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that is, brainwashed. Equally, Winston and John seem to be the only characters capable of experiencing genuine emotions in the form of love, joy, or happiness, and are thereby established as unique reference points for the audience. While Winston discovers his appreciation for art and beauty in the form of a coral paperweight and antiques, John reads Shakespeare and advocates genuine emotions. Also, his distinguishing feature is his superior command of the English language. Tellingly, his language abilities are woven into his emotional intelligence; he is set apart by his refusal to refer to his mother by her first name in order to spare her the embarrassment of being called “mother” – a derogatory term in a society in which age, illness, and other bodily functions like pregnancies are deemed embarrassing or even revolting. Furthermore, he insists on true love and monogamy – again something the Western reader can relate to while the polygamous inhabitants of the World State shrink away in dread. In summary, all three protagonists, Winston, D-503, and John are conceptually closer to the reader than any other character. The similarities in political views, cognitive capacities, and humanist education promote an identification process, which underscores the liberal, humanist ‘message’ of the texts. By identifying with them, the readers are encouraged to adopt the moral superiority of a libertarian ideology.

      This distribution of sympathy is further cemented by a plot full of suspense, driven by the question of whether the rebellious protagonist will succeed in (usually) his attempt at overthrowing the state. According to Raffaella Baccolini, dystopia is “usually built around the construction of a narrative [of the hegemonic order] and a counter-narrative [of resistance]” (“Womb” 293): the protagonist “moves from apparent contentment into an experience of alienation and resistance” (Baccolini and Moylan, “Introduction” 5),7 meaning that every protagonist of dystopian fiction is structurally designed within the narrative to critically assess the terrifying ‘harmonious’ stasis of totalitarian regimes. It is true to say that the subplot of resistance is usually considered the defining narrative trait as it guarantees both character development, action, and the projection of its message. As Shellie Michael puts its simply but accurately: “audiences like rebels” (“Downsizing”). Therefore, the typical trajectory of the protagonist has grown into a quite customised plot: what starts as critically questioning single instructions soon grows into active rejection of the entire system, often in the form of rebellion of any kind.8 The individual is positioned in opposition to a totalitarian state apparatus thus functioning as a symbol for a more liberal way of life (cf. Mohr, Worlds 32; also J. Schmidt 238). Accordingly, dystopian narratives are usually narratives of alienation, or even emancipation from a totalitarian structure and mode of living to finally achieve a more liberal life style achieved by rebelling against the status quo (cf. Moylan, “Moment” 136) – even if they (most of the time) show protagonists who fail.

      To summarise, dystopian narratives place an immense amount of trust in the hands of their readers. As Ferns describes, “in resisting the authoritarian aspirations of the State, dystopian dissidents may be seen as offering, at a narrative level, an embodiment of the reader’s own resistance to the closure and over-determination which so often characterises the traditional utopia” (22). These novels trust their readers with the responsibility of transforming the world for the better – even if their own protagonists have failed. It is the readers who are burdened with the task of fighting for a better future, having been repulsed by the dystopian totalitarianism, and having been drawn in by the alternatives to which the text alludes. After all, the fictional worlds of Nineteen Eighty-Four or Brave New World are not only dominated by bleak and terrifying totalitarian systems. While they may end hopelessly, they nevertheless provide a silver lining in the form of alternative communities, in which people structure their lives according to the novel’s libertarian agenda: the Savage Reservation, the Forests, the countries of the other superpowers. Totalitarian rule in dystopian fiction is finite; when Zygmunt Bauman wrongly claims that there is no alternative present in neither Brave New World nor Nineteen Eighty-Four, he is misled by the fact that both novels only hint at alternatives to the system (cf. Freedom 92). Alternatives exist in the form of dissident protagonists or enclaves of eutopia, advocating libertarian forms of life devoid of state regulations and communitarian ideologies.

      3.2. Contemporary Dystopian Fiction, Neoliberal Capitalism, and ‘Immanent Criticism’

      We can’t pluck up this ‘Sardinian’ from his specific unique political formation, beam him down at the end of the twentieth century and ask him to solve our problems for us. (Stuart Hall on Antonio Gramsci and his influence 161)

      Tom Moylan was among the first to diagnose a shift in focus in dystopian fiction towards a new target of criticism. He argues that “in the dystopian turn of the closing decades of the twentieth century, the power of the authoritarian states gives way to the more pervasive tyranny of the corporation. […] [Now] the corporation rules, and does so ever more efficiently than any state” (“Moment” 135f.). A similar claim is brought forth in Dystopia: A Natural History (2016) by Gregory Claeys: “the spectre of totalitarian despotism dies out as the central target of dystopia by the 1980s. Taking its place, commonly, is corporate dictatorship in various guises, with the privatization, marketization and monetization of all available resources, to the benefit of the wealthy” (495). What Moylan and Claeys try to capture in their reference to the corporation is a move away from totalitarian state domination to an all-encompassing market logic as it can be found in neoliberal capitalism.1 In order to understand the generic changes the two scholars describe, which some novels of the dystopian genre are currently subject to, it is vital to look further afield. Having established external criticism as the modus operandi of classical dystopian fiction, the following chapter will demonstrate that some contemporary novels seem to stand in the tradition of critical utopia and to work only through the lens of immanent criticism. Since this shift is a complex phenomenon and requires a broad theoretical foundation, it is thus necessary to shed light on the socio-political reality of the 21^st century and its defining actors on a global stage (neoliberalism and globalisation), before attempting to show how these changes have started to affect dystopian fiction. Therefore, this chapter will first define the concept of neoliberalism and trace its influence on all levels of human life, before showing how this economic system has successfully colonised the realm of the possible, i.e. how we have come to think of neoliberal capitalism as the natural state of life. Drawing on the notions of Slavoj Žižek, Fredric Jameson, and Mark Fisher, this chapter will continue by explaining in detail why external criticism is not a suitable platform from which to criticise a social formation such as neoliberalism. Finally, this chapter will present the theoretical framework necessary to formulate immanent criticism in the first place, introducing David Grewal’s notion of ‘network power’ as one possible theoretical lens before continuing with the analysis of five informative and illustrative examples of contemporary dystopian fiction, which offer a critical reading of neoliberal capitalism.2

      Theorising Neoliberal Capitalism and Globalisation

      Neoliberalism – just like Fordism or Taylorism – is a historically bound formation, that is to say, a specific manifestation of the current macro-economic, political, and social system commonly referred to as capitalism (cf. Dörre 47).1 Demarcating capitalism from earlier forms of socio-political and economic systems such as feudalism, Ellen M. Wood defines capitalism in The Origin of Capitalism (1999) as a movement starting approximately in the 16^th and 17^th century, “in which goods and services, down to the most basic necessities of life, are produced for profitable exchange, where even human labour-power is a commodity for sale in the market, and where all economic factors are dependent on the market” (2). If capitalism is thus defined as a historical process, favouring market exchange (most notably in the form of wage labour) as the principal mode of societal regulation (cf. Best 500), neoliberalism can be thought of as capitalism’s logical, global extension, its current “stage” ever since the 1970s:2 it is the “political, economic, and special arrangements within society that emphasize market relations, re-tasking the role of the state, and individual responsibility. [It is] broadly defined as the extension of competitive markets into all areas of life” (Springer, Birch, and MacLeavy 2).3

      Moreover,

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