The Postworld In-Between Utopia and Dystopia
This collection of essays offers global perspectives on feminist utopia and dystopia in speculative literature, film, and art, working from a range of intersectional approaches to examine key works and genres in both their specific cultural context and a wider, global, epistemological, critical background.
The international, diverse contributions, including a Foreword by Gregory Claeys, draw upon posthumanism, speculative realism, speculative feminism, object-oriented ontology, new materialisms, and post-Anthropocene studies to propose alternative perspectives on gender, environment, as well as alternate futures and pasts rendered in fiction. Instead of binary divisions into utopia vs dystopia, the collection explores genres transcending this dichotomy, scrutinising the oeuvre of both established and emerging writers, directors, and critics.
This is a rich and unique collection suitable for scholars and students studying feminist literature, media cultural studies, and womens and gender studies.
Katarzyna Ostalska is Assistant Professor in the Department of British Literature and Culture at the University of Lodz, Poland. She is the head of the Posthumanities Research Centre at the Faculty of Philology, University of Lodz. She holds a PhD and postdoctoral degree (habilitation) in literature. Her research includes gender studies, posthumanism, speculative fiction, Utopian studies, animal studies, ecofeminism, contemporary British and Irish literature and culture, and film studies. Her postdoctoral monograph Towards Female EmpowermentThe New Generation of Irish Women Poets: Vona Groarke, Sinad Morrissey, Caitrona OReilly, and Mary ODonoghue was published in 2015. She co-edited two collections of essays and was a guest co-editor of a journals special issue on speculative fiction (2020).
Tomasz Fisiak is Assistant Professor in the Department of British Literature and Culture, Institute of English Studies, University of Lodz. His book She-(d)evils? The Construction of a Female Tyrant as a Cultural Critique was published in 2020. His academic interests include Gothic fiction/cinema, gender/queer/feminist issues, dys/utopian fiction, and popular/pulp culture. He is the Managing Editor of Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture. He is currently a team member of the project Word, Sound and Image: Intertextuality in Music Videos no. 2019/33/B/HS2/00131 financed by National Science Centre in Poland.
Interdisciplinary Research in Gender
Womens Suffrage in Word, Image, Music, Stage and Screen
The Making of a Movement
Edited by Christopher Wiley and Lucy Ella Rose
Intersectional Feminist Readings of Comics
Interpreting Gender in Graphic Narratives
Edited by Sandra Cox
Caffie Greene and Black Women Activists
Unsung Women of the Black Liberation Movement
Kofi-Charu Nat Turner
Forced Migration in the Feminist Imagination
Transcultural Movements
Anna Ball
The Misogynistic Backlash Against Women-Strong Films
Dana Schowalter, Shannon Stevens, and Daniel L. Horvath
Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a Time of Bad Health
Talia Welsh
The Postworld In-Between Utopia and Dystopia
Intersectional, Feminist, and Non-Binary Approaches in 21st Century Speculative Literature and Culture
Edited by Katarzyna Ostalska and Tomasz Fisiak
https://www.routledge.com/Interdisciplinary-Research-in-Gender/book-series/IRG
First published 2021
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fisiak, Tomasz, editor. | Ostalska, Katarzyna, editor.
Title: The postworld in-between utopia and dystopia : intersectional, feminist, and non-binary approaches in 21st century speculative culture / edited by Tomasz Fisiak, Katarzyna Ostalska.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Series: Interdisciplinary research in gender | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2021033692 (print) | LCCN 2021033693 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367537043 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367537067 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003082958 (ebook) | ISBN 9781000509939 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781000509960 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Speculative fictionWomen authorsHistory and criticism. | Speculative fiction21st centuryHistory and criticism. | Feminism in literature. | Dystopias in literature. | Utopias in literature. | Future, The, in literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism. | Essays.
Classification: LCC PN3448.S64 P67 2022 (print) | LCC PN3448.S64 (ebook) | DDC 809.3/876dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033692
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033693
ISBN: 978-0-367-53704-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-53706-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-08295-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003082958
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Contents
List of figures
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Foreword: a utopian/dystopian spectrum: from friendship to fear, from consent to coercion
Gregory Claeys
Utopia and dystopia in the 21st century: feminism, intersectionality, and the rejection of binarism
Katarzyna Ostalska and Tomasz Fisiak
PART I Between Anthropocenic dystopia and ecological utopia
1 In need of new narratives: feminist ustopian fiction challenging the Anthropocene
Alessandra Boller
2 Post-anthropocentric ethics of care in turn-of-the-century fiction
Katarzyna Wickowska
3 Environmental dys/utopian short stories in Olga Tokarczuks Opowiadania Bizarne
Agnieszka owczanin
PART II The materiality of posthuman intersections and speculative discourse in fiction and art
4 Critical hope: relationalities in 21st-century speculative fiction and art
Dunja M. Mohr
5 The mesotopia: from speculative realism to speculative artistic events
Tristan Verran
6 Neganthropic architecture(s): Renee Gladmans speculative reorientation of science fiction
Magorzata Myk
PART III Between history and sexual politics: alternate herstories and historical alternatives
7 Temporal politics: entangling fictions, futures, and histories in contemporary and historical speculative fiction