Critical theory and dystopia

Critical theory and dystopia PDF Author: Patricia McManus
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526139766
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
Critical theory and dystopia offers a uniquely rich study of dystopian fiction, drawing on the insights of critical theory. Asking what ideological work these dark imaginings perform, the book reconstructs the historical emergence, consolidation and transformation of the genre across the twentieth century and into our own, ranging from Yevgeny Zamayatin’s We (1924) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) to Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1963) and Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games series (2000s and 2010s). In doing so, it reveals the political logics opened up or neutered by the successive moments of this dystopian history.

Critical theory and dystopia

Critical theory and dystopia PDF Author: Patricia McManus
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526139766
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
Critical theory and dystopia offers a uniquely rich study of dystopian fiction, drawing on the insights of critical theory. Asking what ideological work these dark imaginings perform, the book reconstructs the historical emergence, consolidation and transformation of the genre across the twentieth century and into our own, ranging from Yevgeny Zamayatin’s We (1924) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) to Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1963) and Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games series (2000s and 2010s). In doing so, it reveals the political logics opened up or neutered by the successive moments of this dystopian history.

Metamodernism

Metamodernism PDF Author: Jason Ananda Josephson Storm
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022678665X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 375

Get Book Here

Book Description
Opening -- Part I. Metarealism. How the real world became a fable, or, The realities of social construction -- Part II. Process social ontology. Concepts in disintegration & strategies for demolition ; Process social ontology ; Social kinds -- Part III. Hylosemiotics. Hylosemiotics : the discourse of things -- Part IV. Knowledge and value. Zetetic knowledge ; The revaluation of values -- Conclusion : becoming metamodern.

Critical Theory and Science Fiction

Critical Theory and Science Fiction PDF Author: Carl Freedman
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819574546
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Book of the Year. This innovative cultural critique offers valuable insights into science fiction, thus enlarging our understanding of critical theory. Carl Freedman traces the fundamental and mostly unexamined relationships between the discourses of science fiction and critical theory, arguing that science fiction is (or ought to be) a privileged genre for critical theory. He asserts that it is no accident that the upsurge of academic interest in science fiction since the 1970s coincides with the heyday of literary theory, and that likewise science fiction is one of the most theoretically informed areas of the literary profession. Extended readings of novels by five of the most important modern science fiction authors illustrate the affinity between science fiction and critical theory, in each case concentrating on one major novel that resonates with concerns proper to critical theory. Freedman's five readings are: Solaris: Stanislaw Lem and the Structure of Cognition; The Dispossessed: Ursula LeGuin and the Ambiguities of Utopia; The Two of Them: Joanna Russ and the Violence of Gender; Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand: Samuel Delany and the Dialectics of Difference; The Man in the High Castle: Philip K. Dick and the Construction of Realities.

Critical Theory and the Thought of Andrew Feenberg

Critical Theory and the Thought of Andrew Feenberg PDF Author: Darrell P. Arnold
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319578979
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume explores Andrew Feenberg’s work in critical theory. Feenberg is considered one of the key ‘second generation’ critical theorists, with a keen interest in philosophy of technology. He has made a vital contribution to critical theory in ways that remain of interest given the pressing technological issues of our time. The authors of this book highlight not only the ways that Feenberg has begun to make good on what is often characterized as “the broken promise of critical theory” to address issues of technology, but also the continued importance of critical theory more generally, and of Feenberg’s contributions to understanding this tradition.

The Myth of Disenchantment

The Myth of Disenchantment PDF Author: Jason Ananda Josephson Storm
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022640336X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Get Book Here

Book Description
A great many theorists have argued that the defining feature of modernity is that people no longer believe in spirits, myths, or magic. Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm argues that as broad cultural history goes, this narrative is wrong, as attempts to suppress magic have failed more often than they have succeeded. Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed. But that raises the question: How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, Josephson-Storm argues, these disciplines’ founding figures were not only aware of, but profoundly enmeshed in, the occult milieu; and it was specifically in response to this burgeoning culture of spirits and magic that they produced notions of a disenchanted world. By providing a novel history of the human sciences and their connection to esotericism, The Myth of Disenchantment dispatches with most widely held accounts of modernity and its break from the premodern past.

Yesterday's Tomorrows

Yesterday's Tomorrows PDF Author: Pere Gallardo
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443858773
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 410

Get Book Here

Book Description
2012 was a year of financial crises and ecological disasters, of endings and forebodings. The world did not end on December 21st as the Mayan calendar predicted, but became the stage for new beginnings, utopian communities, protest groups and solidarity movements. The essays in this book form an intertextual space for negotiating meaningful facts and fictions with an aim to understanding the present. Discussions focus on utopia and dystopia from literature and film, not only within the framework of science fiction but also critical theory, gender politics and social sciences. The authors of these essays are international academics whose interest lies in utopian studies and who attended the 13th International Conference of Utopian Studies, “The Shape of Things to Come”, held in Tarragona, Spain, in 2012.

Modern Dystopian Fiction and Political Thought

Modern Dystopian Fiction and Political Thought PDF Author: Adam Stock
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131732692X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 391

Get Book Here

Book Description
Over the past few years, ‘dystopia’ has become a word with increasing cultural currency. This volume argues that we live in dystopian times, and more specifically that a genre of fiction called "dystopia" has, above others, achieved symbolic cultural value in representing fears and anxieties about the future. As such, dystopian fictions do not merely mirror what is happening in the world: in becoming such a ready referent for discussions about such varied topics as governance, popular culture, security, structural discrimination, environmental disasters and beyond, the narrative conventions and generic tropes of dystopian fiction affect the ways in which we grapple with contemporary political problems, economic anxieties and social fears. The volume addresses the development of the narrative methods and generic conventions of dystopian fiction as a mode of socio-political critique across the first half of the twentieth century. It examines how a series of texts from an age of political extremes contributed to political discourse and rhetoric both in its contemporary setting and in the terms in which we increasingly cast our cultural anxieties. Focusing on interactions between temporality, spatiality and narrative, the analysis unpicks how the dystopian interacts with social and political events, debates and ideas, Stock evaluates modern dystopian fiction as a historically responsive mode of political literature. He argues that amid the terrors and upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century, dystopian fiction provided a unique space for writers to engage with historical and contemporary political thought in a mode that had popular cultural appeal. Combining literary analysis informed by critical theory and the history of political thought with archival-based historical research, this volume works to shed new light on the intersection of popular culture and world politics. It will be of interest to students and scholars in literary studies, cultural and intellectual history, politics and international relations.

The Order and the Other

The Order and the Other PDF Author: Joseph W. Campbell
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496824741
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 151

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the mid- to late 2000s, the United States witnessed a boom in dystopian novels and films intended for young audiences. At that time, many literary critics, journalists, and educators grouped dystopian literature together with science fiction, leading to possible misunderstandings of the unique history, aspects, and functions of science fiction and dystopian genres. Though texts within these two genres may share similar settings, plot devices, and characters, each genre’s value is different because they do distinctively different sociocritical work in relation to the culture that produces them. In The Order and the Other: Young Adult Dystopian Literature and Science Fiction, author Joseph W. Campbell distinguishes the two genres, explains the function of each, and outlines the different impact each has upon readers. Campbell analyzes such works as Lois Lowry’s The Giver and James Dashner’s The Maze Runner, placing dystopian works into the larger context of literary history. He asserts both dystopian literature and science fiction differently empower and manipulate readers, encouraging them to look critically at the way they are taught to encounter those who are different from them and how to recognize and work within or against the power structures around them. In doing so, Campbell demonstrates the necessity of both genres.

Dystopia

Dystopia PDF Author: Gregory Claeys
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191088617
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 569

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Critical Theory and the Digital

Critical Theory and the Digital PDF Author: David M. Berry
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441166394
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
This Critical Theory and Contemporary Society volume re-examines critical theory in light of the challenges raised by today's digital revolution.