Brave New Worlds: The Dystopia in Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Newcastle University, 29-30 April 2015

Brave New Worlds: The Dystopia in Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Newcastle University, 29-30 April 2015

Simon Mernagh (Queen's University, Belfast) opened the mid-morning panel, 'Apocalypse & the Human', by drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt on phenomenological spatial relations to examine distinctions between the dystopic and the apocalyptic; while privacy is destroyed in the for...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Foundation (Dagenham) 2015, Vol.44 (121), p.82
Main Authors: Bigman, Fran, Dietrich, Andrea
Format: Article
Language:eng
Subjects:
Atwood, Margaret (1939- )
Conferences
Fiction
Huxley, Aldous (1894-1963)
McCarthy, Cormac (1933-2023)
Orwell, George (Eric Blair) (1903-1950)
Science fiction & fantasy
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Simon Mernagh (Queen's University, Belfast) opened the mid-morning panel, 'Apocalypse & the Human', by drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt on phenomenological spatial relations to examine distinctions between the dystopic and the apocalyptic; while privacy is destroyed in the former, the public sphere as described by Arendt disappears in examples of the latter. [...]Madeleine Scherer (also Warwick) argued that the Irish Midlands become a dystopian metaphor in the plays of Marina Carr, suggesting Ireland's failure to come to terms with the ghosts of its past. Diletta De Cristofaro (Nottingham) closed the panel by considering the prevalence of dystopia in post-apocalyptic fiction, using the etymological meaning of apocalypse as an 'unveiling' of the true nature of history: a straight line leading to a cataclysm and then to utopian renewal, a teleology subverted by contemporary apocalypses such as Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006) that end in dystopia instead. In the panel, 'Reading & Resistance', Anna Holt (Newcastle) critiqued the idea that cinematic heroines such as Katniss of The Hunger Games and Triss of Divergent are not subject to cultural and filmic norms of femininity, and dependence on men; sexual restraint and self-sacrifice are still important for them, and the camera lingers on the dead and dying bodies of girls and women.
ISSN:0306-4964