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Our current social and economic relations condemn the majority of the world's population to poverty and premature death, and subjects even those who are relatively affluent to forms of alienation, repression and separation, all incompatible with a fully human existence. Living in such world, our sense of utopian possibility is predictably limited, retreating from offering a potential catalyst for change to being a bearer of consolation or a vehicle of criticism. This perhaps explains the dominance of the dystopian mode in contemporary culture where the modern city in particular emerges as a dominant symbol of the incomprehensibility and alienation of modern life, and, paradoxically, as a manifestation of authoritarian order. By focusing on a number of literary and visual texts, this course will attempt to explore the crisis of urban capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world and pose the question of whether an alternative political culture is possible in a world of terror and apathy. We will consider how critical dystopia dominates contemporary culture, articulating perhaps the most effective narrative framework for imagining the dark side of hope in a world that has run out of political ideas and is appears incapable of harboring any utopian vision.
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A WORLD NEITHER BRAVE NOR NEW: UTOPIA, DYSTOPIA AND IDEOLOGY
