Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro / A protagonista do presente trabalho, a Utopia, a arte do pensar-contra, foi apresentada e definida, nas sendas da Filosofia da Esperança de Ernst Bloch, como uma consciência antecipadora que não se conforma com o está-aí das coisas, com a realidade fática; e como um logos, linguagem-ação que cria furos no tempo saltando para-adiante, para o topos-outro. Negativa e Esperançosa, ela representa a verdade-de-fora: não é o irreal, pois existe. E a existência do topos de fora, o topos-outro, se justifica pelo fato de que a vida e o mundo não são sistemas fechados, porque seus horizontes estão em aberto: atravessados por possibilidades, ainda-não-são. Contra o que é estático, o que é fatal e fático, se posiciona o sonho utópico, abrindo espaços no fluxo do mesmo. Ao fazê-lo, cria duas frentes reciprocamente reais: o aqui-e-agora de quem sonha e o aqui-e-agora do sonho, o u-topos. Assim, tanto seu caráter de projeção ao porvir quanto, na sua base, o descontentamento com o atual, revelam seu comprometimento com o presente. Negando e afirmando a história, transformou-se em conteúdo e, sobretudo, forma, de Morus a Fourrier, de Marx a Orwell. E é por comprometer-se com o futuro, o presente e o passado, que, nos tempos sombrios do início do século XX, ela subverte a si mesma e faz vir ao mundo sua versão pessimista: a Distopia. Articulando e fazendo dialogarem as obras distópicas de Orwell, Aldous Huxley e Jerome K. Jerome com os pensamentos de Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer, Hannah Arendt, Karl Kraus e Walter Benjamin, tentamos encaminhar a pergunta originária da nossa pesquisa: é possível uma utopia pessimista? Será este pessimismo, ainda, uma Utopia?

Através da utilização de letras de músicas produzidas entre os anos de 1981 e 1989, busquei analisar o papel que o rock brasileiro teve como elemento de manifestação da juventude que havia crescido sob a ditadura de 1964. Utilizei os conceitos de utopia e distopia para compreender de que maneira essas letras, ao mesmo tempo, serviram como representação da compreensão desses jovens de seu momento histórico e como instrumento de crítica da realidade econômica e social ao seu redor. Mais do que reflexo cultural de seu período, tais letras manifestavam a contradição ideológica da época, na qual a utopia em torno de uma sociedade melhor era negada pela própria distopia presente nas relações econômicas e sociais cotidianas. Esta mesma contradição foi observada na relação entre arte e mercado, criticada por muitas bandas, mas necessária para que suas músicas alcançassem seus ouvintes. É importante ressaltar que o movimento punk brasileiro teve papel fundamental para as bandas do rock brasileiro da década de 1980, pois ele mostrou que era possível produzir músicas para e pela juventude que vivia a transição da ditadura para a democracia. / Using lyrics of songs produced from 1981 to 1989, I tried to analyze the role Brazilian rock n roll had as an element of manifestation of youngsters who had grown up during the 1964 dictatorship. I used the concepts of utopia and dystopia to understand in which way these lyrics, at the same time, served as a representation of the understanding of these youngsters of their historical moment and as an instrument of criticism of the economic and social reality that surrounded them. More than just a cultural reflex of their period, these lyrics demonstrated the ideological contradiction of their time, in which utopia regarding a better society was denied by dystopia that could be found on daily economic and social relations. That same contradiction was observed on the relation between art and market, criticized by many bands, but necessary for the dissemination of their songs among their listeners. It is important to say that the Brazilian punk movement had a fundamental role for the Brazilian rock bands of the 1980s, since it showed it was possible to make songs for and by the youngsters that were living the transition from dictatorship to democracy.

Esse trabalho buscou dar conta de três conceitos gerais dentro da obra de Marge Piercy. Primeiramente apresentamos um pouco sobre a vida da autora, seus alinhamentos e como ela se engaja com os assuntos mais importantes de seu momento histórico. Dois entre seus diversos romances, Woman on the Edge of Time e He, She and It materializam em si uma série de temas e questões, com suas soluções simbólicas e contradições, que buscamos apontar e comentar. O primeiro aspecto que se fez preemente para nossa discussão foi a definição do conceito de Utopia, enfatizando ora suas características formais, ora de conteúdo e, alternativamente, sua função. Ideias como o sonho social e a educação do desejo pautaram nossa análise. Além disso, Fredric Jameson e sua ideia de Utopia enquanto neutralização foi essencial, ou seja, a demonstração de nossa incapacidade de imaginar o futuro. Definimos que a utopia seria para nós um modo de mediação da imaginação, uma ligação entre aquilo que é a uma forma radical de pensar ou agir: a representação da diferença, portanto, uma ferramenta política, um mapeamento das possibilidades e dos limites históricos, importante em um contexto no qual a própria concepção de alternativas está problematizada ou impedida. Além das características gerais da Utopia, se fez importante estabelecer àquelas específicas para as utopias literárias, que são nosso objeto de estudo. Falamos igualmente sobre a Distopia, e suas categorias, além de apresentar uma conceituação de suas vertentes críticas. Nossa tese foi que as obras de Piercy abrem espaço para o pensamento autorreflexivo de alternativas em uma época de crise política e histórica. Elas assim o fizeram na época em que foram escritas e ainda o fazem nos dias de hoje. Guardadas as proporções dos respectivos momentos históricos, as obras representam uma recuperação de aspectos relevantes do passado e um salto para o futuro, na sua mistura de desejos e medos, utopia e distopia. O próximo movimento da pesquisa foi a de explicitar os conceitos de história trazidos pelos romances. Trata-se de uma constante luta contra o apagamento e repressão dos momentos explosivos da História: tanto memória e história são sociais e coletivas quanto o esquecimento e o apagamento da história permeiam a sociedade contemporânea e têm motivações políticas. Finalmente houve uma análise da violência. Fizemos um levantamento de instâncias subjetivas, simbólicas e objetivas dela, analisando episódios do romance que diretamente questionavam as questões da violência. Depois, estudamos as cenas de fechamento dos romances e a forma como a violência passa a ser ressignificada: a defesa se torna um ataque e tal ataque está relacionado a um sacrifício. E o ato individual dos sujeitos é colocado em uma perspectiva coletiva pelas forças do romance, um passo, pequeno, mas prospectivo, na luta por uma alteridade radical. / This thesis aimed at coping with three general concepts within the work of Marge Piercy. Firstly, we introduced some facts about the authors life, her alignments and how she engaged in important issues of her historic moment. Two of her novels Woman on the Edge of Time and He, She and It materialize a series of themes and questions, with their symbolic solutions and contradictions, which we tried to indicate and comment on. The first important aspect of our discussion was the definition of Utopia, its formal characteristics, content or function. Ideas like social dreaming and education of desire were bases for our analyses. In addition to that, Fredric Jameson and his idea of Utopia as neutralization was essential to demonstrating our incapacity to imagine the future. We defined Utopia would be a mediation of imagination, a link between what is and a radical new form of thinking or acting: a representation of difference as well as a political tool, a mapping of possibilities and historical limits, important in a context when even the conception of alternatives are damaged or neutralized. Also, it was important to establish more specific characteristics to literary utopia, which are our object, and we presented Dystopia, its categories and their criticism. Our thesis was that Piercys works enable us to the self-reflexive thinking of alternatives in a time of political and historical crises, both when they were written and now. Regarding their moments of production, they represent a recovery of relevant aspects of the past and a projection into the future, in their mixture of desires, fears, utopia and dystopia. The next step in the research was to explain the conceptions of History within the novels. It showed us the constant fight against the erasing and repression of explosive moments in History: memory and history are social and collective and forgetting and erasing of History are pervasive in our society and have political motivations. There was then an analysis of violence. We selected some examples of subjective, symbolic and objective violence, studying the episodes in the novels that questioned their uses. Finally, we looked to the closing of the novels and the way violence comes to be resignified: defense becomes an attack and such attack is related to a sacrifice. And an individual act of subjects is put into perspective by the collective forces within the novels and are shown to be a small step, yet forward, in the fight towards radical Otherness.

Prominent within various scientific journals, news media outlets, and online publications are conversations surrounding what is dubbed “climate anxiety.” This wide-stemmed social unrest is caused, in large part, by the unrelenting, consistent data from the scientific community reporting rising sea levels, species extinction, and “record-breaking” heatwaves as well as an increasing average of global temperatures, that seem to top the next every year for the past decade. However, an underlying thread to these reports remains largely consistent. Unless serious regard is given to our natural surroundings and how we have come to interact within it, regions of the Earth considered desirable for human life will likely become uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable to humans and other species. When addressed so simply and plainly, it seems that the response to such life-altering implications ought to be simple: do whatever it takes to ensure that a diversity of life, including that of humankind, can continue on the planet Earth. Voices of the scientific community have decreed that a driving force behind the lackadaisical approach to deterring such dire climatological circumstances, is the inability to grasp the immense scope of climate change issues. This thesis, then, aims at proposing a directive to correct this problematic mentality, and a specific generation to combat this nature. Using the lens of ecocriticism, the study of literature and the environment, combined with cutting-edge theoretical findings in the field, I will focus on the literary portrayal of climate change within young-adult dystopian fiction. While regarding the scholarship on the recent increase of YA fiction that takes a critical approach to human ethics and the portrayal of the demise of the natural environment in those texts, I will examine how this trend responds to my ideas of young-adult fiction functioning within Ecocriticism. Moreover, you will see a pattern charting how literature can revolutionize and evolve the mind frame of human ethics on a planetary scale, starting with the young adult readers. Further, I will highlight how these ideologies could and ought to be incorporated into a composition classroom. Composition already has a strong history of grounding itself in the notion of identity, and how contingent factors (social, political, economic, ecological, etc.) are integrated into the construction of that identity. This thesis poses that if we can introduce a sense of how those factors affect our ability to act in the natural world and potential consequences of these actions by way of pop culture outlets like YA Climate Fiction, readers can begin to re-shape our identities and actions, individually and collectively, towards Ecocritical ethics and awareness.

This thesis is a science fiction exploration of a future dystopian world where privacy becomes a dominant currency that is distributed according to social class and ranking mechanisms. It utilizes speculative world-building to study the unanticipated implications of technology on personal privacy, surveillance and social inequality on future societies. The project introduces The Mall, as a highly efficient and hyper-connected world, but also exposes its downfall as a society with heightened cultural and socio-political disparities. Inspired by past civilizations, the development of the modern nation-state as well as contemporary society, the design adapts, appropriates and reformulates existing cultures into new hybrid possibilities. This thesis project is presented as an illustrated coded tapestry that allows the viewer to explore and interact with various components of the narrative to speculate and critique an alternative future-world void of privacy.

Cette thèse analyse le corps dystopique dans La Servante Ecarlate. Elle vise à examiner les façons dont le pouvoir masculiniste subjugue les servantes à travers l'objectivation et l'effacement de leur corps, puis à analyser le corps féminin comme un élément perturbateur, un site où se produit une constante subversion du pouvoir tout au long du roman. L'introduction offre une brève discussion sur la raison derrière le choix de La Servante Ecarlate comme une étude de cas, qui est dans le but de développer le concept du corps dystopique à partir d'un point de vue féministe. Elle délimite aussi mon argument sur le corps dystopique et le pouvoir. Le premier chapitre intitulé ‟Perspectives Critiques” présente une revue critique de la littérature, introduit ma contribution à l'étude du roman, et expose mes arguments sur l'utopie féministe, la dystopie, le corps dystopique et la circulation du pouvoir. Dans le deuxième chapitre intitulé ‟Le Corps Dystopique” je démontre que la dystopie dans une certaine mesure est déjà profondément enracinée dans le présent. Cette section se concentre sur les différents aspects de la dystopie principalement la reproduction, la sexualité, la surveillance et le code vestimentaire tout en étudiant leur impact sur le corps de la servante. Ces aspects sont abordés en détail dans des sous-chapitres séparés. Le dernier chapitre intitulé ‟La Subversion du Pouvoir” examine dans un premier lieu le mode d'échange de pouvoir entre le commandant et son épouse Serena Joy. Il étudie les façons dont chacun des personnages se positionne par rapport au pouvoir afin d’exploiter le corps d’Offred. Puis, il examine l'ironie qui se cache derrière le jeu de pouvoir constant dans le roman, dévoilant ainsi la perpétuation de la dystopie corporelle étant donné que le corps de la femme ne cesse d'être l'objet de la lutte. Ce travail étudie l'expérience corporelle de la femme dans un régime totalitaire et les façons dont le corps féminin devient dystopique. Il présente le corps féminin comme la proie des hommes et des femmes, et la dystopie comme étroitement dépendante et générée par la conception de ce corps dans la société de Gilead. Mots clés: Dystopie, Corps, Pouvoir, Féminisme, Ironie, Margaret Atwood / The present thesis analyzes the dystopic body in The Handmaid’s Tale. It aims at examining the ways with which the masculinist power subjugates Handmaids through the objectification and erasure of their bodies, then analyzing the female body as a disruptive force, a site where constant powerplay occurs throughout the novel. The introduction provides a brief discussion of my reasons for choosing The Handmaid’s Tale as a case study, which includes a desire to develop the concept of the dystopic body from a feminist standpoint. It also delineates my argument on the dystopic body and power. In the first chapter entitled “Critical Perspectives”, I present a critical review of literature, introduce my contribution to the study of the novel, and expose my arguments on feminist utopia, dystopia, the dystopic body and power play. The second chapter entitled “The Dystopic Body” demonstrates that dystopia is already deep-rooted in the present. It focuses on the different aspects of dystopia mainly reproduction, sexuality, surveillance and the dress code, and studies their impact on the Handmaid’s body. These aspects are discussed in detail in separate subchapters. The final chapter entitled “Power Subversion” examines at one level the mode of power exchange between the Commander and his wife Serena Joy. It investigates the ways with which each of the characters positions themselves to power in order to take ownership of Offred’s body. At another level, it studies the irony that lies behind the constant power play in the novel, uncovering the perpetuation of bodily dystopia since the female body never ceases to be the object of struggle. This thesis examines the bodily experience of women under such totalitarian regimes and the ways in which the female body becomes dystopic. It presents the female body as the prey of both men and women, and dystopia as closely dependent on and generated by the conception of that body in the society of Gilead. Keywords: Dystopia, Body, Power, Feminism, Irony, Margaret Atwood

The objective of this thesis is to explore the relationship between moralities and bioeconomies in post-apocalyptic dystopias from the Victorian era to contemporary Young Adult Fiction. In defining the terms bioeconomy and biopolitics, this works examines the ways in which literature uses food and energy systems to explore morality and immorality in social orders and systems, including capitalism and our modern techno-industrial landscapes. This work examines science fiction portrayals of apocalypses and dystopias, including After London: Or, Wild England and The Hunger Games, as well as their medieval and contextual influences. These works are analyzed in light of genre and contemporary influences, including the development of ecology and environmentalism. Ultimately, this thesis argues that authors are building a link between the types of behavior which are sustainable and morally acceptable and a person’s role in a bioeconomy; specifically, those who are moral in post-apocalyptic dystopias are providers of food and care, and do not seek to profit from aiding others. This work contends that the connection between morality and sustainable food and social systems are evidence of authorial belief that our current ways of life are damaging, and they must change in order to preserve our humanity and our world.

Abstract     We humans are hard on our planet, how long will it take before Mother Nature bites back and call on the Apocalypse, to reset the poisoned earth and begin anew. My project is largely about criticism of how we live today in the western world, how I with an arts and crafts, criticize an unsustainable lifestyle. I have with an exciting combination of popular culture, craftsmanship and the critical design portrayed the Apocalypse with a storage cabinet. / Vi människor sliter hårt på vår planet, hur lång tid tar det innan moder natur biter ifrån och kallar på apokalypsen, för att nollställa den förgiftade jorden och börja om på nytt. Mitt projekt handlar till stor del om kritik på hur vi idag lever i västvärlden, hur jag med ett konsthantverk kritiserar en ohållbar livsstil. Jag har med en spännande kombination av populärkultur, hantverkskonst och critical design gestaltat apokalypsen med en förvaringsmöbel.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse two novels written by Aldous Huxley an anti-utopian novel Brave New World (1932) and a utopian novel Island (1963). The examination of both Huxley´ s works is based on the analysis of literary genres. The thesis outlines difficulties concerning a precise definition of the terms "utopia," "anti-utopia," and "dystopia." The genesis of the genres is also briefly mentioned. The thesis also deals with both common and distinct features of the genres. Because of the purpose of the analysis regarding Brave New World and Island, the thesis includes Huxley´ s other works (essays and novels), dystopian novels Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell and We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and a utopian novel Men Like Gods by H. G. Wells.

Dystopian fiction as intended in the Western literary tradition is a 20 th century phenomenon on the Arabic literary scene. This relatively new genre has been experiencing an uplift since the beginning of the 21 st century and many works that have been defined dystopias have been published and translated into English in the last 10 – 15 years. In order to find out their main features, Claeys’s categorization of literary dystopias is applied and a thematic analysis is carried out on four Arabic dystopian works of narrative, written by authors from different parts of the Arabic world. The analysis shows that 21 st century Arabic dystopias are political dystopias, with totalitarianism as their main variation. Rather than on society, their focus is on the individual, and more specifically on personal freedom. The totalitarian constraints are mainly caused by religious fundamentalism and bureaucratic procedures. Surveillance and control over population are implemented by means of religious precepts and bureaucratic constructions, together with, in some instances, control over language and technological devices. Political totalitarianism regardless of a specific political ideology is identified as main theme. The thesis suggests that a Western-based classification framework is only partially suitable for Arabic dystopian fiction of the 21 st century and that further research, including but not limited to a specific classification theory for Arabic dystopian fiction, is necessary to properly investigate this new literary trend in Arabic literature.