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Inhalt
Thank You
I. Introduction: Dystopia Today
II. The Dystopian Genre
1. Genre, Etymology, and Definition of Utopian, Eutopian, and Dystopian Fiction
2. The History of Dystopian Fiction
3. Context, Criticism, and Rahel Jaeggi’s Critique of Forms of Life (2014)
3.1. Classical Dystopian Fiction, State Totalitarianism, and ‘External Criticism’
3.2. Contemporary Dystopian Fiction, Neoliberal Capitalism, and ‘Immanent Criticism’
Theorising Neoliberal Capitalism and Globalisation
Neoliberalism and the Colonisation of the Imagination: Mark Fisher’s ‘Capitalist Realism’
The (Im-)Possibility of Criticising Neoliberalism
Contemporary Dystopian Writing, ‘Immanent Criticism,’ and David Grewal’s Network Power (2008)
III. ‘Crowd-Founded’ Dystopia: Dave Eggers’ The Circle (2013)
1. Corporate Dystopia – The Rise of the Circle
2. “Don’t You See That It’s All Connected?”– The Company and Network Standards
3. Network Standards – The Circlers’ Loss of Identity and Longing for Recognition
4. “They Have Offered No Alternative” – The ‘Eutopian’ Monopoly of the Circle
IV. The Totalitarian Face of Neoliberalism: Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last (2015)
1. “Jobs for All!” – The Eutopian Facade of Neoliberalism
2. “The Right Choice(!?)” – Involuntary Decisions Within Neoliberal Networks
3. The Banality of Dystopia – Totalitarianism as Product of the Free Market
4. “I Need to Help Fix This” – The Impossibility of Thinking beyond Neoliberal Capitalism
V. Feeding Neoliberal Capitalism: M.T. Anderson’s Feed (2002)
1. Conceptionariums and Air Factories – The Commodification of Life and Nature
2. “I Did Not Get the Job” – Network Standards, Neoliberal Capitalism, and the Feed
3. Trendy Riot Gear & Evil Corporations – The Absence of Resistance
4. “Hope Was Looking off to the Side” – The Inefficiency of ‘External Criticism’
VI. Predatory Capitalism Throughout History: David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004)
1. From Empire to Corpocracy – The History of Capitalism
2. “Free Will Plays No Part in My Story” – Networks and Path Dependence
3. A “Cannibals’ Banqueting Hall” – Consumption and Its (Narratological) Limits
4. “Hydra” versus “A Multitude of Drops” – ‘Immanent Criticism’ as Compass for Reform
VII. Clones and Free-Market Capitalism: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005)
1. Our “Most Marketable Stuff” – The Commodification of Life, Art, and Sex
2. “Tommy Had Brought All His Problems on Himself“ – Individuals Within Networks
3. The Logic Behind Rebellion – The Confusion of Voluntariness and Freedom
4. “That Frightened People” – The Failure of ‘External Criticism’
VIII. Dystopia, ‘Immanent Criticism,’ and its Eutopian Implications
IX. Bibliography
Fußnoten. I. Introduction: Dystopia Today
1. Genre, Etymology, and Definition of Utopian, Eutopian, and Dystopian Fiction
2. The History of Dystopian Fiction
3. Context, Criticism, and Rahel Jaeggi’s Critique of Forms of Life (2014)
3.1. Classical Dystopian Fiction, State Totalitarianism, and ‘External Criticism’
3.2. Contemporary Dystopian Fiction, Neoliberal Capitalism, and ‘Immanent Criticism’
Theorising Neoliberal Capitalism and Globalisation
Neoliberalism and the Colonisation of the Imagination: Mark Fisher’s ‘Capitalist Realism’
The (Im-)Possibility of Criticising Neoliberalism
Contemporary Dystopian Writing, ‘Immanent Criticism,’ and David Grewal’s Network Power (2008)
III. ‘Crowd-Founded’ Dystopia: Dave Eggers’ The Circle (2013)
1. Corporate Dystopia – The Rise of the Circle
2. “Don’t You See That It’s All Connected?”– The Company and Network Standards
3. Network Standards – The Circlers’ Loss of Identity and Longing for Recognition
4. “They Have Offered No Alternative” – The ‘Eutopian’ Monopoly of the Circle
IV. The Totalitarian Face of Neoliberalism: Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last (2015)
1. “Jobs for All!” – The Eutopian Facade of Neoliberalism
2. “The Right Choice(!?)” – Involuntary Decisions Within Neoliberal Networks
3. The Banality of Dystopia – Totalitarianism as Product of the Free Market
V. Feeding Neoliberal Capitalism: M.T. Anderson’s Feed (2002)
1. Conceptionariums and Air Factories – The Commodification of Life and Nature
2. “I Did Not Get the Job” – Network Standards, Neoliberal Capitalism, and the Feed
3. Trendy Riot Gear & Evil Corporations – The Absence of Resistance
4. “Hope Was Looking off to the Side” – The Inefficiency of ‘External Criticism’
VI. Predatory Capitalism Throughout History: David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004)
1. From Empire to Corpocracy – The History of Capitalism
2. “Free Will Plays No Part in My Story” – Networks and Path Dependence
3. A “Cannibals’ Banqueting Hall” – Consumption and Its (Narratological) Limits
4. “Hydra” versus “A Multitude of Drops” – ‘Immanent Criticism’ as Compass for Reform
VII. Clones and Free-Market Capitalism: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005)
1. Our “Most Marketable Stuff” – The Commodification of Life, Art, and Sex
2. “Tommy Had Brought All His Problems on Himself“ – Individuals Within Networks
3. The Logic Behind Rebellion – The Confusion of Voluntariness and Freedom
4. “That Frightened People” – The Failure of ‘External Criticism’
VIII. Dystopia, ‘Immanent Criticism,’ and its Eutopian Implications
Annika Gonnermann
Absent Rebels: Criticism and Network Power in 21st Century Dystopian Fiction
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Neoliberalism has been stylised as the most natural approach to human relations, being accepted even “at the level of the cultural unconscious” (Fisher 6). Mark Fisher has cultivated this assumption under ‘capitalist realism,’ a term created to refer “to the contemporary condition in which all social and political possibility is seemingly bound up in the economic status quo” (Shonkwiler and La Berge 2). He argues that “not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it” (Fisher 2, emphasis in the original). Taking the view that neoliberalism is the embodiment of the capitalist realist spirit par excellence, Fisher offers a rather bleak diagnosis: the economic sphere has successfully colonised the cognitive capacities of humanity, obscuring the very possibility of conceiving of alternative systems. Capitalism “is more like realism in itself” (ibid. 4), impeding our capacity to conceive alternatives. As Ellen M. Wood comments somewhat sarcastically, “if capitalism is the natural culmination of history, then surmounting it is unimaginable” (Origin 8). Benjamin Kunkel, too, criticises this understanding, “neoliberal principles were ardently proclaimed by some people I knew and shruggingly accepted by most of the rest” (Utopia 6). Entire intellectual schools refuse to even consider alternatives to the status quo, dismissing them as “madness” (Žižek in an interview with O. Jones et al.) and condemning those who articulate them “as lunatic or terrorist” (Levitas and Sargisson 26). Thus, these schools successfully impede the search for alternative social systems, defending free market capitalism as the natural order of things, and decrying alternatives to neoliberalism as “no more practical than time travel” (Beckett). Doing so, they argue that “capitalism is the natural condition of humanity, that it conforms to the laws of nature and basic human inclinations, and that any deviation from those natural laws and inclinations can only come to grief” (Wood, Origin 1).3
It seems, neoliberalism has not only successfully conquered the realm of imagination. It has equally subsumed and become “part of our commonsense understanding of life” (Massey),4 the effect being that it is regarded by some “as a necessary, even wholly ‘natural,’ way for the social order to be regulated” (Harvey, Neoliberalism 41). In the words of Stephen Metcalf, neoliberal capitalism “has come to regulate all we practise and believe” (“Neoliberalism”) and now constitutes common sense. As Stuart Hall and Alan O’Shea have shown, common sense is so hard to refute since it is believed to be egalitarian in nature, accessible by everyone. It is not the privilege of a wealthy and educated elite, but rather “works intuitively, without forethought or reflection” (8) as the direct result of everyday experiences. Neoliberalism functions thus as the common denominator for both ordinary people and the state’s elite:
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