DysUtopian Literature

In his study of The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature, Keith Booker observes that “much of the history of recent utopian thought can be read as a gradual shift from utopian to dystopian emphases, while utopian thought itself has come more and more to be seen as escapist or even reactionary.” But this is too simple: “utopian and dystopian visions are not necessarily diametrical opposites. Not only is one man’s utopia another man’s dystopia, but utopian visions of an ideal society often inherently suggest a criticism of the current order of things as nonideal, while dystopian warnings of the dangers of ‘bad’ utopias still allow for the possibility of ‘good’ utopias, especially since dystopian societies are generally more or less thinly veiled refigurations of a situation that already exists in reality. Moreover, dystopian critiques of existing systems would be pointless unless a better system appeared conceivable. One might, in fact, see dystopian and utopian visions not as fundamentally opposed but as very much part of the same project” (15).

Dystopian fears don’t necessarily arise from the failure of utopia, but can arise from its success: “many modern thinkers have been worried not that utopia cannot be realized, but that it can. Acknowledging the turn to dystopian visions in modern literary depictions of imaginary societies, [Robert C.] Elliott diagnoses a suspicion of utopian concepts themselves: ‘Utopia is a bad word today not because we despair of being able to achieve it but because we fear it. Utopia itself (in a special sense of the term) has become the enemy’” (16).

In the view of some visionaries of dystopia, “the utopian fulfillment of all desire leads to a dehumanizing stagnation is a motif that runs throughout modern literature. One thinks, for example, of Wallace Stevens, who in poems like ‘Sunday Morning’ rejects the very notion of an eternal paradise and opts instead for the real, physical world, with all its imperfection, flux, and mortality” (17). Haunted by failed totalitarian experiments, in short, “twentieth- century literature has generally envisioned utopia as either impossible or undesirable.” Both prospects are unsettling.