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Dystopia dreams from South African: Lauren Beuke's Moxyland and Zoo…
Dystopia dreams from South African: Lauren Beuke's Moxyland and Zoo City
critical dystopian
disrupts easy binarist classifications and incorporates elements of opposition and hopes for a more egalitarian future
Sargent defines as a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as worse than contemporary society but that normally includes at least one eutopian enclave or holds out hope that the dystopia can be overcome and replaced with a eutopia
allows for some hope, or social dreaming within the reader, they activate the dreams and the nightmares that concern the ways in which groups of people arrange their lives and which usually envision a radically different society than the one in which the dreamers live
the character typically becomes progressively more disaffected and alienated, leading to a counter-narrative of politicised resistances to the hegemonic structures of the society
these novels are not subjected to the tyranny of closure but offer certian possibilities for individuals who live beyond the mainstream
Zoo City
can be seen to form part of substantial tradition and in particular to emerge from the national mood slump of the Mbeki and Zuma eras
fall much closer to the dystopian end of the spectrum than the eutopian, and in each case the effect of various techniques enables the reader to view the texts as central examples of critical dystopias, with specific siting in a South African writing history and local socio-political issues
background of general theoretical observation applied to the concept of the critical dystopia as experienced by readers
writers
story-tellers and thinkers who can lead to a mutation of thought by questioning issues such as rights to fair share, reciprocity and democracy
revitalise the power of language which has been rendered stagnant by clichés, stereotypes and repetitions of the past
Lauren Beukes
through critical dystopias of her novels Moxyland and Zoo City, offers a view of South African society which holds up to scrutiny the dystopia of institutionalised segregation, criminality, volience, oppression and human rights violations that characterised the past and persists into the future
Utopia, dystopia, eutopia
eutopian: better alternatives society
utopian theorist provides a useful distinction between the concepts of dystopia and anti-utopia
implies a resistence to the very idea of utopianism, while dystopia is a negative utopia
tends to be imbued with a totalising impulse, the conflicts in critical dystopias enables social critique and the seeds of hope for a more just, progressive society
dystopian: palpably worse alternative society
alert readers to potentially catastrophic consequences of continuing on a certain path of collective behaviour
emphasised by absolute bleakness of the endings of texts
a bile offering a joyous counter-poison and corrosive solvent to apply to the surface of what is
cyberpunk
branch of science fiction which typically features advanced technology and an alienated denizen of society's underbelly
epitomise the oppositional stance of critical dystopia
national mood in post-apartheid South Africa, and dystopian cultural production
1980s and early 1990s
watershed era
1980s in South Africa were dark days, when a mood of despair prevailed, and the possibility of civil war was a threat
1990s offered up more hope, and the mood shifted to post-apartheid mindset in which cultural relativism was under scrutiny
problems related to rights, identity and assimilating of various cultural groups