Scénarios d’aveuglement dans la littérature d’Orhan Pamuk, d’Ernesto Sábato, et de José Saramago analyse trois œuvres importantes de trois auteurs contemporains : Mon nom est Rouge d’Orhan Pamuk ; « Rapport sur les aveugles » du roman Héros et tombes d’Ernesto Sábato ; et L’aveuglement de José Saramago. Malgré leurs différences, ces romans ont des points communs évidents, synthétisés dans la figure de l’aveuglement. Cette figure signale l’avènement, dans les textes, d’un régime de connaissance alternatif, centré moins sur le primat de la raison et du visuel que sur une nouvelle capacité cognitive, basée sur une logique spéciale du destin. L’aveuglement s’ouvre également sur une nouvelle compréhension de l’histoire, grâce à une capacité du récit de fiction qui passe par le point de fuite de la cécité. Pour Pamuk, l’aveuglement est le couronnement paradoxal d’une vision du monde, gravement mise en crise à la fin du XVIe siècle par le perspectivisme et le réalisme de la Renaissance, la voie d’entrée vers un monde imaginal qui n’est plus accessible à l’imaginaire occidental. Pour Sábato, il représente la variante renversée d’une quête de l’absolu qui passe par les antres de l’inceste, de l’enfer et du crime, tandis que le monde décrit par Saramago est un monde qui sombre sur la pente de la déchéance, en suivant une logique implacable. Il est l’équivalent de plusieurs formes de cécité qui menacent le monde contemporain, comme le fondamentalisme religieux, l’homogénéité préconisée par la société de masse, l’exclusion raciale, l’oppression idéologique. La thèse se divise en trois parties, La violente beauté du monde, Un mythe hérétique de la caverne et Une épidémie à cause inconnue, chacune d’entre elles analysant l’œuvre d’un auteur, mais établissant également des liens avec les autres chapitres. L’approche adoptée est interdisciplinaire, un croisement entre études littéraires, philosophie et histoire de l’art. Dans leur quête de nouveaux concepts et de nouvelles formes de pensée qui s’écartent du modèle rationnel dominant de la modernité, les trois auteurs partent de la présupposition que regarder les choses n’est pas du tout l’équivalent de voir les choses. Ils tentent d’articuler une logique du voir qui ressemble plutôt à la vision et à la clairvoyance qu’à la conformité logique. La figure de l’aveuglement sert de tremplin vers le monde imaginal (Pamuk), la pensée magique (Sábato) et la vision dystopique (Saramago) – des espaces ontologiquement différents où les auteurs mènent leurs attaques contre la rationnalité à tout prix. C’est précisément ces espaces que nous avons choisi d’explorer dans les trois romans. Nous soutenons également que ces trois textes proposent un nouveau régime de « connaissance » qui met en question les règles de pensée héritées de la Renaissance et surtout des Lumières, qui constituent un discours dominant dans la culture visuelle et philosophique moderne. / Blindness in the Literature of Orhan Pamuk, Ernesto Sábato, José Saramago examines three important texts by three well-known contemporary authors: My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk; the chapter « Report on the Blind » from the novel On Heroes and Tombs by Ernesto Sábato; and Blindness by José Saramago. The trope of blindness is a common theme in these novels, despite their significant differences. Blindness introduces an alternative regime of knowledge, centered less on the primacy of the rational and the visual than on a new cognitive capacity, grounded in a specific logic of destiny. It proposes new understandings of history, due to a fictionalizing capacity, which passes through the fault lines of blindness. For Pamuk, blindness represents the paradoxical culmination of a traditional, Islamic world view, which was challenged in the 16th century by the perspectivism and the realism of Renaissance. This conception is regarded as the royal road to an imaginal world that remains inaccessible to the western imaginary. In Sábato’s novel, blindness prompts the reversed version of a quest for absolute, which passes through incest, hell and crime. In the dystopic world depicted by Saramago, this trope is symptomatic of a continuous decay, which follows an implacable logic. It also points to the many forms of blindness that threaten the contemporary world, such as religious fundamentalism, the leveling produced by mass culture and mass society, racial exclusion, ideological oppression. The thesis is divided in three chapters: The Violent Beauty of the World, A Heretical Myth of the Cave and An Epidemic with an Unknown Reason. Each chapter examines one of the three novels, but connections and cross-links among the individual chapters are also established. My investigation provides an interdisciplinary approach, which relies on paradigms from literary studies, philosophy and art history. All three authors examined in the dissertation start from the assumption that looking is not equivalent to seeing. Their texts attempt to formulate a logic of seeing indebted to vision rather than to logical accuracy. The figure of blindness serves as a springboard towards the imaginal world (Pamuk), magical thought (Sábato) and dystopia (Saramago) – ontologically different spaces where the authors counter rationality with new modes of vision. The dissertation explores the articulation of these spaces in the three novels. It argues that these texts on blindness propose a regime of « knowledge » that challenges the dominant discourses on vision, rationality, and the mind – the legacy of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment – in modern visual culture and modern philosophy.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The aim of this essay is to provide an answer to the question "What is the Meaning of Meaningless sex in Dystopia?". It will show that meaningful concepts such as sexual satisfaction, pleassure, passion, love, bonding, procreation and family are handled as threats in dystopian societies described in well-known novels as We, Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four . It will explain how the conflict between the collective and the individual influences peoples' sexuality. It will also show how leading powers in the three dystopian societies use different methods to remove the significanse and functions of sex. It will suggest meaningless sex is a means to control the masses in a collective and that meaningful sex is an act of rebelion against the state. / .

1 ABSTRACT The aim of this thesis is to describe, analyze and explain major influences on the development of dystopian literature of the 21st century written in English. Those influences are described and illustrated on selected literary works, specifically on Oryx and Crake (2003) by Margaret Atwood, Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Hunger Games (2008) by Suzanne Collins, Matched (2010) by Ally Condie, and The Bone Season (2013) by Samantha Shannon. The theoretical part aims to explain the term dystopia, to define dystopia as a genre, and to describe its history. This part also deals with the influences on the development of dystopia, focused especially on the 20th century, and with the summaries of the books selected for the use in the practical part. The practical part focuses on the major influences on the development of dystopian literature of the 21st century written in English. Those are influences relating to methods of social control, scientific and technological advancements, and from various apocalyptic ideas and visions, such as wars and diseases. The practical part includes descriptions of the influences, their explanations, and subdivisions, following by illustrations of those influences on the selected literary works. KEY WORDS Dystopia, dystopian novel, the 21st century, major...

Depuis 1984 (1949) de George Orwell, la télévision et les regards (panoptiques et synoptiques) qu’elle engendre constituent un leitmotiv du genre dystopique. Dans les dystopies Acide sulfurique (2005) d’Amélie Nothomb et Les Sorcières de la République (2016) de Chloé Delaume, ils occupent une place centrale. Imposant une façon de voir au moyen du cadrage de la caméra et transmettant le contenu filmé à un nombre illimité de téléspectateurs, ils sont responsables de l’horrible traitement des protagonistes. Les héroïnes, Pannonique et la Sybille, sont exposées sans leur accord sur les écrans des habitants de leur pays qui se divertissent de leurs malheurs. Les œuvres des autrices à l’étude critiquent toutes deux, chacune à leur manière, la « société du spectacle » (Guy Debord, 1967) qu’encourage la télévision. Suivant des perspectives intermédiales et féministes, ce mémoire s’intéresse aux conséquences de la contamination non seulement des personnages féminins mais également du genre romanesque lui-même par les regards télévisuels. Il semble avant tout qu’ils aient un effet non négligeable sur les protagonistes, puisqu’elles sont jugées selon leur apparence par les téléspectateurs et que leur sexe conditionne l’image qui leur est attribuée (la sorcière, la vierge, l’amoureuse, etc.). Or, l’impact des regards télévisuels ne se limite guère à l’intrigue des romans, puisqu’ils contaminent aussi la forme, la structure et la narration des œuvres. Acide sulfurique et Les Sorcières de la République apparaissent comme des « livres-écrans » qui font adopter la position de téléspectateur à leur lectorat et accueillent simultanément le virus télévisuel au sein du livre, tout en le combattant de l’intérieur. / Since George Orwell’s 1984 (1949), television and the (panoptic and synoptic) gazes that it generates have been a leitmotif of dystopian fiction. In the dystopian novels Acide sulfurique (2005) by Amélie Nothomb and Les Sorcières de la République (2016) by Chloé Delaume, they play a central role. By imposing a way of seeing through the framing of the camera and by transmitting the filmed content to an unlimited number of viewers, televisual gazes are responsible for the horrible treatment of the protagonists. The heroines, Pannonique and Sybille, are exposed without consent on the screens of fellow citizens who are entertained by their misfortunes. The works by the two authors examined both critique, each in their own way, the “society of the spectacle” (Guy Debord, 1967) that television encourages. From an intermedial and a feminist perspective, this research analyses the televisual gazes’ contamination of the novel that occurs through the portrayal of the female characters, but also through the form of the works themselves. Firstly, it seems that they have a significant effect on the protagonists, since they are judged by the viewers according to their appearance and because their sex conditions the image assigned to them (the witch, the virgin, the lover, etc.). However, the impact of televisual gazes is not limited to the intrigue of the novels : they also contaminate the form, structure and narration of the works. Acide sulfurique and Les Sorcières de la République appear as “screening books” inviting readers to adopt a viewer’s role and hosting televisual gazes like a virus, all while fighting them from the inside.

The purpose of this essay is to analyse several of the extreme dystopian elements found in the Warhammer: 40000 megatext and reveal how these elements display critique towards authoritarian policies and philosophy. I opted for a close reading of several texts and analysed several characters’ relationship to the galactic empire known as the Imperium of Man and found themes of suppression of thought, self-existential crises and wishes for freedom. Through my analysis of the megatext of Warhammer: 40000, I argue that it is the governance of the Imperium of Man that creates these humanitarian issues, and, while not an explicit reference, has been influenced by our own human history. / Syftet med denna uppsats är att analysera ett flertal dystopiska element som existerar i det fiktiva universumet Warhammer: 40000 och påvisa hur dessa element avslöjar kritik riktad mot auktoritär politik och filosofi. Jag valde en fördjupad läsning av ett antal texter och analyserade karaktärernas relation till det galaktiska imperiet Imperium of Man och fann områden vars fokus var förtryck mot yttrandefrihet, existensiella kriser och drömmar om frihet. I min analys av Warhammer: 40000 argumenterar jag att styrelseskicket som etablerats i Imperium of Man skapar dessa humanitära kriser, vilket till viss del blivit inspirerat av mänsklighetens egen historia.

2022 lade Europakommissionen fram ett förslag om att all kommunikation, offentlig somprivat, borde vara obligatoriskt övervakat. Detta förslag kom fram genom att det ansågskunna hjälpa fler barn från sexuellt utnyttjande. Kommissionen föreslog att all digitalkommunikation borde bli dekrypterad (avkodad). Om kommunikationen visar någon form avmisstänkt aktivitet hamnar det i en databas kallad ”Europol”, där det kommer bli lagrat,analyserat, spårat och rapporterat.Meningen med den här uppsatsen är att analysera EU-kommissionens förslagsdokument föratt se vilken typ av kommunikation och vilken diskurs som används för att etablera makt.Efter det har vi genomfört analys av förslagets likheter mellan Shoshana Zuboffs teori omövervakning och George Orwells dystopiska roman 1984. Teorin och metoden som används idenna studie är kritisk diskursanalys och övervakningsteorier.I vår uppsats fann vi ut att EU-kommissionen använder sig av diskursen kring barns säkerhetför att få människor ombord på att barnens säkerhet är viktigare än alla andra mänskligarättigheter. Slutsatser från den här studien inkluderar också att det finns likheter på så sätt attövervakning kan kontrollera vårt beteende om den här lagen kommer i kraft, precis som iZuboffs teori och Orwells dystopiska framtidsroman. / 2022, the European Commission put forward a proposal that all communication, public andprivate, should be under mandatory surveillance. This proposal came to be because theybelieve this could help keep more children safe from sexual abuse. The commission proposedthat all digital communication be decrypted (decoded). If the communication shows any formof suspicion it will then be sent to a database called ”Europol”. There it will be stored,analysed, tracked and reported.The purpose of this study is to analyse the EU- Commission's proposal document toinvestigate what type of communication and discourse is used to establish power. After that,we also performed an analysis on the proposals' similarities to Shoshana Zuboff’s theoryabout surveillance capitalism and George Orwell's dystopian book 1984. The theory andmethod used in this study is critical discourse analysis and surveillance theories.In our essay we found that the EU-commissions uses the discourse surrounding children'ssafety to get people onboard the idea that children's safety is more important than all otherhuman rights. Conclusions from this study also include that there are similarities in the waysurveillance could control our behaviour if this law comes to pass, as it does in Zuboff’stheory and Orwell's dystopian future fiction.

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[pt] Esta dissertação analisa os efeitos decorrentes da construção de Brasília, enquanto materialização da utopia moderna em pleno hemisfério sul, mais precisamente, no Brasil. Investigamos de que maneira a utopia moderna é produto não apenas da racionalidade e do desenvolvimento técnico, mas também de impulsos da ordem da vontade e da fé, algo que a introduz a matizes religiosos. Nesse sentido, Brasília torna-se um caso paradigmático de estudo, pois é o resultado de uma convergência entre os ideais da arquitetura moderna e uma genealogia mítica que previa a construção de uma capital no Planalto Central como meio de desencadear o florescimento de uma grande civilização num paraíso de abundância, um paraíso que posteriormente se mostraria perdido, a desencadear melancolia e desilusão. A partir desse ângulo, analisamos leituras não convencionais do evento extraídas dos clássicos da literatura brasileira, assim como mobilizamos um referencial teórico de matriz alegórica, derivado do pensamento do filósofo alemão Walter Benjamin, a fim de construir uma interpretação não convencional de Brasília, para além dos limites da historiografia tradicional e sua lógica linear. / [en] This dissertation analyzes the effects of Brasilia s construction, as a materialization of modern utopia in the southern hemisphere, more precisely, in Brazil. We investigate how modern utopia is a product not only of rationality and technical development, but also of will and faith, something that introduces it to religious nuances. In that sense, Brasilia becomes a paradigmatic case of study, because it results from a convergence between the ideals of modern architecture and a mythical genealogy that foresaw the construction of a capital in Brazil s central plateau as a means of unleashing the flourishing of a great civilization in a paradise of abundance, a paradise that later would be proved lost, unleashing melancholy and disillusionment. From this angle, we analyze unconventional readings of the event, extracted from the classics of Brazilian literature, and also mobilize the theoretical framework of allegory, derived from the work of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, in order to construct an unconventional interpretation of Brasilia, beyond the boundaries of traditional historiography and its linear logic.

This project is an exploration of 20th century dystopian literature through the lens of germ theory. This scientific principle, which emerged in the late 19th century, asserts that microorganisms pervade the world; these invisible and omnipresent germs cause specific diseases which are often life threatening. Additionally, germ theory states that vaccines and antiseptics can prevent some of these afflictions and that antibiotics can treat others. This concept of a pervasive, invisible, infection-causing other is not just a biological principle, though; in this paper, I argue that one can interpret it as an ideological framework for understanding human existence as a whole. Particularly, I believe that authors of prominent 20th century dystopian novels applied the tenets of germ theory in order to explore the potential “pathogens” that furtively exist within the human mind. These pseudo-germs are various human tendencies that, when left “untreated” by governments, create nonnormative members of society. In the eyes of dystopian regimes, it is precisely this nonnormativity that poses a lethal threat, in that it challenges the continued existence of society with the current ruling body at the helm. In this paper, I trace love (both sexual and familial) and individuation (as a function of social hierarchy, recreational activities, and the use of language) as social disease-causing pathogens in George Orwell’s 1984 and in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.