Reading the Dystopian Short Story Jessica Norledge
Chapter 2: A Poetics of Dystopia
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- Navigate this page:
- 2.1 Dystopia: Introducing the Genre
- 2.2 Mapping the Dystopian Impulse
- 2.2.1 The Critical Utopia
- 2.2.2 The Rise of the Critical Dystopia
- 2.2.3 Ecodystopia
- 2.3 Dystopia: Influences and Characteristics
- 2.3.1 Dystopia, Science Fiction and Satire
Chapter 2: A Poetics of Dystopia
In this chapter, I present a general overview of existing literary critical work on the dystopian genre, with particular focus upon the genre’s literary historical development and the stylistic characteristics attributed to the form. I map the key developments of the dystopian genre and situate the focal texts for this thesis within their broader literary and historical contexts. In sections 2.1 and 2.2, I introduce the definitions and literary heritage of dystopian literature. I map the dystopian impulse, from the early representations of H. G. Wells and Samuel Butler through to the rise of the critical dystopia in the 1980s. In 2.4, I move on to discuss the twenty-first century dystopia, as represented in evolving forms of literary discourse, film and videogame narratives. I pay particular attention to the burgeoning sub-genre of Young Adult (YA) dystopian fiction and discuss the collective impact these narratives have had on the development and reception of present-day dystopian worlds. In 2.5, I examine the focal medium of this study, the dystopian short story, which has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, and introduce the four dystopian short stories discussed in this thesis: George Saunders’ ([2012] 2014g) ‘The Semplica Girl Diaries’; Paolo Bacigalupi’s ([2008] 2010a) ‘Pump Six’; Genevieve Valentine’s ([2009] 2012) ‘Is this your day to join the Revolution?’; and Adam Marek’s ([2009] 2012b) ‘Dead Fish’. I conclude this chapter by discussing the critical limitations of existing dystopian theory resulting from the rigid parameters of its periodic structure, and its particular disregard for the human experience of reading dystopian fiction. I look towards a cognitive poetics of dystopia, which will be further developed in Chapter 3, which moves beyond such limitations and proposes a more systematic method for investigating dystopian texts. 2.1 Dystopia: Introducing the Genre The term ‘dystopia’ is derived from the word ‘utopia’, which was originally coined in 1516 for the title of Thomas More’s seminal novel of the same name, Utopia (More, [1516] 2012). The word ‘utopia’ itself is taken from the Greek ‘où’ (ou-), meaning ‘not’ and ‘τόπος’ (topos), meaning ‘place’, translating into English as ‘no-place’ or ‘nowhere’ – the original title of More’s work being ‘Nusquama’ (translated from Latin as ‘Nowhereland’) (Wilde, 2016: 11; see also Baker-Smith, 2011). More’s Utopia, which takes for its focus a metafictional interaction between the fictional character, Thomas More, and Raphael Hythloday, concerns the ‘social evils of the sixteenth century’ and the contrasting social, political and religious structures of the commonwealth of ‘Utopia’ (Bruce, [1999] 2008: xx). The fictional city, ‘Utopia’, in its presentation of ‘communist equality’, stood in opposition to the apparent injustice and disorder of sixteenth-century England, and by doing so Utopia gave More a platform from which to philosophise on the characteristics of the perfect state (see Bruce, [1999] 2008: xxi). As a result, the title Utopia is often viewed as a pun on the Greek word ‘eutopia’, or ‘good place’: ‘εὐ’ (eu-) meaning ‘good’ and ‘τόπος’ (topos) meaning ‘place’ (OED Online, 2016a; ‘eutopia, n’). It is this second meaning which has become most generally associated with both the novel itself and the term’s broader denotations. For example, by the seventeenth century, the word had developed in relation to the ‘eutopian’ etymological root to characterise a hypothetical place or social structure in which everything is perfect (see OED Online, 2016d: ‘utopia, n’), and by the eighteenth century was used to define real-world idylls. ‘Dystopia’, which was reportedly coined by J. S. Mill during a speech in Hansard Commons in 1868, is generally viewed as the antonymic form of ‘eutopia’, essentially meaning ‘bad place’ given the denotations of the ‘dys’ prefix (see OED Online, 2016b: ‘dystopia, n’). However, as argued by Stockwell (2000b: 211), ‘dystopia is not the opposite of utopia. The contrary of utopia (no place) is our reality (this place); dystopia is a dis-placement of our reality.’ Stockwell (2000b: 211) draws upon the etymological roots of the original ‘utopian’ (rather than ‘eutopian’) form to categorise dystopian fictions as ‘extensions of our base-reality, closely related to it or caricatures of it, rather than being disjunctive alternatives’. Despite there being many early examples of dystopian writings, such as Samuel Butler’s ([1872] 2006) Erehwon or Wells’ (1895) The Time Machine, it was not until the early 1950s that the term ‘dystopia’ was used to describe a world, future, or system that was in itself ‘dystopian’, that is, of dystopian quality or pertaining to dystopian characteristics (see OED Online, 2016b: ‘dystopia, n’; also Gottleib, 2001: 4). Dystopian literature as a genre is therefore perceived as a twentieth-century phenomenon, as a response not only to the unrealised utopian visions of past centuries (such as those of Thomas More’s Utopia ([1516] 2012), Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis ([1627] 2008) or Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines ([1668] 2008)), but to the terrors of the current generation (see Moylan, 2000: xi). Fuelled by a ‘hundred years of exploitation, repression, state violence, war; genocide, disease, famine, ecocide, depression [and] debt’ (Moylan, 2000: xi), dystopian accounts enacted a critical response to the ‘inadequacies’ (Booker, 1994: 20) and instability of contemporary society post-World-War-I. Works such as Orwell’s ([1949] 2000) Nineteen Eighty-Four, Huxley’s (1932) Brave New World and Zamyatin’s We ([1924] 1993) responded critically to such contemporary insecurity, taking distanced perspectives on real-world anxieties (Bowering, 1968; Calder, 1976; Kern, 1988; Woodcock, 1972). These twentieth-century narratives came to be seen as ‘classic’ forms of dystopian writing and to this day dominate the generalised view of the dystopian genre. They continue to influence new and evolving dystopian narratives, ranging from Suzanne Collins’ (2008) The Hunger Games to Margaret Atwood’s (2015) The Heart Goes Last, which at their cores depict undesirable future worlds that stand as antonymic forms of stereotypical utopian ideals. To date, dystopian narratives have reflected on a range of social, cultural and political concerns as inspired by their authors’ world-views. They have represented societal fears of technological development (see Bradbury, [1953] 2010; Forster, [1909] 2011); scientific advancement (for example, Atwood, [2003] 2004; Huxley, 1932); theocracy (see Butler, 1993; Jordan, 2012; Morrow, 2012); infertility (for instance Atwood, 1996; James, 1992; Rogers, 2011); democracy (see Collins, 2008; Lu, 2011; Orwell, [1949] 2013); concerns for the ecosystem (as seen in Atwood, 2009, 2013; Bacigalupi, 2009, 2010c, 2015b; Ballard, [1962] 2006; Bertagna, 2002; Cline, [2011] 2012); population growth (see Ballard, [2011] 2012; Malley, [2008] 2012); urban decline (for example, DuPrau, 2003, 2004; Howey, 2013); disease (see Brookes, [2006] 2012; Dashner, 2009; Ryan, 2009); and the growing power of the internet (Eggers, 2013; Pynchon, [2013] 2014). Each of these subjects highlights a salient political, cultural, ideological or social warning about contemporary ‘trends that need to be averted’ (Stockwell, 2000b: 211). Dystopian worlds are therefore purposefully refracted, presenting recognisable yet transformed imaginary worlds that can be in some way connected to a specific ‘real-world’ spatio-temporal present. 2.2 Mapping the Dystopian Impulse In mapping the dystopian impulse, it is first necessary to outline the relationship between dystopian and utopian writing, given ‘the push and pull between utopian and dystopian perspectives’ (Gottleib, 2001: 131) present in many dystopian texts. The rise and fall of each form is often linked by literary critics to particular historical events and the ideological, political and social attitudes of a particular time. In this section, I offer a brief chronology of the literary historical development of dystopian fiction moving away from the ‘new maps of hell’ (Amis, 1960), which developed after the Second World War, to the resurgence of utopian thought in the 1960s and ’70s, and the rise of the critical dystopia in the late 1980s. It should be noted that such a history is based primarily on western dystopian thinking and Anglo-American dystopian literature in particular; a broader literary theoretical discussion of the genre, such as that offered by Gottleib (2001), is beyond the scope of this thesis. 2.2.1 The Critical Utopia Following the classic dystopias or ‘anti-utopias’ (see Kumar, 1987; Moylan, 2000; Sargent, 1975) of the early twentieth century, utopian fiction returned to favour in the 1960s with the writings of Russ (see for example, The Female Man (1975)), Le Guin (for example The Dispossessed ([1974] 2002)), Piercy (for example, Woman On the Edge of Time ([1976] 2016)) and Delany (see Trouble on Triton (1976)), amongst others, reclaiming utopianism under a new literary theoretical heading – ‘critical utopia’ (see Baccolini and Moylan, 2003: 2; Ferns, [1931] 1999: 202-237; Moylan, 1986: 10). Moylan offers the most complete definition of this hybrid utopian form noting that: a central concern in the critical utopia is the awareness of the limitations of the utopian tradition, so that these texts reject utopia as blueprint while preserving it as dream. Furthermore the novels dwell on the conflict between the originary world and the utopian society opposed to it so that the process of social change is more directly articulated. Finally, the novels focus on the continuing presence of difference and imperfection within utopian society itself and thus render more recognizable and dynamic alternatives. (Moylan, 1986:10-11) Moylan (1986: 10) discusses the critical utopia here, both as the ‘destruction’ of and the ‘transformation’ of the original utopian form into a more ‘subversive’ and ‘radical’ genre, that reflected more accurately on the surrounding historical-social environment of the time. In this respect, the critical utopia was driven by the ‘politics of autonomy, democratic socialism, ecology, and especially feminism’ (Moylan, 1986: 11) that shaped the 1960s and ’70s. For Prettyman (2011: 339), the increased social relevance of the critical utopia was achieved through experimentation with ‘increased realism’ and a ‘decreased distance between real life and the utopian society’, supporting Moylan’s (1986) assertions that the form more directly addressed the processes of social and political change within the real-world present of its authors. The ability of the anti-utopians to portray utopian visions that were critical of the real-world present, yet able to map potential futures built on ‘principles of autonomy, mutual aid, and equality’, was the strength of the genre – refracting the social systems of the present-day to advocate ‘other ways of living in the world’ (Moylan, 1986: 26-27). Despite the success of the form, by the 1980s, dystopia was once again popular and the utopianism of the past two decades inspired yet another shift in the fictional representation of possible future worlds, triggering what came to be known as the ‘dystopian turn’, and the rise of the ‘critical dystopia’. 2.2.2 The Rise of the Critical Dystopia The critical dystopia stood both in opposition to the dystopian visions of the early twentieth century, which were unreservedly nightmarish by design, and the earlier utopian ideals from which ‘its politically enabling stance derives’ (Jameson, 2005: 198). The term was first coined by Sargent (1994) in relation to texts such as Piercy’s ([1991] 2016) He, She and It, which he argued presented both utopian and dystopian tendencies (see Moylan, 2000: 187-88). As a merged form of utopia and dystopia, critical dystopias maintained a sense of utopian hope within their presentation of negatively refracted futures, both as regards a hopeful ending for the texts’ protagonists and also for the reader in relation to their own real-world futures. As argued by Baccolini and Moylan (2003: 7), ‘the new critical dystopias allow both readers and protagonists to hope by resisting closure: the ambiguous, open endings of these novels maintain the utopian impulse within the work’ (emphasis in original). They argue that by resisting the subjugation of the protagonist and leaving the characters to contend with their own roles and choices (Baccolini, 2004: 521), the critical dystopia ‘opens a space of contestation and opposition for those “ex-centric” subjects whose class, gender, race, sexuality, and other positions are not empowered by hegemonic rule’ (Baccolini and Moylan, 2003: 7). Within this body of work, there are several sub-strands which exemplify the social and political contestations Baccolini and Moylan mention, such as feminist dystopia (see Baccolini, 2000; Cavalcanti, 1999) and ecodystopia (Otto, 2012). Given the applicability of the ecodystopian label to the texts I examine in this thesis, and the clear ecocritical interests of Bacigalupi and Marek in particular, I will briefly detail the characteristics of the ecodystopia, both in terms of its literary historical roots and as a useful bridge to the dystopias of the twenty-first century. 2.2.3 Ecodystopia Ernest Callenbach coined the term ‘Ecotopia’ for the title of his 1975 novel Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston, which is argued to be one of the first examples of an ecological utopia and which gave its name to the genre as a result (Mathiesen, 2001). In recent years, the term has been applied to texts that focus primarily on environmental and ecological concerns that are presented in terms of utopian ideals or conversely that are refracted within dystopian worlds as ecodystopias. According to Barnhill (2011: 126), ecotopias may therefore take up topics such as ‘sufficiency, high quality of life, egalitarianism, communitarianism, libertarianism, radical democracy, decentralization, appropriate technology, an affirmation that the natural world has intrinsic value, a sense of identification with nature, and a critique of the degradation of ecological systems’. Such texts aim to challenge current environmental and environmental-social concerns within the reader’s real world and invite critical responses to the reader’s real-world present, articulating ‘the desire for a better way of being’ (Levitas, 1990: 221; see also Sargisson, 2007). Under this view, ecotopianism, in Dunlap’s (2013: 2) terms, acts as a ‘vehicle for positive social change’. Otto (2012) defines ecodystopian worlds as negative refractions of present and future worlds that critically engage with such thematic concerns. He argues that ecodystopian science fiction posits a series of frightening worlds not disengaged from the now but instead very much extrapolated out of some current and real, anti-ecological trend – whether that trend is social, scientific, economic, religious, or a combination of these and others rehearsed daily in the contemporary order of things. (Otto, 2012: 50) For Otto, the ecodystopia is able to contend with such themes and issue warnings about real-world ecological trends in a way that the ecotopia cannot, so as to present ‘extended reflections on the issues that give rise to deep ecological sentiments, including over population, species extinction and air and water pollution’ (Otto, 2012: 50). In examining Brunner’s ([1972] 2016) The Sheep Look Up and Stand on Zanzibar ([1968] 2013) in particular, Otto (2012) aligns the ecodystopia with critical dystopianism (despite these texts’ publication pre-1980). He goes on to claim, however, that such texts (as evidenced by Brunner’s narratives) reflect more on ‘ecotopian (im)possibility’ rather than utopian hope, ‘stimulating new, more ecologically and socially conscious ways of thinking and being in the world’ (Otto, 2012: 50). Indeed, as argued by Schulzke (2014: 324), some of the most affective critical dystopias are those which resist the possibility of hope. The ecodystopian form has been significantly developed in recent years with the publication of texts such as Oryx and Crake (Atwood, [2003] 2004), The Year of the Flood (Atwood, 2009) and MaddAddam (Atwood, 2013); The Maze Runner (Dashner, 2009), The Scorch Trials (Dashner, [2010] 2011) and The Death Cure (Dashner, [2011] 2012); Mike Carey’s The Girl with all the Gifts (2014); The City of Ember (Du Prau, 2004a); New York 2140 (Robinson, 2017); The Sunlight Pilgrims (Fagan, 2016); ‘The End of the Whole Mess’ (King, 2007); and Ready Player One (Cline, [2011] 2012). Such texts take up a range of ecotopian concerns and present them within the boundaries of dystopian worlds. The ‘degradation of ecological systems’ (Barnhill, 2011: 126), for example, is a prominent theme within all of the latter texts, which take up such anxieties as climate change, pollution and biological warfare. As argued by Buell (2003: 246), ‘today, attempts to imagine the future realistically forces one to take environmental and environmental-social crisis seriously’, and this view is certainly reflected within such ecodystopian fictions, particularly those of the twenty-first century which I go on to examine in Section 2.4. 2.3 Dystopia: Influences and Characteristics Throughout the last three sections, focus has been placed upon the chronological evolution of dystopian texts. I have mapped the key historical shifts between utopian, dystopian, critical utopian and critical dystopian writing that have determined contemporary understanding of the dystopian genre. Before moving on to look at current manifestations of dystopia, however, I will first examine the style of dystopian texts and the influence of both science fictional and satirical discourse upon the stylistic development of the genre. 2.3.1 Dystopia, Science Fiction and Satire Science fiction, in Butor’s (1971: 162) terms, is ‘a form which is not only capable of revealing profoundly new themes, but capable of integrating all the themes of old literature’ and can be traced from numerous literary sources, including but not restricted to, ‘the amazing voyages of the early modern period, the utopian narratives of the sixteenth century, the scientific romances of the nineteenth century, the science fictional novels of imperial Britain, or the pulp stories and paperbacks of the neo-imperial United States’ (Moylan, 2000: 4). However, as argued by critics such as Merril (1972), Cansler (1972) and Stockwell (2000b), science fiction, like dystopian fiction, is in essence a twentieth-century phenomenon, with the 1940s and ’50s being particularly recognised as its ‘Golden Age’ (see Stockwell, 2000b: 9; Hrotic, 2014). Concerned primarily with the developments of science and technology, science fiction ‘evolved in parallel to these developments’ (Hrotic, 2014: 997-998) to address a broad range of topics, including space and time travel, future worlds, alternate species, robotics, genetics and artificial intelligence, to name but a few. Central to all such speculative visions, however, is the representation of a world and/or world-view that is in some way distinct from that of the author (see Aldiss and Wingrove, 1986; James, 1994; Hrotic, 2014 for detailed histories of the genre). Stockwell (2000b: 203) argues that all science fiction has an aspect of ‘alternativity’ that differentiates its worlds from the world of the reader and ‘possesses a fundamentally powerful capacity for altering readers’ perceptions and habits of interpretation’. Such a relationship between the world of the text and the world of the reader is, for Stockwell (2000b: 204), a fundamental aspect of science fiction’s poetics and a defining feature of what he terms a science fictional ‘architext’ (see also Genette, [1979] 1992; [1997] 1982). Stockwell notes that: though all science fiction has the capacity as an essential part of its generic make-up to alter readers’ paradigms, only those which explicitly make use of this feature can be considered as architexts. An architext is any science fictional narrative which configures a fully worked-out, rich world, and also provides stylistic cues that encourage a mapping of the whole textual universe with the reader’s reality. (Stockwell, 2000b: 204) (emphasis in original) Dystopian texts are one of the four key text types that Stockwell (2000b: 204) categorises as a ‘main architextual template in science fiction’, alongside utopias, post-apocalyptic fictions and ergodic literature. By presenting believable future worlds that offer refracted visions of the author’s environment, dystopian architexts work to alter readers’ perceptions of the real world through the often satirical refraction of recognisable present-day referents, in terms of specific objects, characters and broader thematic concerns. According to Booker (1994: 19), although dystopias present distinct future worlds, ‘it is usually clear that the real referents of dystopian fictions are generally quite concrete and near-at-hand’ in relation to the situation of the author. For Baccolini (2003: 115), dystopian fictions are therefore necessarily and ‘immediately rooted in history’. She argues that by critiquing the society of the writer and the history that shapes its development, dystopian fictions show ‘how our present may negatively evolve’ (Baccolini, 2003: 115; see also Pfaelzer, 1980: 62) through the depiction of future ‘deficiencies’ (Ross, 1991: 143). In responding to a particular historical moment, dystopian fictions often draw upon satirical discursive practices to attack or reflect upon a particular real-world referent. According to Simpson (2003: 1), ‘satirical texts are understood as utterances which are inextricably bound up with context of situation, with participants in discourse and with frameworks of knowledge’. Given the context-sensitive nature of dystopian literature and its ‘didactic intent to address the Ideal Reader’s moral sense and reason’ (Gottlieb, 2001: 15), the genre certainly ties in with Simpson’s definition. Simpson notes that as a discourse practice: satire requires a genus, which is a derivation in a particular culture, in a system of institutions and in the frameworks of belief and knowledge which envelop and embrace these institutions. It also requires an impetus, which emanates from a perceived disapprobation, by the satirist, of some aspect of a potential satirical target. (Simpson, 2003: 8) (emphasis in original) In terms of dystopian fiction, the genus would, in the main, derive from the beliefs and attitudes of a particular culture, society or ‘community of practice’. The term community of practice is here taken from sociolinguistics to refer to ‘an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in some common endeavor’ (Eckert and McConnell-Ginnett, 1992a: 8; also Eckert, 2000; Eckert and McConnell-Ginnett, 1992b). The impetuses of dystopian fictions are notably far-ranging, with dystopian writers taking up various social, political and cultural issues as base satirical targets. In this respect, the targets of most dystopian satires are what Simpson (2003: 71) refers to as ‘experiential’ targets: targets aimed at ‘more stable aspects of the human condition and experience as opposed to specific episodes and events’. Dystopian satire focuses primarily on society, satirizing ‘both society as it exists, and the utopian aspiration to transform it’ (Ferns, [1931] 1999: 109; Gottleib 2001: 15). As such, experiential targets are often imbued with broader socio-political messages. It is by recognising the relationship between a reader’s environment and a particular dystopian world – the relationship between satiree and the satirsed target – that dystopian authors can ‘alter readers’ real-world paradigms’ (Stockwell, 2000b: 204) and project unrealised visions of possible future events. As will be outlined in the following section, these cross-world mappings are made as a result of ‘defamiliarisation’ and ‘cognitive estrangement’, both of which work to further emphasise the target of a particular dystopian world and cement the relationship between the author’s real-world present and the fictional extrapolations posed by a particular text. Download 1.19 Mb. Share with your friends:
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