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This paper demonstrates how fictional narratives can address ethical and epistemic problems in the creation and conduct of qualitative research. A story about international students with parental responsibilities in the UK is presented. Through this 'performance,' fictional narratives can address issues linked to ethical and epistemic desires. This article contributes to the extant literature on fictional research writing by presenting and interrogating a piece written in response to ethical and epistemic dilemmas in the field. I present the lack of opportunity to meet for a group study to demonstrate how participants can convene in the 'virtual real.' Instead of passively accepting the unfortunate limitations on our interactions and interpretations, I allowed a fictional version of a utopian meeting to 'occur' among us. At the same time, the account itself performs a reflexive dystopian unravelling as I reveal some tacit frameworks and processes that led to its writing. Finally, I discuss the repercussions of desire on the material presentation of research as part of an initiative to address impossibilities in the conduct of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay engages with the inclination of recent ecocritical thought to disqualify postapocalyptic fiction and, often by extension, dystopian fiction from the ranks of those responses to the Anthropocene deemed helpful or appropriate. After a survey of recent antidystopian pronouncements and a discussion of their implications, this essay argues that Antoine Volodine's dark fiction offers tools for imagining why one might assert the validity—if not the productivity—of dark modes of thought. Specifically, it shows how Volodine's darkness explores literary intransitivity and defiant nonpurposiveness, where stark pessimism about the ecological impacts of human life allows for the cultivation of hospitable ideas of a posthuman future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We advocate for the reading of young adult literature (YAL) as a means for justice-oriented education, and we also recognize how the recent surge in challenges to youth-centered texts in the U.S. attempts to limit such work in classrooms. In response, we wondered about the ways in which YAL offers pathways for critically framing and situating global concerns, such as censorship, in time and space as a means of entering public conversations on issues. In this article, we offer waypoints as a critical reading framework for approaching sociopolitical issues in YAL as gateways for shifts in perspectives, orientations, and actions towards justice. We argue that such a framework for approaching YAL can help further unravel the social issues critical literacy aims to name and act on by locating topics in relation to politics and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current research explores Bina Shah's (2018) dystopian novel Before She Sleeps, which depicts violence against the women destroying nature's biodiversity. The worst effects on nature and women are examined using the ecofeminism framework by Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies (2014). Males use science to fulfil their goals under pretext of strengthening society. Both women & nature are cruelly disrupted by science, firming totalitarian state. Patriarchy, science, and technology all play interconnected role in shaping the world. Science, which is considered as a blessing, brutally disrupts both the normal cycles of women and of nature. Also, totalitarian regime benefits from it. The study reveals that development is a patriarchal project. Using the descriptive textual analysis method, the study's findings indicate that the scientific advancements, sexism, and innovation harm women and the environment. This study paves the way for studying the materialism from an ecofeminist perspective to provide new insights & add significant research to the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which explores the response of author Anthony Burgess to George Orwell's dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" through his novel "1985." Topics discussed include the meeting between Orwell and Burgess which the latter described in his autobiography "Little Wilson and Big God," the way Burgess defined the dystopian fiction writing technique, and the verdict offered by Burgess on the impossibility of the dystopia presented by Orwell.

This paper continues ongoing research, by the three authors, into possible ways to write climate fiction, a subgenre of literature that focuses on depictions of climate change. Curious as to whether climate fiction has become fixed as a negative genre, most frequently mired in dystopian landscapes, we posited that writing fiction collaboratively might be one method to help us imagine a future in which we have agency and are not simply helpless victims of the inevitable. To explore this hypothesis, we ran a two-day Posthuman Artists' Laboratory with six other professional writers, all based on Kaurna and Permangk country in Tartanya/Adelaide, Australia. In detailing the setup and findings of this experiment, the paper looks towards artistic practice that does not focus on the capitalist individual and details the thrill of collaboration. We propose that there is a strong (posthuman) argument for writers to abandon the desire to be identified as one singular being with a 'unique' voice and reimagine their creative subjectivities as a sticky web of connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes an exam of the novel Los ojos vacíos, published in 2000 by the Spanish novelist Fernando Aramburu. The novel inaugurates the trilogy set in the imagined town of Antíbula and, in spite of presenting date and events which apparently belong to the historical reality, it is actually an alienating reproposition of a "possible world", set in an imaginary time and a space. With a dystopian approach developed in this kind of fiction, the author shows a deep idea of the human being, committed in deciphering, interpreting and understanding History, his destiny, the present time and his future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This invited article is a tribute to Giovanni Maniscalco Basile, reflecting on his multifaceted contributions as a scholar, and cultural enthusiast. Darko Suvin highlights Basile's extensive work and interests spanning Russian politics and ideology, music, science fiction, and utopian studies. Suvin underscores Basile's unique intellectual presence, likening him to a Renaissance man with a profound ability to interweave diverse fields. The article delves into Basile's engagement with Russian utopian and dystopian literature, his polyglot abilities, and his critical approach to blending historical and futuristic narratives. Suvin discusses Basile's role in elevating science fiction as a legitimate field of academic inquiry and his efforts in integrating it with contemporary cultural and political critiques. Marina Ciccarini further explores Basile's life, and personal and professional background, emphasizing his broad interests, between literature, politics, music and physics, and eventually providing a selected bibliography of his works. In conclusion, the article portrays Giovanni Maniscalco Basile as a profound thinker whose interdisciplinary work continues to inspire discussions on creativity, freedom, and the intellectual's role in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paolo Zanotti, an appreciated scholar of the romance tradition and a brilliant reader of Calvino, was also (and above all) a storyteller. This contribution focuses on first posthumous novel, Il testamento Disney, to show how he managed to unfold his erudition on the page, and to transfigure it by counting on an his imaginative ability and a refined technique. This paper will state accurate references to his contemporary essays, in order to identify the theoretical coordinates within which the novel should be framed: alongside the aforementioned Calvino, also Celati, Jameson, Auden, as well as his beloved Stevenson could be named. Just like his favourite writer Cortázar, Zanotti narrates the digressions of a gang of funny and unkempt flâneurs who try to enchant a city that pushed them to the fringe. To achieve it, they resort to any means, through continuous apparitions, nostalgia, ecstasy, rituals, coincidences and interference from other dimensions. Thus, this essay aims to emphasize Zanotti's visionary ability, worthy of the best fantastic tradition: like Ariosto invoked by Calvino in the face of the cold Machiavelli, Zanotti knows how to hover above the reality, and to glimpse a lively world in a desolate desert. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate contemporary Spanish-American science- fiction short stories, focusing on the emblematic case of the Bolivian author Giovanna Rivero. She is part of a national context that is very prolific in this literary genre, which has been stimulating new studies, symposiums and specialized journals. Her themes, style and language will be investigated through the study of the short stories "Regreso" and "Pasó como un espíritu", in order to explore the dystopian universe created by the author. Combining Andean cultural heritage and dystopic projection, she manages to outline the current political and sociological context in Bolivia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay looks at a series of post-war texts, quite different in terms of purpose, origin, background of their authors, editorial events, and so on, but connected by a transversal interpretation in an anti-anthropocentric perspective. This reading ranges from 1970's works as Simonetta's I viaggiatori della sera, Volponi's Il pianeta irritabile, Morselli's Dissipatio H.G. or Cassola's "atomic trilogy" to contemporary works such as Anna by Ammaniti. I will try to draw the threads of those reflections, obviously in a dystopian key, on human beings and their presence on Earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking advantage of the principles maintained by Thomas More in Utopia (1516) and by Erasmus of Rotterdam in In Praise of Folly (1511), the present essay analyzes some topics and stylistic features of one of the hardest and most pessimistic novels by the great Castilian writer Miguel Delibes (Valladolid, 1920-2010), that is to say, Los santos inocentes (1981). The text is set in the isolated and underdeveloped countryside of Extremadura during the middle 1960s, and deals with a harsh contrast: on the one hand, the positive protagonist, the madman, and animal-like Azarías, who lives in close contact with pristine nature (symbolized by birds), while on the other hand his masters, represented by the cynical «señorito Iván», exert a tyrannical, dystopic power on Azarías and his family, based on a medieval idea of property. The final part of the essay studies the significant influence that the novel's topics and structure have over the excellent film adaptation produced by Mario Camus in 1984. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay analyzes Moscow, the cycle of novels published between 1926 and 1932 in the USSR by the symbolist writer Andrei Bely. The cycle retrospectively recounts the transformations that would lead to the birth of the new Soviet socialist state. Three different utopias in the struggle against the capitalist and bourgeois order identifiable in the cycle of novels are examined: that of the young Lizasha, daughter of the Western businessman and spy Mandro, who dreams of the existence of a "world beyond", that of the socialist Kierko and that of professor Korobkin, i.e. the utopia of free science and universal order, as well as the inner transfiguration of humanity. The essay intends to show how the first two utopias, which in the course of the narration merge into a single one, are overcome in Bielian narration by the third: spiritual regeneration, and not the achievement of socialism, whose flaws Bely covertly highlights, is the only true evolutionary condition of the spiral of history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine the Possible Worlds Theory and its application to contemporary fictional universes, specifically focusing on eutopias and dystopias. I trace the historical development of the Theory from the 1970s. The Theory, emerging from formal logic and analytic philosophy, presents an alternative to binary thinking by considering all as fiction. I critique David Lewis's approach, which eliminates hierarchies between real and fictional worlds, and instead propose to analyze alternative fictions, particularly counterfactuals, fantasy, and science fiction, from their relation to the real world and their moral dimensions. The study contrasts utopias and dystopias, suggesting the use of "eutopia" and "cacotopia" for better and worse states than the current world. I explore whether these alternative fictions challenge or reinforce the boundary between reality and fiction. Through the analysis of works like Laurent Binet's Civilizations and Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem, I investigate the role of play in these narratives and their implications for understanding contemporary culture's obsession with alternative worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adam Mickiewicz never wrote down A History of the Future. We only have a few remaining fragments of the poet's project. However, A History of the Future exerted a powerful and long-lasting influence on Polish culture. After a sketch of these fragmentary contents, drawn according to Pigoń and Skwarczyńska, the main aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of Mickiewicz's project in the history of Polish literature and culture. Stressed are some aspects of utopian and dystopian thought, as well as the interest of Mickiewicz and other Polish Romantics in scientific and technical achievements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes The Time Machine (1895) by H.G. Wells as a work of dystopian genre, demonstrating its significance in exploring dystopian narratives and Wells’ predictions on a possible apocalyptic future. Dystopian works serve both as a warning against the danger awaiting the current societal order in the future and a criticism of the present order. In this regard, Wells’ work acts as a key example of the dystopian genre and illustrates an apocalyptic world in which the society is divided into two different groups called the Eloi and Morlocks. The novel describes the Eloi as a community who live above the ground and maintain a simple life. On the contrary, the Morlocks live under the ground, having a darker existence. Through this differentiation, Wells underscores conflicts in the current societal order such as class division, rapidly growing technology, and the unrestrained social progress. Even though the setting of the story is in the far away future, Wells in this work successfully portrays the struggles of his own time and warns his readers against the possible paths these struggles might take them in the future. The Time Traveller travels through time, to an apocalyptic future and witnesses the possibilities which the conflicts in his own society might cause in the future firsthand. Consequently, Wells’ work serves not only as a story about the future but also as a warning against the current trends in society such as technological developments and the destruction of environment. Therefore, Wells’ work encourages readers to critically approach the present order of the society by portraying the probable dystopia that is awaiting them. Hence, what makes The Time Machine an important example of the dystopian genre is the fact that it serves as a warning to make a change and to reestablish balance in the present society. This study argues that Wells’ The Time Machine portrays an apocalyptic dystopia which warns against the possible conflicts that might be caused by the workings of the present, underscoring the consequences of societal and technological divides. Consequently, Wells’ work emphasizes on the need for societal change and balance to prevent a dystopian future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a contribution to the growing scholarly debate on literary representations of gentrification, this article explores a tendency of contemporary, Berlin-set fiction to depict accelerating gentrification processes as an imminent apocalypse. While earlier gentrification fiction frequently centered on the struggles of a male character, this article turns to recent female-authored and female-centered narratives of gentrification, thus highlighting the relevance of gender for literary gentrification studies. Based on readings of four novels by German and US-American authors, the main contribution of the article is the delineation of a new hybrid subgenre of gentrification fiction and dystopian fiction—the accelerated gentrifiction. A further major finding is the identification of a standardized female gentrifier character type as an essential feature of this subgenre. The relative flatness of these protagonists results from their shared lack of action and emotional response when facing the consequences of complex social and ecological issues such as accelerated gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article brings two terms of political sciences, "state of exception" and "clash of civilizations" to dystopian studies. These terms help us to understand the hybrid nature of the dystopian genre. Almost in every Russian postcommunist dystopia we meet various kinds of state of exception. The concept of "clash of civilizations" convincingly describes many aspects of Slavic-Muslim dialogue in Russian dystopia. Russian military invasion of Ukraine had been predicted in dystopian novels the decades before it happened. The prophetic nature of the dystopian genre dictates the necessity of new analytical tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study outlines a typology of dystopias and narrative allegories about Communist Romania, discussing three famous novels: The Black Church by A. E. Baconsky, The Second Messenger by Bujor Nedelcovici, and Farewell, Europe! by Ion D. Sîrbu. The three novels were prohibited from being published during the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu and became drawer manuscripts, seeing the light of print only after the fall of Communism, in 1990, 1991, and 1992-1993. Baconsky's novel circulated in samizdat (between 1976-1977) and was made into a series by the Munich-based Radio Free Europe, which broadcast clandestinely inside Romania. Nedelcovici's novel was translated into French in 1985, and was very successful. In Romanian literature, Ion D. Sîrbu's novel is considered the most important "drawer" work. All three novels, as dystopias, allegories and parables, focus on three recurrent topics: the world of oppressors, the world of victims and the method of brainwashing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general state of anxiety and anguish that currently prevails in contemporary societies is a breeding ground for all kinds of proposals - such as dystopias - that seek to unravel, question, or simply make sense of the increasingly incomprehensible and indecipherable world in which humanity feels confined. Of all of them, it is probably those who, like the ancient myths of antiquity, use novels and stories to exorcise and conjure up their ghosts, reflecting on and symbolically expressing all that shocks and frightens them as individuals and as members of a society, that contribute most to reappropriating and coming to terms with their fears. This article proposes an in-depth analysis of a type of dystopia that could be described as mythical and whose extremely overwhelming presence in the contemporary political and cultural landscape is clearly indicative of the prevailing climate of fear and mistrust in our societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Kazuo Ishiguro's novel "Never Let Me Go," delving into its exploration of freedom in technoculture and the role of love in shaping that freedom. Topics include the novel's departure into science fiction, its portrayal of a dystopian 1990s England with social advantages of cloning technologies, and the argument for love as a site of resistance for the clones' existential crises.

The article focuses on the process of growth in Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go," a novel set in an alternative Britain in the late 1990s, narrating the coming-of-age story of Kathy H., a thirty-one-year-old clone. Topics include the revelation of the clones' roles as donors, the critique of Kathy's passive acceptance of her predetermined fate, and the novel's departure from the traditional bildungsroman by linking Kathy's anti-Bildung to remote geographies.

Mary Shelley mined the ideas of international thought to help develop three new subgenres of modern political science fiction ('poliscifi'): post-apocalyptic, existential, and dystopian. Her two great works of poliscifi, Frankenstein (1818), and The Last Man (1826) – confront the social problems that arise from humanity's technological and cultural interventions in the wider environment. This article recovers The Last Man not only as the first modern post-apocalyptic pandemic novel, but also as an important source for the existentialist tradition, dystopian literature, and their intersections with what I call 'Literary IR'. Comparing The Last Man with its probable sources and influences – from Thucydides and Vattel to Orwell and Camus – reveals Shelley's ethical and political concerns with the overlapping problems of interpersonal and international conflict. The Last Man dramatises how interpersonal conflict, if left unchecked, can spiral into the wider sociopolitical injustices of violence, war, and other human-made disasters such as species extinction, pandemics, and more metaphorical 'existential' plagues like loneliness and despair. Despite these dark themes and legacies, Shelley's authorship of the great plague novel of the nineteenth century also inspired a truly hopeful post-apocalyptic existential response to crisis and conflict in feminist poliscifi by Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, and Emily St. John Mandel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bildungsroman is a genre that concerns the formation of individual identity and particularly focuses on the moral and psychological growth of the protagonist in a novel. This article aims to analyze the bildungsroman process in a dystopian context, primarily focusing on the significance of emotions in the dystopian society of Clone (2018) by Priya Sarukkai Chabria. This study scrutinizes the emotive structure of the novel based on two kinds of emotional movements: firstly, the psychic and textual movement of emotions is explored using Bharata's rasa theory and, secondly, the spatial significance of emotions in social spaces is probed through phenomenological inquiry into the anatomy of shared emotions in the text. Through this theoretical approach, this article addresses the following questions: (a) How does a dystopian context problematize the identity formation of the protagonist in Clone? (b) How does the dystopian genre treat emotions in its structure and how instrumental are they to the identity formation of the bildungsheld in the selected novel? (c) How does Chabria manifest rasa theory and emotional movement in the structure of the novel? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the literary trajectory of dystopia from Western to Arabic literature and vice versa, seeking to reveal a double-edged aspect of the genre, particularly in the works of Basma Abdel Aziz’s The Queue (2013) and Mohammad Rabie’s Otared (2014). I examine how these texts reflect Western influences while simultaneously engaging with the status quo in post Arab Spring countries. By drawing on Edward Said’s “Travel Theory” and David Damrosch’s “double refraction” metaphor, I seek to highlight the round-trip journey of dystopia from Western to Arabic literature and its transformation to the global capital. Equally important, I discuss the role of translation in influencing the development of Arabic dystopia and refracting it back to its origin, albeit dynamically. Here, translation assumes significance in the bilateral influence of the genre, particularly the dynamic absorption of Western forms in the Arabic dystopian novels that manifest these with the existing sociopolitical conditions while refracting such grisly circumstances onto global literary capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there anything new left to say about Huxley's Brave New World ninety years later? The novel has been analyzed for its sociopolitical predictions, read against 1984, and examined for its satire of Wells and Ford. Common to such approaches is the assumption that the World State is as abhorrently stable as the narrative claims. This essay's argument holds that the World State's success is counterfactually reported and undermined for parodic effect, and that Brave New World functions as a humorous mock-dystopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The two worlds created by Padmanabhan have further significance in that they demonstrate how dystopia is embedded in reality, making it more relevant to the contemporary audience. Harvest sets itself up as a fictional dystopia while keeping enough reality for the contemporaries to recognize; Lights Out , on the contrary, begins as a realistic drawing room drama that initiates itself from a social incident, but reaches out to include dystopian qualities bad enough for the audience to want to deny its practicality. ... Although by definition neither utopia nor dystopia can exist, Padmanabhan's depiction of dystopian societies that touch the quotidian life strengthens her commentary and critique on the existing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel, The Handmaid's Tale, has invited revisitation and reinterpretation over time. One reinterpretation surfaced in 2019 in the form of a graphic adaptation by Renée Nault. Was she successful? Was there anything lost – or gained – in the transition from text to comic? Are these two Tales one and the same? Utilizing theories from sociology, art history and illustration, this article explores how real-world inequalities and oppressive regimes are distilled into Atwood's fictional dystopia, and then, in turn, how her ideas are translated into a visual medium in Renée Nault's graphic novel adaptation. The colour red becomes fraught with meaning for both character and reader, while the illustration of the body can evoke control over, and violence towards, women. The authors adopt a call-and-response format and create 'visual texts' in response to each other's work to echo the act of adaptation and the cyclical nature of ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the dystopian necropolitics depicted in Un fantasma, which depicts a fictional viral pandemic that gives rise to a brutal military regime, and considers how such a dystopian depiction of pandemics can aid in understanding lived realities with COVID-19 and what these may mean for future social pacts following the global pandemic. Written in 2019 before the onset of COVID-19, the comic enables an analysis of extant social anxieties that existed prior to the pandemic as depicted in Un fantasma, as well as a comparison of this dystopia with what actually came to pass. By engaging with the history of contagion narratives, and also with scholars of dystopia studies, and necropolitics, this article argues that fears of rising authoritarianism that predated the COVID-19 pandemic remain relevant (and in some cases have been augmented) since its outbreak. The comic is an admonitory work; Sanz Martínez's imagining of what might come to pass in a worldwide pandemic reminds readers what they must strive to prevent during the pandemic in which they are actively living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Dystopia" means a fictional place where people live inhumane and often terrifying lives. The grounds for the emergence of dystopia, which is also known as dystopian literature, are works that have viewed the reality of human life in the contemporary world with extreme pessimism. In addition to expressing dissatisfaction and criticism of the present, this literary genre examines the dangerous effects of political and social structures on the future of humanity. In this essay, two examples of dystopian works from two different Iranian and American cultures; That is, the novels "The Terrible Tehran" by Morteza Mushfiq Kazemi and "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood have been examined and compared. According to some experts such as Gary Saul Morson, American writer and literary critic, in the book "Boundaries of Genres", Frederick Jameson (1998), American critic and theorist, and George Orwell, author of the dystopian novel "1984" Dystopian literature is an independent type and genre whose components may occur. (Orwell, 1968: 502؛Burroway, 2011: 29؛Morson, 2010: 128). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "The Encantadas" by Herman Melville is presented. It outlines the characters and explores their symbolic significance. It examines Melville's dystopian political vision in the context of popular nineteenth-century scientific discourse. An overview of the story is also given.