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Absent Rebels: Criticism and Network Power in 21st Century Dystopian Fiction. Annika Gonnermann
Читать онлайн.Название Absent Rebels: Criticism and Network Power in 21st Century Dystopian Fiction
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isbn 9783823302551
Автор произведения Annika Gonnermann
Жанр Языкознание
Серия Mannheimer Beiträge zur Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft
Издательство Bookwire
Eckart Voigts-Virchow and Alessandra Boller are one step ahead. They include contemporary dystopian fiction in their study Dystopia, Science Fiction, Post-Apocalypse – Classics – New Tendencies – Model Interpretations (2015) such as Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go or Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. However, they blur the generic definitions of post-apocalyptic fiction and dystopia too much when they refer to Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic nightmare The Road (2006) as ‘post-apocalyptic dystopia.’ The same is true for Worlds Gone Awry. Essays on Dystopian Fiction (2018) edited by Han, Triplett, and Anthony. While both Alessandra Boller in Rethinking ‘the Human’ in Dystopian Times (2018) and Elena Zeißler in Dunkle Welten (2008) have correctly identified the need for a new classification of dystopian fiction by advocating a focus on newer works of dystopian fiction such as Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (2003–2013) or even post-colonial dystopias such as Albert Wendt’s Black Rainbow (1992), the latter’s structuralist approach remains unconvincing. Zeißler’s classification system differentiates, for instance, between feminist and postmodern dystopias, thereby ignoring the fact that these two categories might be applied at the same time. Christine Lehnen (Defining Dystopia, 2015) also attempts to redefine the genre. Having identified the generic boundaries as being too narrow and arguing for a re-negotiation of the genre characteristics, she opts to build her reader-oriented classification on the premise whether the didactic appeal is fully recognized by the audience – a rather broad and uncritical classification since almost any literature can be described as ‘offering a warning’ ever since Horaz defined its general function as ‘prodesse et delectare.’
Enlightening, however, is the collection of essays published by Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan in Dark Horizons (2003). They critically engage with new developments of the genre outside the paradigm of state criticism. Tom Moylan is one of the first scholars to describe a paradigmatic change in dystopian fiction. His essay “State, Agency, and Dystopia in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Antarctica and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Telling” (2003) should serve as a rudimentary basis for the current project; it describes the transition from a state-focused critique to criticism focused on neoliberal capitalism, globalisation, and network-thinking, which shape the society at the beginning of the 21st century – tendencies progressive dystopian fiction undoubtedly reacts to. Also, Moyan’s work on the ‘critical utopia’ has undoubtedly influenced the ideas presented in this book.
While research usually focuses purely on the content of dystopian writing, the meta-analysis of forms of critique has thus far largely escaped scholarly attention. This is the reason why the following thesis has a second aim (besides offering an explanation for the absent rebels and tracing the change from state totalitarianism to free market capitalism dystopia): it will analyse the prevailing modes of formulating critique within dystopian fiction in general. The basis for this differentiation is to be found in Rahel Jaeggi’s Kritik von Lebensformen (2014; Critique of Forms of Life, trans. 2018), a philosophical enquiry into what constitutes ‘the good life.’ Her terminology offers the subtle nuances necessary for categorising the process of voicing critique and is thus perfectly suited for a detailed look at how dystopian fiction approaches the socio-cultural reality of the 21st century. Moreover, tracing the use of Jaeggi’s ‘external criticism’ and ‘immanent criticism’ in classical dystopian fiction and contemporary dystopian fiction respectively, this analysis will draw attention to a genealogical change in the formulation of critique within the dystopian canon. Connecting Jaeggi’s ‘immanent criticism’ and David Grewal’s ‘network power’ (Network Power, 2008), this analysis will examine the nature of power – a hallmark of dystopian writing – within free market capitalism. I will treat the dialectics between perceived freedom and actual freedom (‘voluntariness’) as a yardstick for deciphering oppression within seemingly free neoliberal societies, and offer an explanation for how and where coercion originates in systems that lack a Machiavellian centre of power.
After the introduction of both the etymology and history of dystopian fiction in “The Dystopian Genre,” the chapter “Context, Criticism, and Rahel Jaeggi’s Critique of Forms of Life (2014)” will link classical dystopian fiction with ‘external criticism’ and demonstrate how this model is well suited to criticise structures like totalitarianism. In a second step, the analysis will juxtapose the tradition of classical dystopian writing to the texts produced at the beginning of the 21st century, ending with the observation that ‘external criticism’ is replaced by ‘immanent criticism’ within certain novels. By elaborating on the observation that the socio-cultural reality of the 21st century has changed dramatically (key developments include globalisation, neoliberal capitalism, and the resulting decline of the nation state), this analysis shall demonstrate how the construction and literary focus of selected contemporary dystopias published since the year 2000 has changed accordingly. Having set the necessary analytical parameters, the project will continue with the theoretical section which begins with the analysis of the five dystopian novels in question. By analysing the dystopian novels by Dave Eggers, Margaret Atwood, M.T. Anderson, David Mitchell, and Kazuo Ishiguro, this book aims to provide a critical approach to recent dystopian fiction that transcends its traditional genre boundaries. Afterwards, this study will conclude with a re-contextualisation of contemporary dystopian fiction within the wider framework of the utopian genre, introducing the terminology of ‘blueprint dystopias’ versus ‘iconoclastic dystopias,’ before discussing the eutopian potential within the dystopias defined by their absent rebels.
II. The Dystopian Genre
In order to comprehend the changes and generic modifications this work will examine, it is vital to understand the dystopian genre, its terminologies, as well as its complex history and intertextual relationships. This chapter will therefore provide a short introduction to dystopian fiction and a brief overview of the most important topics and themes, forms and functions of the dystopian genre before attempting to clarify the confusion associated with the terms ‘utopia,’ ‘eutopia,’ and ‘dystopia.’ The chapter “Context, Criticism, and Rahel Jaeggi’s Critique of Forms of Life (2014)” will then conclude this section by introducing Rahel Jaeggi’s taxonomy of criticism, which provides the theoretical backbone necessary to structure not only the brief introduction to the three canonical novels by Orwell, Huxley, and Zamyatin but also the more extensive analysis of contemporary dystopian writing.
1. Genre, Etymology, and Definition of Utopian, Eutopian, and Dystopian Fiction
[T]here must be a link between the forms of literature and the ways in which, to quote Erich Auerbach, ‘we try to give some kind of order and design to the past, the present and the future.’ (Kermode 93)
Ever since Aristotle dichotomised literature into tragedy and comedy, literary studies have faced the challenge of generic analysis (cf. K. Williams 137). Even though genres are merely an artificial, constructed set of conventions and based on random categorisation, they and their boundaries are “obviously important,” as Zymner puts it crudely (7, own translation). In a similar manner, Darko Suvin argues
(1) that no field of studies and rational inquiry can be investigated unless and until it is at least roughly delimited; (2) that there exist literary genres, as socioaesthetic and not metaphysical entities; (3) that these entities have an inner life and logic of their own, which do not exclude but on the contrary presuppose a dialectical permeability to themes, attitudes, and paradigms from other literary genres, science, philosophy, and everyday socioeconomic life; (Metamorphoses 16)
In an equal manner, Fredric Jameson goes on to define genres as “essentially literary institutions, or social contracts between a writer and a specific public, whose function is to specify the proper use of a particular cultural artifact”