Browsing by Subject "Dystopia"

In my master’s thesis (pro gradu) I analyze three novels that are set in the future: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, The Circle by Dave Eggers, and Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart. I suggest that while the novels share a great deal of tropes with such dystopian classics as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Geroge Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Yevgeni Zamyatin’s Мы (trans. We), they also differ from these novels to a significant degree. For this reason, I suggest approaching them as corporatocratic dystopias. In the analysis of generic dystopian characteristics in the novels, I refer to Erica Gottlieb’s (2001) notions of dystopian fiction. Another important literary concept in my study is satire, in the analysis of which I refer to Dustin H. Griffin’s (1994) views on satire as a playful and questioning genre. Central for all dystopias is the notion of a dystopian waning: the implied author of a dystopia exaggerates and ridicules in order to warn a contemporaneous reader against dystopian developments that take place in the reader’s own reality. The elementary difference between the three novels I analyze and Gottlieb’s characterizations concerns the novels’ description of tyranny. Traditionally, dystopias depict the supremacy of a state or a political party. In the novels I investigate in my thesis, the negative developments that take place in society are closely linked to the fact that corporations have gained power at the cost of political rulers, i.e. to the birth of a corporatocracy. I approach the question of power with the help of Antonio Gramsci’s (1975/1992) two dimensions of power: hegemony and dominance. I argue that unlike earlier dystopias, in which tyranny manifests itself in coercive deeds of dominance, the kind of corporatocracy the three novels depict functions to a great extent through hegemony, which is based on consent. In the three novels, corporations renew and uphold their power by maintaining excessive consumerism and mediatisation in society. In the analysis of these developments, I turn to Jürgen Habermas’ (1962/1989) views on mediatisation, and to Jean Baudrillard’s (1970/1998 and 1981/1994) and Joseph D. Rumbo’s (2002) conceptions on consumer society. The effects of consumerism penetrate also the private sphere in the novels, and thus questions about the body, sex, gender and sexuality are central to my thesis. Additionally, the novels seem to suggest that corporatocracy threatens reciprocity and togetherness between people, and alienates them from nature and from religion. I approach these themes with the help of Baudrillard’s theorisations on the body in consumer culture and Luce Irigaray’s (1985) discussions on patriarchy and women as commodities. The central outcome of my study is that the characters in the novels do not merely appear as identifiable victims of corporatocracy, or as fearless heroes who challenge the tyranny. Rather, as members of their fictional societies, the characters also contribute to the establishment of corporatocracy. I suggest that the dystopian warning all three novels eventually communicate leads directly to the behaviour, norms and ideologies of the characters, and finally, to human nature. Thus, through their characters, the implied authors of these novels encourage their readers to critically assess also their own roles as members of society.

Pierce Brown’s Red Rising is a science fiction series set in a distant dystopian future, in which Darrow, a young rebel, fights to overthrow an authoritarian regime. Its overarching themes raise issues in narrative ethics, which make up the main concerns of this thesis. Power, slavery, and modes of governance are ethical issues inherent to the novels. Brown, however, divests Red Rising from the historical and critical character of classic dystopias by introducing a protagonist who realizes, near immediately, the dystopian nature of their setting. This thesis examines the six books published in the series so far through a hermeneutic approach to narrative ethics, as described by Hanna Meretoja. Particular foci in this regard are the self-reflective and naturalizing qualities of narratives, as well as their ethical potential to widen or constrict choice. This approach is complemented with contributions from cognitive literary studies on children’s literature and its intersection with the function of fiction as well as historical and cultural studies into American exceptionalism. This combined outlook is used to examine issues of power dynamics, ideology, gender, and sexuality in the novels, as well as the protagonist’s personal narrative arc and the widening of perspective provided by other character-narrators. In Red Rising homophobia and misogyny appear in the text despite the author’s intention to create a society free of either. Further, despite being a series revolving around the merits of democracy over fascism, Pierce Brown’s protagonists constantly work against democratic structures when the will of the majority is in disagreement with the desires of the powerful. The thesis argues that Darrow’s story sees him liberated from slavery, yet reinscribed into the role of slave through a relinquishment of his own agency and a descent into war-mongering authoritarianism. Finally, the thesis explores how the inclusion of other narrators widens our sense of what is and is not possible within Red Rising. This highlights the ethical issues already mentioned, and provides an interesting case of a perpetrator narrative that mirrors Darrow’s own journey.