DIVE-IN – An International Journal on Diversity and Inclusion

Il Dominio della Macchina: dagli scenari ipotetici di Erewhon alla realtà delle piattaforme digitali di The Circle

Robin Libero Carbonara — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Throughout dystopian literature it is possible to identify meditations and anxieties concerning the relationship between Man and the Machine along with its present and future developments. In a globalised world, dominated by the digital sphere and, maybe, on the verge of giving rise to artificial intelligence, the present article aims to retrace the evolution of these concerns throughout dystopian literature, putting them in relation with recent technological developments. It will focus specifically on four works: Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872), E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops (1911), Michael Frayn’s A Very Private Life (1968) and Dave Eggers’s The Circle (2013). Each has addressed Man’s dependence on the Machine and its eventual takeover, starting from Butler’s philosophical and speculative considerations and moving on to more concrete scenarios in which the relationship between Man and Machine has acquired the shape of the social and technological landscape we inhabit.

Spersonalizzazione del personaggio e inclusione del lettore: da Noi di Evgenij Zamjatin (1921) a Notre vie dans les forêts (2017) di Marie Darrieussecq

Sofia Tincani — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This paper analyzes two dystopias belonging to different worlds and eras: one from the 20th century, We, by Russian writer E. Zamjatin and the other from the 21st century, Notre vie dans les forêts, by the French M. Darrieussecq. This literary journey of a century allows us to focus on themes dear to the dystopian genre but especially related to the lives of today’s readers, in the spirit of engaged literature. In particular, readers will be prompted to reflect, with the help of some critical insights, primarily on the disasters of the Anthropocene and on the depersonalization experienced by humans in a world that changes too quickly and in which the boundaries between human and nonhuman seem to have been obliterated. Starting from this last element, the article considers a new model of inclusion of the different, the posthuman, through the studies of Rosi Braidotti and Donna Haraway.

Se il Mare del Nord arriva e l’Olanda scompare. L’ecofiction di Eva Meijer

Marco Prandoni — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

In the uchronic novel with dystopian/(post)apocalyptic features Zee Nu (Sea Now) by Dutch philosopher Eva Meijer (2022) the Netherlands is submerged by an exceptional high tide that does not recede. The government reacts slowly and inadequately: the country is flooded and the surviving Dutch become climate refugees in Germany and Belgium. A scientist, an activist and a young writer embark on a boat (later on, with a dog too) in order to uncover the causes of this extreme phenomenon and to pay tribute to dead people, animals and to the devastated ecosystems. In this article I focus on how the novel fictionalizes environmental issues and foregrounds key issues of contemporary philosophers of the Anthropocene as Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway: the relationship between human and nonhuman, the agency of nonhuman and the ethics of response-ability.

A speculative fjord: The global and the planetary in the depiction of Killary Harbour in Notes from a Coma (2005) by Mike McCormack and The Fjord of Killary (2012) by Kevin Barry

Beatrice Masi — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The present paper aims at analyzing two works of contemporary Irish fiction, namely, Notes from a Coma (2005) by Mike McCormack and The Fjord of Killary (2012) by Kevin Barry. I argue that both works not only mirror what Dipesh Chakrabarty calls the ‘global’ and the ‘planetary’, but also reflect the non-human space and time scales that Timothy Morton identifies as one of the properties of hyperobjects. Moreover, the two novels are deeply rooted in the history of Ireland, and especially in the semi-peripheral position occupied by the country within the capitalist world system. The intermingling of various narrative layers together with speculative and realistic tropes conveys the epiphenomenality of our lived experience, characterized by the not-yet predictable consequences of planetary climate crisis and the ever-shifting demands of global capitalism.

Eco-catastrofe e ricostruzione di un futuro plurale in Juan Buscamares di Félix Vega

Federica Moscatelli — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

In contemporary times, it has become increasingly urgent to focus on the dire situation of our planet, now on the brink of collapse. This pressing concern is reflected in certain contemporary dystopian narratives that have an eco-catastrophe as their central node. Indeed, dystopia, and specifically eco-dystopia, is the genre that best interprets our current world: a future projection that reveals the profound degradation of society. In particular, in this article, we will focus on the analysis of a graphic novel: Juan Buscamares by Chilean Félix Vega (2017). This eco-dystopian narrative is particularly interesting for several reasons, including: the relationship between colonial Christian culture and indigenous Andean myths, the tale of catastrophe, and the reconstruction of a plural future that can intervene in imagining and thus creating a more inclusive and eco-sustainable present. Specifically, we will emphasise how in this Chilean graphic novel space is given to the community dimension to reconstruct an imaginary alternative future after the apocalypse.

Distopia, memoria e identità nel romanzo El orden alfabético di Juan José Millás

Giacomo Mannucci — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

In his fictional novel El orden alfabético, the writer Juan José Millás describes a dystopian world where the death of language and the disappearance of the written word put reality into an ontological chaos. Several studies have shown that Millás’s attempt to fill the gap between the self and reality can only be achieved in fiction, in which the character embarks on a moral and personal journey. This study aims to find new ways to interpret Millás’s dystopia in the present day and within a society where images and appearances have become the norm of human experience. The relationship between personal memory, identity and the self are investigated by adopting a critical perspective and a comparative approach to the latest trends in dystopian narratives, with a focus on speculative fiction. The analysis points out the role of inexperience in Millás’s dystopia and in the construction of the character’s artificial identity.

Consumed Bodies and Unhinged Women. The dystopian worlds of Murata Sayaka’s Seimeishiki (Life Ceremony, 2013) and Ono Miyuki’s Karada o uru koto (“Selling the Body,” 2020)

Anna Specchio — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This paper investigates the representation of bodies in two contemporary Japanese works, namely Murata Sayaka’s Seimeishiki (生命式 , Life Ceremony, 2013) and Ono Miyuki’s Karada o uru koto (身体を売ること “Selling the Body,” 2020). Both novellas are set in the future and share the trope of the ‘uncanny,’ heightened through the transgression of boundaries thanks to the presence of what I refer to as ‘consumed bodies,’ and female protagonists as an ‘unhinged woman,’ the anti-heroine interpreted as a feminist icon recently emblazoned in social networks. In Life Ceremony, the Japanese government has approved anthropophagy as a social practice; in “Selling the Body,” healthy flesh bodies are sold to survive in polluted environments and replaced by robotic ones. Present anxieties concerning the control over bodies and their reproductivity, as well as the fear of objectification are expressed through the practices of cannibalism and cyberization. Consequently, readers are forced to rethink the human nature and ethics in a posthuman dialectic within a hyper-capitalistic society.

From futuristic center to lifeless periphery: Tokyo in three dystopian narratives from post-Fukushima Japan

Giulia Colelli — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Reflections on the collective traumas that have shaped Japan’s more recent history (primarily the triple disaster of Fukushima) have ignited a new boom in dystopian productions that have achieved an unprecedented success. These narratives explore themes that deal with the erosion of the ecosystem in which humans live – but also of the human body itself. However, it is not only human beings who play a part in some of these dystopias: the city of Tokyo also plays a key role within them. The purpose of this paper is to explore this peculiar role of Tokyo in three selected case studies: namely, Adou (2021-) by Amano Jaku, Soundtrack (2003) by Furukawa Hideo, and The Emissary (2013) by Tawada Yōko. Destroyed and rebuilt in multiple media productions over the last seventy years and at the center of psychedelic futuristic visions, Tokyo becomes either a swarming center of human life or an abandoned wasteland, an urban skeleton that stands as a reminder of the impending or preceding catastrophe, forcing the reader to think about the actual future of our urban spaces – and whether it will include us humans or not.

Catastrophilia: A case study of the eco-apocalyptic Japan Sinks’ mediascape

Veronica De Pieri — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The global entertainment world has recently seen an increase in post-apocalyptic products, clearly reflecting a public demand for catastrophe-related narratives. This ‘catastrophilia’ finds a relevant example in the dystopian works by Komatsu Sakyō, one of Japan's most celebrated science fiction authors, beginning with the first novel Nihon chinbotsu (1973). Having become a transmedia product thanks to film, manga, and anime adaptations, the story portrays a fictional version of “The Big One” able to sink the entire Japanese archipelago in an unknown future. What is the reason behind such success? By adopting an interdisciplinary perspective intertwining psychological, philosophical and media studies, this paper examines the popularity achieved by Japan Sinks and its mediascape to unveil the addiction to the apocalyptic narratives that goes beyond the ecotopic purpose of re-establishing a symbiotic contact between humans and the environment. Instead, it results from a pathological desire for violence and death and an atavistic tendency for morbid curiosity.

Un attimo prima della catastrofe. Realismo e distopia tra “ridicole emozioni umane” e “soddisfazione del consumatore”

Alessia Polatti — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Images of socio-political, economic, and environmental catastrophes constantly hit our imaginary: wars and humanitarian disasters provoke anxieties and mental and physical diseases. So, the boundary between realism and dystopia has become even more brittle, also in literature. The present essay intends to examine the dystopian traits of some contemporary novels – Generosity by Richard Powers, Solar by Ian McEwan, Margaret Drabble’s Pure Gold Baby, The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid, and Richard Flanagan’s The Living Sea of Waking Dreams – which cannot be properly considered as dystopian or realistic texts. Each novel is set in times and spaces that are weirdly familiar, where alienating presents and futures develop in-between human emotions and the satisfaction of the consumer in a mercified society. The essay will investigate if contemporary novels can resist and narrate the contrasting feelings deriving from the idea that everything can happen, everywhere and to anyone, in a world where also the most astonishing and baleful warnings of the dystopian fiction are becoming real.

The (Dystopian) Promise of Happiness: Hope, Happiness and Optimism in Contemporary Feminist Dystopias

Marta Olivi — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This article explores how recent utopian studies have conceptualized hope as a shapeless “horizon” characterized by its collective, positive and revolutionary core, and compares it to recent discussions on hope in the fields of feminist theory and affect studies that problematize affirmative conceptualizations of hope, happiness and optimism in calling for a more complex vision on the topic. Such reflections will be applied to the increasingly realistic contemporary feminist dystopias of recent years, which demonstrate a decisive change concerning where and how dystopian worlds are set and represented. Finally, an analysis of the novel The Book of X (2019) by Sarah Rose Etter, with its stunning lack of any utopian horizon traditionally intended, will try to break open Baccolini and Moylan’s definition of “critical dystopia”, detaching the presence of a critical angle from the presence of a properly intended utopian opening.

Antigone transgenica. Nuove indagini critiche tra genere distopico e mitologia

Chiara Protani — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

In the 20th century, it is common to find some rewritings of classical myths set in post-apocalyptic scenarios. The aim of this paper is to propose an innovative research field that combine the study of dystopian literature and myth criticism. The new myth-critical approach considers three social innovations: informatization, which is essential in dystopian literature as well; migration and postcolonial literature, which is linked to the concept of the otherness science fiction thrives on; and finally, consumerism, which leads to eternal technical reproducibility, also presented in the dystopian works, especially in the concept of cloning. A concrete example are the dystopian adaptations of the myth of Antigone: the movie I Cannibali by Liliana Cavani, the epistolary novel In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster, and the play Antígona Gelada by the portuguese author Armando Nascimento Rosa.

Il viaggio di Clitennestra attraverso i secoli: da Micene a Metropolis

Cristiana Desiderio — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

In 2015, the Sicilian director Vincenzo Pirrotta re-elaborated the myth of Clytemnestra in his drama Clitennestra Millennium. La caduta degli dèi. Tragedia post – moderna in tre mondi, in which Clytemnestra returns to Mycenae, in a post-apocalyptic scenario, where all traces of ancient beauty were destroyed after a terrible plague that hit the city and which led to the dictatorship of the Elektra and Oreste. The work is full of literary and cinematographic references, such as La caduta degli dèi by Luchino Visconti and Metropolis by Fritz Lang. In particular, Johann Fredersen’s journey towards a dehumanized environment is comparable to the journey that Clytemnestra embarks on to reach his own children towards the brighter world, behind whose light, however, the crisis of values that characterizes society is hidden, due to which it is difficult to speak of humanity, but where there is only place for ashes and ruins.

Before the after: narrative distopiche nel presente della catastrofe. Introduzione

Edoardo Balletta, Paola Scrolavezza — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100