Utopia, Dystopia, Speculative Fiction and Extinction

About the lecture

In this module, we introduce the concepts of utopia and dystopia, focusing in particular on: (i) the dual etymology of the word 'utopia' – both 'no-place' (ou + topia) and 'good place' (eu + topia); (ii) the work of Lyman Tower Sargent and the concept of utopia as 'social dreaming'; (iii) Sargent's definition of positive utopia (or eutopia) and negative utopia (or dystopia); (iv) Oscar Wilde's discussion of utopia in his 1891 essay 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism'; (v) the relationship between utopia and dystopia; (vi) Margaret Atwood's rejection of the label 'dystopia' in preference for the label 'speculative fiction'; (vii) the tension in both utopias and dystopias between the here and now and some alternative (better or worse) world; (viii) the work of Gregory Claeys and the idea of dystopias as "utopias which have decayed"; (ix) the shrinking of the gap between the here and now and the dystopian future, and the view of some writers (e.g. Kim Stanley Robinson) that we are already living in a dystopia; (x) the rise of extinction narratives, including Ling Ma's Severance (2018) and Christina Sweeney-Baird's The End of Men (2021).

About the lecturer

Prof. Nicole Pohl is Professor in Early Modern Literature and Critical Theory at Oxford Brookes University. Her research focuses on utopias and utopianism.