The book studies utopian fiction as a knowledge apparatus by connecting three aspects of late Qing culture: the rise of modern press, the emergence of new genre, and the epistemology of modernity, ...while reflecting on the ability of utopian imagination to develop the three-way relationship between new people, new China, and new genre via the Chinese public sphere.
Perfect Worlds offers an extensive historical analysis of utopian narratives in the Chinese and Euro-American traditions. This comparative study discusses finally the rise of dystopian writing – a ...negative expression of the utopian impulse – in Europe and America (Zamyatin, Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury, Atwood) as well as in China (Lao She, Wang Shuo, and others). The author observes that the utopian imagination thrives in a context of secularization. It appears that in the twentieth century the distinction between utopia and dystopia is blurred as a result of the increasing autonomy of the reader. Fokkema argues that in modern times utopianism in China and in the West has developed in opposite directions, each appropriating attitudes from the other culture which originally were considered alien.
Perfect Worlds biedt een uitgebreide historische analyse van utopische verhalen in de Chinese en Euro-Amerikaanse traditie. Verschillende hoofdstukken gaan onder meer in op de kritiek van Thomas More op Plato, de Europese oriëntalistische speurtocht naar utopieën in China, Dostoevsky’s reactie op Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done, Wells’s Modern Utopia en zijn interview met Stalin, Chinese schrijvers die hun Confucianistische utopie construeren, en sporen van het Daoisme in het gedachtengoed van Mao Zedong en zijn politiek van de Grote Sprong Voorwaarts en de Culturele Revolutie. Deze vergelijkende studie bespreekt tenslotte de opkomst van dystopische fictie – een negatieve representatie van de utopische impuls – in Europa en Amerika (Zamyatin, Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury, Atwood) alsook in China (Lao She, Wang Shuo en anderen). De auteur constateert dat de utopische verbeelding tot bloei komt in een context van secularisering. In de twintigste eeuw heeft de toenemende autonomie van de lezer tot gevolg dat het onderscheid tussen eutopie en dystopie vervaagt. Tenslotte betoogt Fokkema dat in de moderne tijd de utopie in China en in het Westen een tegengestelde ontwikkeling heeft doorgemaakt, waarbij elk van de twee culturen zich elementen van de andere cultuur heeft eigen gemaakt die oorspronkelijk als vreemd werden beschouwd.
Thomas More's Utopia is one of the most iconic, translated, and influential texts of the European Renaissance. This Handbook offers three different ways of thinking about the book: in terms of its ...renaissance contexts, its vernacular translations, and its utopian legacies.
This book is inspired by the authors work as part of a major international and interdisciplinary research group at the University of Konstanz, Germany: What IfOn the Meaning, Relevance, and ...Epistemology of Counterfactual Claims and Thought Experiments. Having contributed to great discoveries, such as those by Galileo and Einstein, thought experiments are especially topical in the twenty-first century, since this is a concept that bridges the gap between the arts and the sciences, promoting interdisciplinary innovation. To study thought experiments in literature, it is imperative to examine relevant texts closely: this has rarely been done to date and this is precisely what this book does as a pilot study focusing on selected works of philosophy and literature. Specifically, thought experiments by Thomas Malthus are analyzed side by side with short stories and novels by Vladimir Odoevsky and Nikolai Chernyshevsky, Alexander Bogdanov and Aleksei Tolstoy, Alexander Chaianov and Nina Berberova.
Argues that utopia is our best hope for confronting authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and the dead end of party politics.Troubles fashionable critiques of American Exceptionalism by examining work of ...key literary works by Whitman, Dickinson, Burroughs, and Pynchon.Rejects exceptionalism's emphasis on nationalism, capitalism, and individualism in favor of democratic self-governance, egalitarian cooperation, and communal property.
Critics of American exceptionalism usually view it as a destructive force eroding the radical energies of social movements and aesthetic practices. InA Desire Called America, Christian P. Haines confronts a troubling paradox: Some of the most provocative political projects in the United States are remarkably invested in American exceptionalism. Riding a strange current of U.S. literature that draws on American exceptionalism only to overturn it in the name of utopian desire, Haines reveals a tradition of viewing the United States as a unique and exemplary political model while rejecting exceptionalism's commitments to nationalism, capitalism, and individualism. Through Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William S. Burroughs, and Thomas Pynchon, Haines brings to light a radically different version of the American dream-one in which political subjects value an organization of social life that includes democratic self-governance, egalitarian cooperation, and communal property.
A Desire Called America brings utopian studies and the critical discourse of biopolitics to bear upon each other, suggesting that utopia might be less another place than our best hope for confronting authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and a resurgent exclusionary nationalism.
The emerging post-1970s Chinese contemporary writer Li Shijiang's novella Dumplings (2018) describes in a minute way the escape from the real world into the utopian world of classical Chinese ...culture. This essay analyzes its complicated time sequence and its intermittent use of stream of consciousness. Its style can be characterized as a mixture of bitter irony and meticulous description. Dumplings is founded on the opposition between the cruel reality and literary allusions to romances, mostly three classical Chinese novels A Dream of Red Mansions, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio and A Journey to the West. In Dumplings, the theme of escape is presented through an original use of time and language, also via echoes from classical Chinese novels. Keywords Dumplings; Li Shijiang; middle age crisis; Utopian World; escape
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