdle of decoherence, which is why progress towards a large-scale QC has been painstakingly slow. To their dismay, their QC is “expropriated for the quantum revolution” in order to share quantum information among all mankind and thus impose a collective entangled state of mind. They set out to foil this totalitarian plan and restore individuality by decohering the quantum information channel. The appendix to this chapter provide a flavor of QC capabilities through a quantum algorithm that can solve problems exponentially faster than classical computers.Less

Posthuman Potential and Ecological Limit in Future Worlds

Phoebe Chen

in Posthumanism in Young Adult Fiction: Finding Humanity in a Posthuman World

Phoebe Chen analyzes three representative YA dystopic novels in which characters face ecological disaster and finds them lacking, inadequate to address posthumanist possibilities. Ecological ... More

Phoebe Chen analyzes three representative YA dystopic novels in which characters face ecological disaster and finds them lacking, inadequate to address posthumanist possibilities. Ecological posthumanism stresses connections—between self and Other, human and environment, present and past—erasing borders that constitute liberal humanism. Earth Girl, Of Beast and Beauty, and Orleans all feature female protagonists living in ruined eco-systems whose subjectivities are massively influenced by their environments. Jarra, as an archaeologist on Earth, heals through recovery of the past; Isra reclaims the human traits of compassion and sacrifice to embrace the Other; and Fen survives (for a while) in the flooded streets of Orleans by embedding herself into the environment, thus losing her posthuman dignity. Chen describes such novels as being an “imaginative platform” for speculating about being human in ruined environments, a likelihood we all will face.Less

Fahrenheit 451 in Contexts

David Seed

in Ray Bradbury

This chapter analyzes Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and its dystopian contexts. The novel widely is recognized as a classic among postwar American dystopias. It belongs in that body of science ... More

This chapter analyzes Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and its dystopian contexts. The novel widely is recognized as a classic among postwar American dystopias. It belongs in that body of science fiction published just after the Second World War, which gradually took over the function of social criticism previously performed by realist fiction. The novel shares an overall pattern common to two of the most famous dystopias of the period: Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth's The Space Merchants and Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano (1952). All three novels focus on a protagonist working within an organization with which he becomes increasingly dissatisfied. Under the impact of a catalytic character or event, these dissatisfactions gradually come to a head and result in final separation from that organization.Less

Dystopias

in Special Relations: The Americanization of Britain?

This chapter deals with the different genres of dystopias. Television significantly played in the antimodern warnings of cultural crisis and visions of future dystopia. Cultural damage from the left ... More

This chapter deals with the different genres of dystopias. Television significantly played in the antimodern warnings of cultural crisis and visions of future dystopia. Cultural damage from the left as well as the right in both the United States and Britain were anticipated from the start of the television era. The media-promoted and politician-massaged concern about rising crime rates was a transatlantic phenomenon. CBS put together a conference of social scientists to assess “ways and means of securing realistic estimates of the different effects of exposure to television violence” in 1969. By 1970, there was a speedily rising concern in Britain about urban violence. Furthermore, a group of British political scientists maintained that the British environmental movement was a distinct phenomenon less driven by “hysteria”.Less

Colonial Utopias/Dystopias

Lyman Tower Sargent

in The Oxford History of the Novel in English: Volume 9: The World Novel in English to 1950

This chapter explores colonial utopias/dystopias. Utopianism and colonialism have had direct connections from the time Thomas More inadvertently created a genre of literature when he published what ... More

This chapter explores colonial utopias/dystopias. Utopianism and colonialism have had direct connections from the time Thomas More inadvertently created a genre of literature when he published what is now known as his Utopia, in 1516. Utopia reflected the process of exploration taking place in the early sixteenth century that resulted in the discovery of the lands that were to become colonies. Colonists generally have the expectation of achieving a much better life by settling, while producing an actual dystopia for the original inhabitants. While the colonists did not always find what they expected, they were often led to settle by clearly utopian projections of what life would be like in the new place. Those settlers who had the leisure to write about their hopes for the future in the new place sometimes depicted what that place might look like in the future.Less

Societies of the Possible

Vlad P. Glăveanu

in The Possible: A Sociocultural Theory

This chapter uses the core concepts of position, perspective, and dialogue to analyze the workings of society. From this standpoint, we cannot conceive the possible outside of a societal framework ... More

This chapter uses the core concepts of position, perspective, and dialogue to analyze the workings of society. From this standpoint, we cannot conceive the possible outside of a societal framework given the fact that societies, all over the world and across historical time, comprise a variety of positions and, through the accumulation and transmission of culture, allow the development of perspectives, including on society itself. At the same time, societies are constantly transformed by the sense of possibility that fuels social change, activism, and the imaginative construction of the future in utopias and dystopias. Democratic systems, built on plurality and dialogue, tend in principle to expand the possible for individuals and communities adopting them. And yet democracies, as both a form of government and a way of living, are inherently fragile. In the end, societies of the possible are both an ontological condition for human communal living and a reality that should not be taken for granted.Less