In response to theoretical inquiries into the decline in the production of utopian literature, this dissertation argues that the decline or, rather, the "postmodern" loss of faith in utopian literature and utopian thinking results from the neo-liberal globalization of capitalism and its material and discursive/ideological appropriation of global space. To demonstrate this thesis, the dissertation examines the invariably dystopic imaginative geographies in the fiction of J. G. Ballard. By analyzing the historical-geographical discursive context of Ballard's imaginative geographies, the dissertation attempts to locate and recover those absent spaces that might have served as probable sites of Utopia. / The first part of this dissertation examines Ballard's "Concentration City," "Report on an Unidentified Space Station," "The Enormous Space," "The Overloaded Man," and the novel High-Rise. This section concludes generally that the imaginative geographies inscribed within those texts are closed, insular, homogeneous, pathological and exclusionary social spaces that are antithetical to a Postmodern Utopia whose socio-cultural inclusiveness would be predicated upon a "politics of difference." / The second half of the dissertation examines Ballard's later works, such as Rushing to Paradise (1994), Cocaine Nights (1996), and Super-Cannes (2001). By discursively analyzing the similar yet more ideologically transparent imaginative geographies in these recent works, the dissertation concludes that it is not exclusively the material and ideological conquest of social space by global capital that poses the greatest threat to Ballard's "utopian" socio-spatial imaginary. Rather, it is also the postcolonial threat of the dislocations and mass immigrations of the Indigenous Other precipitated by globalization. It is the emergence of the de-territorialized Other that impels Ballard's imaginative geographies to recoil inwardly into "Privatopias," "white enclaves" and "imperial ghettos" demarcated by neocolonial pathological geographies of exclusion.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.38543 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Ostrowidzki, Eric A. |
| Contributors | Marchessault, Janine (advisor), Hensley, David (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001982701, proquestno: NQ98405, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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