Speculative Fiction, Sociology, and Surveillance Studies: Towards a Methodology of the Surveillance Imaginary

Utopian theorists often speak about the merits of reading utopian fiction in order to reimagine and rebuild a better world, but dystopian fiction is often overlooked. This is, in my view, misguided because dystopian fiction, like utopian fiction, diagnoses issues with the present, inspires activism and resistance, and, in the twenty-first century, often presents ideas of how to effect positive change through collective activism. As speculative literary genres concerned with world-building, utopian and dystopian fiction have inherent sociological concerns. These texts can therefore be utilised by sociologists and other researchers beyond the arts and humanities. Speculative fiction is important to the field of surveillance studies not only because surveillance is a major theme in these literary texts but also because their formal properties provide us with the language, imagery, and feelings associated with being under surveillance. Twenty-first-century utopian and dystopian fiction has not been thoroughly examined by surveillance scholars. Analysis of utopian and dystopian fiction in this field has also focused on texts set in, and written by authors from, the global north. Considering the plethora of dystopian novels in and beyond the global north published in recent years that discuss surveillance, the neglect of the study of these texts to date is an oversight.

National internationalism in late 19th-century utopias by Mór Jókai, Edward Bellamy, and William Morris

The paper looks at two major representatives of fin-de-siècle utopian fiction, Edward Bellamy’s 1888 Looking Backward 2000–1887, William Morris’s 1890 News from Nowhere, and an earlier work by the Hungarian novelist Mór Jókai, The Novel of the Century to Come (A jövő század regénye, 1872–1874). I examine their various strategies regarding the spatial and historical aspects of utopian transformation as well as their respective positions toward the relation of commerce and community. On the whole, I suggest that the pattern of nationally informed or biased internationalism that seems to underlie all three novels might be traced back to the enlightened concept of patriotic cosmopolitanism.

CULTURAL ECOFEMINISM IN CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN’S FEMINIST UTOPIAN VISION AND ITS LIMITATIONS

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an American feminist author of fiction and non-fiction, lecturer and sociologist of the late 19th, early 20th centuries. She integrates her sociological commentary into her ecofeminist vision for an alternative community consisting merely of women in her utopian fiction Herland published in 1915. The community she envisioned can best be read through the lens of cultural ecofeminism with her essentialist view of women’s innate tendency to uphold the sanctity of the environment opting for a peaceful coexistence rather than patriarchal domination. Since men are considered to be impediments to such a coexistence, they are absent from the utopian vision based on sisterhood of all women where they breed through parthenogenesis and raise their daughters as a community rather than in individual family units. Familial relations are not entirely eliminated, rather, as all Herlanders descend from a common maternal ancestor, are biologically as well as culturally connected.

Alberto Blest Gana: Four Chronicles and a Novel

Four chronicles written by Alberto Blest Gana between April and May 1862 in the newspaper La voz de Chile, months before the publication of his novel Mariluán, shed light on the close relationship between his production as chronicler and writer. Among the various faits divers discussed in the columns, the issue of a Mapuche delegation’s arrival in Santiago to hold a parlamento with the government about border disputes arises. The oscillating attitude of the chronicler in the face of otherness and his prejudiced comments, which are at the same time full of doubts and perplexities, serve as an incentive for his composing a utopian fiction. This article aims to examine the connections in the relationship between Blest Gana chronicler and novelist to expand the reading possibilities of Mariluán.

The dystopian genre as one of Ray Bradbury’s creative trends

Utopia is a common literary theme, especially in a speculative and science-fiction genre. Authors use utopian genre to explore what a perfect society would look like. Utopian fiction is set in a perfect world, while a dystopian novel drops its main character into a world where everything seems to have gone wrong. Dystopian fiction can challenge readers to think differently about current world. The article is devoted to the etymology of dystopia genre within Ray Bradbury’s creativity. In his short stories he tried to show the depth of his imagination. In Ray Bradbury’s fiction the world is a terrible place. He exposes the destructive side of technological progress and paradoxes of human personality in a grotty society. Key words: science-fiction, utopia, dystopia, prognosis, short story

Between Aesthetic and Political Theory

This chapter interrogates the utopian troping of Virginia Woolf's pacifism through a theoretical, historical, and rhetorical perspective. At a time when peace projects were condemned as utopian, Woolf’s choice to mobilize utopian tropes was not ideologically neutral. The chapter will first map out the utopia/reality divide that structured the interwar fields of international relations, focusing on the theoretical debate opposing Leonard Woolf to E. H. Carr. A similar unease around utopias became manifest in the interwar literary field, as the upsurge in peace utopias coincided with a growing critique of utopian fiction. This chapter argues that this aesthetic and political polemic between fact and fiction was at the core of Woolf’s writings on peace. Close readings of Three Guineas and "Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid" will show how Virginia Woolf deconstructed the duality between "utopia and reality" that polarized pacifist discourses of the time. In a mock-utopian tone quite distinct from serious fictional peace projects, Woolf critiqued planned utopias of world peace, such as those devised by H. G. Wells, but also moved away from Leonard Woolf's political idealism. Beyond any fixed oppositions between idealism and realism, between "fact" and "dream," she renegotiated the materiality of hope by repurposing press cuttings and other "fragmentary notes" into archives of the future.