EN 4241 Utopias & Dystopias

Course Description and Objectives

The module examines the appeal of s/f as a serious fictional engagement with our consensual sense of reality. It addresses fantasy, speculative fiction, and science fiction as forms of narrative engaged in “world-building” and “word-shaping,” studying such fictional constructs as forms of sociological and anthropological knowledge. It also examines the relation between the “strange” and the “real” in terms of the shared and the antithetical elements that relate s/f to realism.

----------------------------------

This module will examine the s/ f sub-genre of utopias and dystopias in fictional literature. It will address the following questions: What is the appeal of imaginative utopias and dystopias? What is the relation of these fictions to the world of contemporary reality? To alternative ways of conceiving life, experience, or reality? To traditional history? To alternative futures? To projections of, and apprehensions about human society? How does the imaginative construction of dystopias, in particular, address the constantly changing relation of science and technology to human life as we know it, to the human individual, to human society, and to the many institutions and notions, from gender and sexuality to race, family, nation, religion and species through which the relation of the individual to the group is mediated in time and place? Dystopian and Utopian fiction will be studied as imaginative constructions of extrapolations from current technology and science, or as possible worlds with alternative selves, life-forms, ecosystems, or histories.

Primary Texts
1. Anthony Burgess	A Clockwork Orange (1962)
2. Philip K. Dick	Dr Bloodmoney (1965)
3. Ursula le Guin	The Dispossessed (1974)
4. Margaret Atwood	*The Handmaid's Tale* (1985)
5. Sheri S. Tepper	*The Gate to Women's Country* (1988)
6. David Brin	Glory Season (1993)

Assignments & Continuous assessment

The module has 100% CA.

1. Class-seminar and presentation (15%)

Note: Each student will do one presentation during the semester, of approximately 20 mins, and submit a handout or written version.

2. Class Test (35%)

Note: Open Book (primary texts only). The class test will be of 90 mins duration. The test format will be put up nearer the start of semester.

3. End-of-semester submission of Long Essay (30%)

Note: Length: Between 2,000-2,500 words (including references). To be submitted on the Monday of Week 13 of semester. This essay is expected to be comparative in orientation, and should pursue an independent line of inquiry/analysis/argument based on at least one text from the syllabus and any one (or more) of the following texts (which will not be discussed in class, but can be read by students as additional resource material for the module):

(a) Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (1921) LINC: PG3476 Z24W

(b) Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932) LINC: PR6015 H986B 2004

(d) Walter E. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) LINC: PS3525 M652C

4. End-of-semester Test (20%)

Note: The test will comprise short-answer quiz-type questions covering texts discussed in latter half of semester.

Suggested approaches to presentations & essays

(These are sample topics, to which more will be added throughout the semester.

For presentations & essays, you are encouraged to come up with similar topics of your own)

Background topics/questions to keep in mind throughout the semester:

What are the ways in which sf narratives resemble "ordinary" realist fiction?
In what specific ways do sf narratives differ from realist narratives?
Why, when and how do writers turn and return to a utopian mode of thought about human life and societies?
Why, when and how does the utopian impulse turn or twist into dystopianism?

1. Single text topics

Burgess: What are the roles assigned to force, coercion, manipulation and deception in terms of human resource management in A Clockwork Orange?
Dick: To what degree to do you think Dr Bloodmoney vindicates the authors claim that the people he invents show "strength and tenacity and vitality" (303)?
le Guin: In what sense is the factional politics represented in The Dispossessed a refraction of 20th century Cold War realities?
Atwood: What is the role assigned to Christianity by the novelist in her representation of Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale?
Tepper: How do allusions to classical mythology reinforce the feminist impulse in The Gate to Women's Country?
Brin: What would you assess as the limitations of societies based on cloning as imagined in Glory Season?

2. Comparative topics (any two or three novels [of which one can be outside the syllabus] can be compared with a focus on the following perspectives:

The relation between utopian thinking and its inversion/negation/distortion/or what-have-you by the dystopian imagination in specific sf narratives.
The relation between the "speculative" element and the "(quasi-)science" element in utopian/dystopian fiction.
How technological developments affect human beings at the levels of the individual and of society.
The relation of the fictive conditions imagined by sf novels to the specific circumstances (historical, cultural, political, technological, religious, etc) in which those narratives were written.
The role played by gender politics in the development of plot and character in utopian/dystopian narratives.
Contrast the role assigned to sexuality and gender roles in any 2 or 3 sf novels you've read for this module.
"One person's utopia may turn out to be another person's dystopia." Comment.
Discuss the usefulness of the Foucaldian idea of "heterotopia" in relation to "utopia" and "dystopia".

Lecture Schedule (Mondays, 10-11.50am, AS4-0109)
Week	Date	Text/Author/Topic		Lecturer	Presentation schedule
1	12 Jan	Introductory and Burgess
2	19 Jan	Burgess			1	Burgess
3	26 Jan	CHINESE NEW YEAR HOLIDAY
4	2 Feb	Dick			2	Dick
5	9 Feb	Dick and le Guin			3	le Guin
6	16 Feb	le Guin			4	Comparative topics
21 Feb-1 March RECESS WEEK
7	2 Mar-rev to 9 Mar	Atwood			5	Atwood
8	9 Mar-rev to 16 Mar	Atwood and Tepper			6	Comparative topics
9	16 Mar-rev to 23 Mar	Tepper			7	Tepper
10	23 Mar-rev to 30 Mar	CLASS TEST
11	30 Mar-rev to 6 Aprl	Brin			8	Brin
12	6 Apr-rev to 13 Aprl	Comparative			9	Comparative topics
13	13 Apr-rev to 20 Aprl	Concluding discussion	ESSAY DUE as always on 13 April		10	Comparative topics
14	20 Apr	Final Class test

Supplementary Reading

REFERENCE WORK

J. Clute & P. Nicholls (ed), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993)

CRITICAL WORKS

Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the future: the desire called utopia and other science fictions (2005)

Richard Gerber, Utopian Fantasy 1973)

Alexandra Aldridge, The Scientific World View in Dystopia (1984)

Ursula le Guin, The Language of the Night (1979)

Ursula le Guin, Dancing at the Edge of the World (1989)

Tom Moylan, Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination (1984)

Brian Stableford, The Sociology of Science Fiction (1987)

Frances Bartowski, Feminist Utopias (1989)

Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction (1993) Jenny Wolmark, Aliens and Others: Science Fiction, Feminism and Postmodernism (1994)

Neil Barron, Anatomy of Wonder 4 (4th edn., 1995)

Damien Broderick, Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction (1995)

Brooks Landon, Science Fiction After 1900 (1997)

JOURNALS

Science-Fiction Studies

Extrapolation

Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction