Some of these are anti-utopias, which criticise attempts to implement various concepts of utopia. For example, Claeys and Sargent define literary dystopias as societies imagined as substantially worse than the society in which the author writes. Some scholars, such as Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent, make certain distinctions between typical synonyms of dystopias. For example, the 2004 mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, and Ben Winters' Underground Airlines, in which slavery in the United States continues to the present, with "electronic slave auctions" carried out via the Internet and slaves controlled by electronic devices implanted in their spines, or Keith Roberts Pavane in which 20th Century Britain is ruled by a Catholic theocracy and the Inquisition is actively torturing and burning "heretics". So can other works of Alternative History, in which a historical turning point led to a manifestly repressive world. The entire substantial sub-genre of alternative history works depicting a world in which Nazi Germany won the Second World War can be considered as dystopias. Dystopias, through an exaggerated worst-case scenario, often make a criticism about a current trend, societal norm, or political system. Some authors use the term to refer to existing societies, many of which are, or have been, totalitarian states or societies in an advanced state of collapse. Dystopian societies appear in many sub-genres of fiction and are often used to draw attention to society, environment, politics, economics, religion, psychology, ethics, science, or technology. Other famous examples are Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953). The best known by far is George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Dystopian societies appear in many fictional works and artistic representations, particularly in stories set in the future. Despite certain overlaps, dystopian fiction is distinct from post-apocalyptic fiction, and an undesirable society is not necessarily dystopian.
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Distinct themes typical of a Dystopian Society include: complete control over the people in a society through the usage of propaganda, heavy censoring of information or denial of free thought, worshiping an unattainable goal, the complete loss of individuality, and heavy enforcement of conformity. ĭystopias are often characterized by rampant fear or distress, tyrannical governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society. The relationship between utopia and dystopia is in actuality not one simple opposition, as many utopian elements and components are found in dystopias as well, and vice versa. It is often treated as an antonym of utopia, a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, published in 1516, which created a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence and poverty.
Painting by artist Sebastián Picker.Ī dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place" alternatively cacotopia or simply anti-utopia) is a speculated community or society that is undesirable or frightening.
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Key strategies of utopian and dystopian narrative, the posthuman and intertextual connections to Shakespeare, whose works serve as a literary counterpart to the mass-produced mediality and hedonistic culture of the novel’s World State, are discussed alongside narrative strategies which underline these issues in the text.From the series Examinations of Dystopia. The chapter attempts a reading of the text in the light of recent critical posthumanist theory alongside an overview of critical approaches to the novel, focusing mainly on the framework of feminist and dystopian readings.
This chapter reads Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) in the literary context of early twentieth-century dystopias, arguing that the novel’s criticism of its cultural context focused on the predominantly American technocratic consumer culture Huxley perceived to be on the rise at the time and the possible consequences for humanity, which might result in nothing less than a complete de-humanization and the mass-production of (post-)human beings.
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