Download or read book The Scientific World View in Dystopia written by Alexandra Aldridge and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dystopia written by Gregory Claeys and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-17 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dystopia: A Natural History is the first monograph devoted to the concept of dystopia. Taking the term to encompass both a literary tradition of satirical works, mostly on totalitarianism, as well as real despotisms and societies in a state of disastrous collapse, this volume redefines the central concepts and the chronology of the genre and offers a paradigm-shifting understanding of the subject. Part One assesses the theory and prehistory of 'dystopia'. By contrast to utopia, conceived as promoting an ideal of friendship defined as 'enhanced sociability', dystopia is defined by estrangement, fear, and the proliferation of 'enemy' categories. A 'natural history' of dystopia thus concentrates upon the centrality of the passion or emotion of fear and hatred in modern despotisms. The work of Le Bon, Freud, and others is used to show how dystopian groups use such emotions. Utopia and dystopia are portrayed not as opposites, but as extremes on a spectrum of sociability, defined by a heightened form of group identity. The prehistory of the process whereby 'enemies' are demonised is explored from early conceptions of monstrosity through Christian conceptions of the devil and witchcraft, and the persecution of heresy. Part Two surveys the major dystopian moments in twentieth century despotisms, focussing in particular upon Nazi Germany, Stalinism, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and Cambodia under Pol Pot. The concentration here is upon the political religion hypothesis as a key explanation for the chief excesses of communism in particular. Part Three examines literary dystopias. It commences well before the usual starting-point in the secondary literature, in anti-Jacobin writings of the 1790s. Two chapters address the main twentieth-century texts usually studied as representative of the genre, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The remainder of the section examines the evolution of the genre in the second half of the twentieth century down to the present.
Download or read book The Language of Dystopia written by Jessica Norledge and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-08-29 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an extended account of the language of dystopia, exploring the creativity and style of dystopian narratives and mapping the development of the genre from its early origins through to contemporary practice. Drawing upon stylistic, cognitive-poetic and narratological approaches, the work proposes a stylistic profile of dystopia, arguing for a reader-led discussion of genre that takes into account reader subjectivity and personal conceptualisations of prototypicality. In examining and identifying those aspects of language that characterise dystopian narratives and the experience of reading dystopian fictions, the work discusses in particular the manipulation and construction of dystopian languages, the conceptualisation of dystopian worlds, the reading of dystopian minds, the projection of dystopian ethics, the unreliability of dystopian refraction, and the evolution and hybridity of the dystopian genre.
Download or read book Utopia Social Theory and the Future written by Keith Tester and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-17 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the light of globalization's failure provide the universal panacea expected by some of its more enthusiastic proponents, and the current status of neo-liberalism in Europe, a search has begun for alternative visions of the future; alternatives to the free market and to rampant capitalism. Indeed, although these alternatives may not be conceived of in terms of being a 'perfect order', there does appear to be a trend towards 'utopian thinking', as people - including scholars and intellectuals - search for inspiration and visions of better futures. If, as this search continues, it transpires that politics has little to offer, then what might social theory have to contribute to the imagination of these futures? Does social theory matter at all? What resources can it offer this project of rethinking the future? Without being tied to any single political platform, Utopia: Social Theory and the Future explores some of these questions, offering a timely and sustained attempt to make social theory relevant through explorations of its resources and possibilities for utopian imaginations. It is often claimed that utopian thought has no legitimate place whatsoever in sociological thinking, yet utopianism has remained part and parcel of social theory for centuries. As such, in addition to considering the role of social theory in the imagination of alternative futures, this volume reflects on how social theory may assist us in understanding and appreciating utopia or utopianism as a special topic of interest, a special subject matter, a special analytical focus or a special normative dimension of sociological thinking. Bringing together the latest work from a leading team of social theorists, this volume will be of interest to sociologists, social and political theorists, anthropologists and philosophers.
Download or read book We written by Yevgeny Zamyatin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collectible hardcover centennial edition of the exhilarating Russian dystopian novel of totalitarian mass surveillance that inspired George Orwell's 1984, featuring a foreword by the National Book Award-winning New Yorker journalist Masha Gessen A Penguin Vitae Edition In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful “Benefactor,” the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity—until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: He has an individual soul. Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We is the archetype of the modern dystopia and the forerunner of works such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Suppressed for many years in Russia, it details the fate that might befall us all if we surrender to some collective dream of technology, and remains a resounding cry for individual freedom. Clarence Brown's brilliant translation is based on the corrected text of the novel, first published in Russia in 1988 after more than sixty years' suppression. Penguin Vitae—loosely translated as "Penguin of one's life"—is a deluxe hardcover series from Penguin Classics celebrating a dynamic and diverse landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction from seventy-five years of classics publishing. Penguin Vitae provides readers with beautifully designed classics that have shaped the course of their lives, and welcomes new readers to discover these literary gifts of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.
Download or read book Cold War Stories written by Andrew Hammond and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-08-28 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive study of mainstream British dystopian fiction and the Cold War. Drawing on over 200 novels and collections of short stories, the monograph explores the ways in which dystopian texts charted the lived experiences of the period, offering an extended analysis of authors’ concerns about the geopolitical present and anxieties about the national future. Amongst the topics addressed are the processes of Cold War (autocracy, militarism, propaganda, intelligence, nuclear technologies), the decline of Britain’s standing in global politics and the reduced status of intellectual culture in Cold War Britain. Although the focus is on dystopianism in the work of mainstream authors, including George Orwell, Doris Lessing, J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter and Anthony Burgess, a number of science-fiction novels are also discussed, making the book relevant to a wide range of researchers and students of twentieth-century British literature.
Download or read book Imaginary Communities written by Phillip E. Wegner and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-06-04 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Imaginary Communities is a beautiful treatment of utopian narratives as the quintessential genre for figuring social space in the modern nation-state. Wegner demonstrates a wide-ranging yet lighthanded philosophical learnedness, an urgent political conscience, and a deeply historical sense that narrative utopias are like specters that haunt particular moments of upheaval, crisis, and contradiction within modernity: whether the threshold between the vestiges of feudal agrarian society and early modern English capitalism, conflicts between the new oligarchy of industrializing late 19th c. United States and the increasing militancy of the labor movement, the uneven successes and failures of the Russian Revolution of 1905, or the mid-century Cold War struggles."—Lisa Lowe, author of Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics "In this important book, Wegner argues that the historical work done by utopian narratives should be reconsidered, interrogated, challenged—and continued. Insightful and provocative, Imaginary Communities will prove a valuable contribution to our thinking about the politics of imagination."—Daniel Cottom, author of Cannibals and Philosophers: Bodies of Enlightenment "Phillip Wegner's Imaginary Communities represents a major intervention in our understanding not merely of utopian literature, but the very ways in which we view our world. His concept of utopian narrative as both vision and practice, as participating in "real" worlds, a force for change rooted in the social world "as it is" and as it is becoming and is "imagined," succeeds wonderfully well; his notion of the imperative of "failure" as a resource of hope is deeply humane. He provides a body of work worth thinking through and thinking with. As a historian, I find the historicity of his approach, the literary arch spanning from the origins of the European nation-state to our global present and future, compelling in its ambition and execution. Wegner moves well beyond the more tired moves of "new historicist" literary criticism: this is historicist scholarship in a new key."—James Epstein, author of Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England, 1790-1850
Download or read book Dystopian Fiction East and West written by Erika Gottlieb and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2001 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Erika Gottlieb explores a selection of about thirty works in the dystopian genre from East and Central Europe between 1920 and 1991 in the USSR and between 1948 and 1989 in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.
Download or read book A Companion to the History of Economic Thought written by Warren J. Samuels and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assembling contributions from top thinkers in the field, thiscompanion offers a comprehensive and sophisticated exploration ofthe history of economic thought. The volume has a threefold focus:the history of economic thought, the history of economics as adiscipline, and the historiography of economic thought. Provides sophisticated introductions to a vast array oftopics. Focuses on a unique range of topics, including the history ofeconomic thought, the history of the discipline of economics, andthe historiography of economic thought.
Download or read book Hiroshima written by Andrew J. Rotter and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-02-28 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The US decision to drop an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 remains one of the most controversial events of the twentieth century. However, the controversy over the rights and wrongs of dropping the bomb has tended to obscure a number of fundamental and sobering truths about the development of this fearsome weapon. The principle of killing thousands of enemy civilians from the air was already well established by 1945 and had been practised on numerous occasions by both sides during the Second World War. Moreover, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was conceived and built by an international community of scientists, not just by the Americans. Other nations (including Japan and Germany) were also developing atomic bombs in the first half of the 1940s, albeit hapharzardly. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any combatant nation foregoing the use of the bomb during the war had it been able to obtain one. The international team of scientists organized by the Americans just got there first. As this fascinating new history shows, the bomb dropped by a US pilot that hot August morning in 1945 was in many ways the world's offspring, in both a technological and a moral sense. And it was the world that would have to face its consequences, strategically, diplomatically, and culturally, in the years ahead.
Download or read book A History of the Future written by Peter J. Bowler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-02 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging survey, Peter J. Bowler explores the phenomenon of futurology: predictions about the future development and impact of science and technology on society and culture in the twentieth century. Utilising science fiction, popular science literature and the novels of the literary elite, Bowler highlights contested responses to the potential for revolutionary social change brought about by real and imagined scientific innovations. Charting the effect of social and military developments on attitudes towards innovation in Europe and America, Bowler shows how conflict between the enthusiasm of technocrats and the pessimism of their critics was presented to the public in books, magazines and exhibitions, and on the radio and television. A series of case studies reveals the impact of technologies such as radio, aviation, space exploration and genetics, exploring rivalries between innovators and the often unexpected outcome of their efforts to produce mechanisms and machines that could change the world.
Download or read book Decadences Morality and Aesthetics in British Literature written by Paul Fox and published by ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revised and expanded volume examines the intersections of aesthetics and morality and asks what Decadence means to art and society at various moments in British literature. As time passes, the definition of what it takes to be D/decadent changes. The decline from a higher standard, social malaise, aesthetic ennui – all these ideas presume certain facts about the past, the present, and the linear nature of time itself. To reject the past as a given, and to relish the subtleties of present nuance, is the beginning of Decadence. The conflict underlying the contributions to this collection is that of society's moral contempt vis-a-vis the focus on the fleeting present on part of the purportedly decadent artists; who in turn thought the truly decadent to be the stranglehold society maintained on individual interpretation and the interpretation of oneself.
Download or read book Utopian Dreams Apocalyptic Nightmares written by Miguel López-Lozano and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopian Dreams, Apocalyptic Nightmares traces the history of utopian representations of the Americas, first on the part of the colonizers, who idealized the New World as an earthly paradise, and later by Latin American modernizing elites, who imagined Western industrialization, cosmopolitanism and consumption as a utopian dream for their independent societies. Carlos Fuentes, Homero Aridjis, Carmen Boullosa, and Alejandro Morales utilize the literary genre of dystopian science fiction to elaborate on how globalization has resulted in the alienation of indigenous peoples and the deterioration of the ecology. This book concludes that Mexican and Chicano perspectives on the past and the future of their societies constitute a key site for the analysis of the problems of underdevelopment, social injustice, and ecological decay that plague today's world. Whereas utopian discourse was once used to justify colonization, Mexican and Chicano writers now deploy dystopian rhetoric to interrogate projects of modernization, contributing to the current debate on the global expansion of capitalism. The narratives coincide in expressing confidence in the ability of Latin American and U.S. Latino popular sectors to claim a decisive role in the implementation of enhanced measures to guarantee an ecologically sound, ethnically diverse, and just society for the future of the Americas.
Download or read book Worlds Apart written by Dunja M. Mohr and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2005-06-15 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary critics and scholars have written extensively on the demise of the "utopian spirit" in the modern novel. What has often been overlooked is the emergence of a new hybrid subgenre, particularly in science fiction and fantasy, which incorporates utopian strategies within the dystopian narrative, particularly in the feminist dystopias of the 1980s and 1990s. The author names this new subgenre "transgressive utopian dystopias." Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue trilogy, Suzy McKee Charna's Holdfast series, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale are thoroughly analyzed within the context of this this new subgenre of "transgressive utopian dystopias." Analysis focuses particularly on how these works cover the interrelated categories of gender, race and class, along with their relationship to classic literary dualism and the dystopian narrative. Without completely dissolving the dualistic order, the feminist dystopias studied here contest the notions of unambiguity and authenticity that are generally part of the canon.
Download or read book Crossing Borders written by Bernhard Kettemann and published by Gunter Narr Verlag. This book was released on 1999 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book 3D and Animated Lenticular Photography written by Kim Timby and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-07-31 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars are increasingly investigating photography’s broad cultural role, expanding our understanding of the diversity of photographic practices. Kim Timby contributes to this new history of photography by examining the multifaceted story of images that animate with a flick of the wrist or appear vividly three-dimensional without the use of special devices—both made possible by the lenticular process. Using French case studies, this volume broadly weaves 3D and animated lenticular imagery into scientific and popular culture, from early cinema and color reproduction to the birth of modern advertising and the market for studio portraits, postcards, and religious imagery. The motivations behind the invention and reinvention of this pervasive form of imagery, from the turn of the twentieth century through the end of the pre-digital era, shed new light on our relationship to photographic realism and on the forceful interplay in photography between technological innovation and the desire to be entertained. 3D and Animated Lenticular Photography: Between Utopia and Entertainment is a profusely illustrated and engaging interdisciplinary study of a wide-ranging body of images that have fascinated viewers for generations.
Download or read book Trajectory of the 21st Century written by Lawrence J. Terlizzese and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trajectory of the Twenty-first Century explores what many prophets of the twentieth century, such as Oswald Spengler, Paul Tillich, Aldous Huxley, Jacques Ellul, and others, have predicted would transpire in the current century. Their vision included an out-of-control technological system and a return to religious sentiment that will ultimately undermine the system to which it is reacting. This book aims to accurately present their positions and draw certain logical conclusions from them that pertain to the course of history in our time. The book's theme argues that modernity is a secularized version of millennial Christianity, which reaches its fullest development in the twenty-first century and will regress into what Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev called "the new Middle Ages" or a new religious period. This will mean the twilight of modern technological society, as its values of rationalism give way to a postrationalist society. Ironically, decline will come through further technological advance. Omnicide threatens through religious world war driven by transcendent values and modern weaponry. Jihadist thinking and posthumanist technology both establish the omnicidal mentatlity. New technologies such as genetic engineering and artificial intelligence created under millennial inspiration to reach for immortality could potentially bring an end to the human species either through a slow, steady obsolescence or through environmental catastrophe. The titanic forces of technological progress and regress are on a direct collision course in the twenty-first century.
