Annotated Bibliography
Daniels, Margaret, and Heather E. Bowen.
"Feminist Implications of Anti-Leisure in Dystopian Fiction."Journal
of Leisure Research 35.4
(2003): 423-440. EBSCOhost.
Database. 29 February 2012.
This research
paper focuses on the restrictions of leisure in dystopian fiction. The authors provide a window with which
to view the worlds famous dystopian authors have
created. The article demonstrates how leisure must be restricted in order to
create an effective dystopia. Leisure is
defined in this essay as personal space, both physical and metaphorical, in which women are allowed to become women in
their own rights. Where they can
pursue objectives, activities, and goals that are more than what they have been told that they can or
should do. A space that is their own, "which they are allowed to fill with whatever persons,
objects, activities, or thoughts that one chooses." The authors discuss specific
examples of women's personal leisure spaces being jeopardized and utilized by dystopian regimes. The four books
that they draw upon are: Margaret
Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World,
Kurt Vonnegut's Player
Piano, and George Orwell's 1984. These two authors demonstrate how these forces of female disempowerment
undermine women's personal leisure spaces.
McAlear, Rob. "The Value of Fear:
Toward a Rhetorical Model of Dystopia." Interdisciplinary
Humanities27.2 (2010): 24-42. EBSCOhost.
Database. 29 February 2012.
This article examines what one
could almost call a formula for creating dystopian literature. The author first differentiates dystopia
from utopia by looking at the author's intentions
and anagogical analyses of the two different genres. Dystopian literature employs what advertisers call the
"fear appeal". This effective marketing strategy is broken down into three parts by
the author, and expounded upon in depth. Dystopian literature is written specifically in
order to motivate readers into action, normally the intended action is political change. The author explains
that the ways in which we use language
imply a value system. "Dystopias take this value system and extrapolate it
into a nightmarish future in
order to ask us to reflect on the present." The author diagrams the relationship between hope and fear in the
utopian/dystopian world of fiction. By presenting
a rhetorical model, the author gives us a useful tool with which to examine dystopian literature. He uses this model
briefly in order to analyze several different stories.
Ashcroft, Bill. "The Ambiguous
Necessity of Utopia: Post-Colonial Literatures and the Persistence of
Hope."Social Alternatives 28.3
(2009): 8-14.EBSCOhost. Database. 29 February 2012.
The author of
this article looks at the three ambiguities present in common utopian literature. The relationship between
utopia and utopianism, future and memory, and the
individual and the collective. The author argues that utopias are nothing more
than inconsequential abstractions, a parody
of hope. While utopianism is essential to every human being, and inherent in our characters.
Utopianism is hope, it is striving for the future
whereas a utopia is a stagnant, stationary location. "Utopianism cannot
exist without the
operation of memory." Memory is what allows us to recreate and to reach out to a horizon. The individuals in
utopia must all be equal for the betterment of society,
yet this equality is also a common theme in dystopian literature. Through the use of Ernst Bloch's Marxist theories, and
Sir Thomas More's Utopia the author compares
and contrasts these relationships. The author uses post-colonial literatures as
a vehicle for his utopian analysis.
Milner, Andrew. "Archaeologies of the
Future: Jameson's Utopia or Orwell's Dystopia?." Historical Materialism 17.4 (2009): 101-119. EBSCOhost. Database. 29
February 2012.
This research
paper begins with the proposition that Fredric Jameson's Archaeologies of
the Future is the most
important contribution to utopian and science fiction studies. The author states that "Utopia
is the socio-political sub-genre of Science Fiction." Like Ernst Bloch, the author discusses the
utopian impulse that is intrinsic to human nature. There is a taxonomy that exists in the utopian
form, and that is the utopian program
and the utopian impulse. The author
states that the utopian program is the physical manifestations of the utopia. Those things which are seen as
a result of utopia. Whereas the
utopian impulse is the intangible reform.
The author then states that the opposite of utopia is anti-utopia, and the opposite of eutopia is
dystopia. Anti-utopia is the belief that
humans are so inherently flawed that it could never be "salvaged by any heightened consciousness of the
impending dangers." It concludes that both utopias and dystopias use techniques engineered specifically in order
to shock the present and force a
meditation on the impossible.
Hickman, John. "When Science Fiction
Writers Used Fictional Drugs: Rise and Fall of the Twentieth-Century Drug Dystopia." Utopian Studies 20.1 (2009): 141-170. EBSCOhost. Database. 29
February 2012.
This article
examines the interesting occurrence in dystopian literature of pharmacology. Pharmacology is the use
of drugs to create or maintain social order. The author compares seven novels in order to examine the effects
of this drug use. The author
questions the possible symbolic meaning of these drugs in the text. Another question that the author poses is why
there are so few drug dystopias. He says that fictional
story telling is used to persuade and provide moral, social, and political instruction. These drug dystopias carry
pertinent warnings about the possible consequences
of "personal and public policy choices, especially those involving new technology." The novels reviewed in
this paper are: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Karin Boye's Kallocain, Hunt Collins' Tomorrow and
Tomorrow, Ira Levin's This Perfect Day,
John Brunner's The Stone that Never came Down, Philip K. Dick's A
Scanner Darkly, and Walter Tevis' Mockingbird.
These novels warn about drugs being used either to demolish the population, or to make it docile. Several specific
evils addressed in these novels
remain pertinent today.
Harel, Naama. "Post Speciesist
Utopias and Dystopias."Interdisciplinary Humanities 27.2 (2010): 111-120.EBSCOhost.
Database. 29 February 2012.
The author makes
an interesting point in this paper, that utopias rarely if ever mention other species. The question she
poses is whether utopia has room for non-human animals.
The author notes several instances in which animals no longer exist in
dystopias due to ecological
disaster. However she also mentions the outstanding example of Gulliver's Travels. In the book,
the protagonist encounters a race of horses that live in utopia. The humans on this same island are
barbaric and illiterate, and hence are avoided
by the superior horse race. As Gulliver begins to tell the horses about the people from his
land, he begins to realize that the European people are not all that different from the degenerate
species that share the horses island. The author states that though the horse's society may be utopian to the horses, it is
far from utopian for all of the species
on that island. The author compares this to Martin Luther King's famous statement, "no one is free
until everyone is free," adding the stipulation, including members of other species. She concludes the
paper by saying, "The distinction between
dystopia and utopia is often in the eye of the beholder, for what some see as working, others see as
failing."
