Annotated Bibliography

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."