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 Free Download Daniel Cojocaru, "Violence and Dystopia: Mimesis and Sacrifice in Contemporary Western Dystopian Narratives " English | ISBN: 1443876135 | 2015 | 335 pages | PDF | 1348 KB Violence and Dystopia is a critical examination of imitative desire, scapegoating and sacrifice in selected contemporary Western dystopian narratives through the lens of René Girard s mimetic theory. The first chapter offers an overview of the history of Western utopia/dystopia with a special emphasis on the problem of conflictive mimesis and scapegoating violence, and a critical introduction to Girard's theory. The second chapter is devoted to J.G. Ballard's seminal novel Crash (1973), Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996) and Rant (2007), and Brad Anderson's film The Machinist (2004). It is argued that the car crash functions as a metaphor for conflictive mimetic desire and leads to a quasi-sacrificial crisis as defined by Girard for archaic religion. The third chapter focuses on the psychogeographical writings of Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd. Walking the streets of London the pedestrian represents the excluded underside of the world of Ballardian speed. The walking subject is portrayed in terms of the expelled victim of Girardian theory. The fourth chapter considers violent crowds as portrayed by Ballard's late fiction, the writings of Stewart Home, and David Peace's GB84 (2004). In accordance with Girard's hypothesis, the discussed narratives reveal the failure of scapegoat expulsion to restore peace to the potentially self-destructive violent crowds. The fifth chapter examines the post-apocalyptic environments resulting from failed scapegoat expulsion and mimetic conflict out of control, as portrayed in Sinclair's Radon Daughters (1994), Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and Oryx and Crake (2003), and Will Self's The Book of Dave (2006).  Free Download Robert T. Tally Jr., "The Fiction of Dread: Dystopia, Monstrosity, and Apocalypse" English | ISBN: 1501375857 | 2024 | 184 pages | EPUB, PDF | 318 KB + 2 MB A history and examination of dystopia and angst in popular culture that speaks to our current climate of dread.
 Free Download Katarzyna Ostalska, "The Postworld In-Between Utopia and Dystopia: Intersectional, Feminist, and Non-Binary Approaches in 21st-Century Specul" English | ISBN: 0367537044 | 2021 | 268 pages | EPUB | 1275 KB This collection of essays offers global perspectives on feminist utopia and dystopia in speculative literature, film, and art, working from a range of intersectional approaches to examine key works and genres in both their specific cultural context and a wider, global, epistemological, critical background.  Futures Beyond Dystopia: Creating Social Foresight By Richard A. Slaughter 2003 | 336 Pages | ISBN: 0415302692 | PDF | 2 MB How can dystopian futures help provide the motivation to change the ways we operate day to day?Futures Beyond Dystopia takes the view that the dominant trends in the world suggest a long-term decline into unliveable Dystopian futures. The human prospect is therefore very challenging, yet the perception of dangers and dysfunctions is the first step towards dealing with them. The motivation to avoid future dangers is matched by the human need to create plans and move forward. These twin motivations can be very powerful and help to stimulate the fields of Futures Studies and Applied Foresight.This analysis of current Futures practice is split into six sections:* The Case Against Hegemony* Expanding and Deepening a Futures Frame* Futures Studies and the Integral Agenda* Social Learning through Applied Foresight* Strategies and Outlooks* The Dialectic of Foresight and Experience.This fascinating book will stimulate anyone involved in Futures work around the world and will challenge practitioners and others to re-examine many of their assumptions, methodologies and practices.  Ishita Dey, Ranabir Samaddar, Suhit K. Sen, "Beyond Kolkata: Rajarhat and the Dystopia of Urban Imagination" English | 2013 | pages: 304 | ISBN: 0415844355, 113866037X | PDF | 10,3 mb This bookexamines the politics behind, and the socio-economic and ecological repercussions of, the making of a new township, variously called New Town, Megacity or Jyoti Basu Nagar, in Rajarhat near Kolkata. Conceived by the West Bengal state government in the mid-1990s, in pandering to the vision of urban planners of creating a hi-tech town beyond an unruly, crowded Kolkata, and feeding the hunger of realtors and developers, the city is built on the foundations of coercive, even violent, land acquisition, state largesse and corruption ― and at the cost of erasing a self-sufficient subsistence economy and despoiling a fragile environment. Yet, after its completion and departure of construction labour, the new town appears as a necropolis, a ghost city, that belies its promised image of an urban utopia, even as the displaced locals lead a precarious, mobile existence as 'transit labour', engaged in odd and informal jobs. |
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