A dystopie is an account of fiction being held in an imaginary company. The dystopie is opposed to the Utopie: instead of presenting a perfect world, the dystopie proposes the worst which is. The difference between dystopie and Utopia is due less to the contents (because after examination, many positive Utopias can appear alarming) that with literary form and for its author.

This literary form was made famous for Brave New World (1931) of Aldous Huxley, 1984 (1948) of George Orwell, and, to a lesser extent, by Us Others (1920) of Ievgueni Zamiatine.

The terrifying worlds described in these novels, and especially in 1984 , left think that a dystopie was, by definition, the description of a dictatorship without pity. The impact that these novels had on the Science-fiction often brought to qualify dystopie any text of anticipation describing a dark future.

Definition of the specific field of the dystopie

Dystopie and science fiction

The against-Utopias are generally texts of fiction of narrative form. They are generally regarded as a sub-genus of the Science-fiction but there is a certain difference between against-Utopia and science fiction. Indeed, the speculative field of science fiction is, by definition, science. Science fiction imagines scientific discoveries or technological, the met in scene or wonders about their virtual consequences such as:

It can also postulate the existence of physical phenomena not proven such as:

Science fiction approaches sometimes in these cases the Fantastique.

The speculative field of the dystopie is, on the other hand and like the Utopia, that of the possible consequences of changes of a political nature. In a against-Utopia, the technological change is not a determining factor: the technological lucky finds (large-sized telescreens in 1984 , methods of Clonage and handling of the fetuses in Brave New World ) are not phenomena which one analyzes the consequences, they are the consequences of a political will (will of monitoring in 1984 , will to model the man with the needs for the company in Brave New World ). Moreover, the technological innovations presented in most famous of the against-Utopias are not very impressive and, with the time, were shown perfectly realizable (the remote monitoring is possible today, as the animal cloning which lets predict human cloning). As for the supernatural scientific postulates, they do not have quite simply their place in the against-Utopia. If this one, by taking for framework a more or less near future, lies within the scope of the text of Anticipation, its specific object distinguishes it from the traditional science fiction. The authors of the first against-Utopias are not besides authors of science fiction.

It should however be noticed that, the science fiction tending more and more to be concerned with political and social problems, the topics resulting from the against-Utopias is now frequent there.

Dystopie and futuristic world sink

It is appropriate, to seize the significance of the term of against-Utopia to return within the meaning of the Utopia. A Utopia, i.e. an ideal company, is not the fruit of a coincidence but the result of a considered plan. The utopian companies, like that of Thomas More, are " parfaites" because desired like such. In the same way, a against-Utopia is not simply the description of an alarming world: it is the description of a world made alarming by the realization reasoned and conscious of a political project. The worlds of 1984 , Us Others or the Meilleur of the Worlds are against-Utopias in the sense that they are, just as the worlds " parfaits" Utopias, creations aiming at carrying out on ground a certain ideal.

It thus appears abusive to qualify against-Utopia any creation literary aiming at describing a terrifying future. The universes described by the literature Cyberpunk, the worlds post-apocalyptic S and, in general, the accounts of science fiction anticipating on the drifts of our company cannot be qualified theutopian ones (even if they have common points with the against-Utopia) because these worlds are not the fruit of a precise political project.

Dystopie: a setting in prospect for the Utopia

Common points between Utopia and dystopie

The utopian and against-utopian universes have jointly not to be simply imaginary worlds. They are the result of a political project. This project aims at making possible an ideal: ideal of equality in the Utopia Collectivist of Thomas More or in that of Campanella, ideal of absolute capacity in 1984 , ideal of order and rationality in Us Others . The ideal of happiness is perhaps a little more ambiguous. It is defined like the suppression of any suffering in Brave New World , and like the safety and stability in an insupportable happiness of Ira Levin.
The companies described in the Utopias as well as in the against-Utopias have as a characteristic to be " parfaites". Their perfection holds in what on the one hand, they carry out perfectly the ideal that they assigned (perfect equality at More, perfect oppression at Orwell and perfect happiness at Huxley) and that, on the other hand, they are inalterable. Indeed, a perfect world could not be threatened or provisional and must be, in a relative way at least, eternal. The main challenge posed with the utopian consists in, indeed, preventing any possibility of flashback.

Passage du description with the narrative one

The many Utopias created since the Renaissance ( the City of the Sun of Campanella, the Utopia of Thomas More, the News Atlantis of Francis Bacon and well of others still) are of the texts of the descriptive type, even philosophical. They rather often begin with a short narrative part where a traveller tells how it approached the unknown grounds which it then describes in detail. There is no action in a Utopia, which is quite natural besides because what could it occur there?

Contrary, the against-Utopias are novels or accounts. The world of 1984 or Us Others appears to us only through one intrigue and characters. Generally, the real nature of the universe of a against-Utopia as well as the major intentions of those which direct it or created it only appear very gradually to the reader.

The direction of the against-Utopia, as a kind being opposed to the Utopia, lies more in this change of the textual type that in the nature of the described universes. Except notable for 1984 which even describes a world malefic from its project, the against-utopian universes are distinguished relatively little their hanging utopian: both are also justified by the research of the happiness of all. Only the point of view changes.

Passage du collective with the individual one

The traditional Utopias as a whole carry their glance on social, political and cultural construction. The case of the individuals not finding their happiness in such a world, or refusing to follow the rules of them, is regarded as a marginal problem. Thomas More considers for example the possibility that citizens of its island refuse to yield with the common rules and proposes that those are condemned to the Esclavage. He however does not consider this impossibility of integrating everyone into his perfect company like a fault with the whole of sound système.
Contrary, the against-Utopias are novels whose main characters are precisely misfits who refuse or cannot melt itself in the company where they live.

The against-Utopia is thus not as well a malefic Utopia as a traditional Utopia seen under a different angle: that of the individual.

Problems raised by the dystopie

Against-utopian works carry the mark of the concerns and concerns of their time. Birth of the Soviet mode (first implementation with large scales of a utopian company, although Marx challenges this term) and, later, the threat of the Totalitarisme offered ideal topics to the birth and the development of the against-Utopia. The new prospects for prosperity and happiness for all offered as of first half of the 20th century by the Consumer society incipient (permitted by the Taylorism) in the United States offer as for them the raw material of the Meilleur of the Worlds of Huxley.

Dystopie and Communism

The history of the Utopia and its prolongation in against-Utopia is closely related to that of the Communisme in the broadest sense of the term. Several centuries before the publication of the Proclamation of the Communist party of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Utopias of the Renaissance propose models of companies collectivists.

Thomas More, who sympathizes with the miserable fate of the peasants without ground of England of the 16th century, and sees in the Private property the leading cause of misfortunes of his time, invents a company, the Utopie , whose main feature is to be unaware of any individual possession completely. the City of the Sun of Campanella also functions on a collectivist mode.

At the 19th century, the Utopia takes a more practical turning. The utopians are not simply any more of the theorists but militants. One then speaks about Utopian socialism to qualify works of authors such as Saint-Simon, Robert Owen or Charles Fourier. Utopian creations of microphone-companies are tried (the sect of the Shakers in the United States, the Phalanstère S fourierists), with a success limited to these microphone-sociétés.

The dystopies are born at the 20th century, while at the same time of the modes claiming Socialisme, Communisme and Marxisme are established for the first time in Europe and elsewhere. Us Others of Ievgueni Zamiatine is written in Russia in 1920, i.e. the shortly after the Soviet Revolution. While at the same time the Soviet mode is only with its stammerings, Zamiatine denounces the risks of the company which takes shape in Russia: in the name of the equality and rationality, the State describes in Others organizes Us and controls méticuleusement the least aspects of the existence of its citizens; the private life is abolished. Others is not to Us a critic aiming the Marxism specifically, Zamiatine criticizes the will to want to plan and rationalize all the aspects of the existence and to refuse with the man the right to any imagination.

The novel 1984 also attacks him a Communist regime, the Stalinist mode. It would be however exaggerated to make a criticism of the Marxist doctrines of it. The world of 1984 resembles indeed of nothing an egalitarian company. What denounces Orwell in its novel, it is the Totalitarisme mainly incarnated at the time (1948) by the mode of Joseph Stalin in Soviet Union. Writer engaged on the left, Orwell wished by this novel to fight the fascination which exerted on a certain number of British intellectuals of the time the Soviet mode. The world of 1984 is not the USSR (it is quite worse) but of many details refer to the Soviet Union: Océania is directed by a party (named " simply; Parti"), the official doctrines are called " angsoc" (" socialism anglais") and the face of Big Brother points out that of Stalin.

Dystopie and conditioning

The Utopias of the Renaissance then of the traditional age are not paradisiac companies offering to the man a framework life answering all its needs and its desires. Thomas More, the first, sees in selfishness and cupidity the causes of the injustice of all the existing companies and its Utopia is a project of moral improvement of the man. The ideal companies are only because they knew to make of the man a better being, more civilized and able for it to serve its community before its own interests. However, as of the birth of the Utopias, their authors could arrive to these results only by imposing a certain number of constraining laws: selfishness and greed are prevented, in the Utopia of More, by the absolute prohibition of any private property.

The against-Utopias denounce in the Utopias the incapacity of those to change truly the man to make of it a being happy and worthy of happiness. Works of Huxley, Orwell, Zamiatine or Silverberg underline the surface character of the changes which the contemporary States could impose on the human nature. Those did not know to change in-depth man and could act only on its Comportement.

As follows:

  • In 1984 , the State intends to modify the human spirit by the use of the " Novlangue " and of the " Doublepensée ". The novlangue is a voluntarily impoverished language of which the goal is to prevent its speakers from formulating complex thoughts and to exert their critical spirit. The doublepensée is a kind of mental gymnastics consisting in accepting like also true contradictory propositions. Its goal is also to destroy at the individual any logical direction. These processes however do not succeed in making accept with the inhabitants of Océania their living conditions. Orwell insists on the fact that, even deprived of all average intellectuals to dispute the order in place, the characters of its novel do not continue any less to feel instinctively that their life is unacceptable. The methods of the Party could not come to end from the needs and of the tastes of the man and did not know that to drive back them as the example testifies some to the character of Parsons, enthusiast to support mode which however insults Big Brother against its own liking during its sleep.

  • In Brave New World , the individuals are conditioned as of their more young age by listening during their sleep of slogans and supposed aphorisms to print itself for the life in their spirit and aiming at dictating the behavior to them to be adopted in all the situations. The characters of the novel of Huxley are thus exempted to have never to think and escape the torments which could result from it. They are also worked so as to always behave in accordance with waitings of their company. However, just like their counterparts of 1984 , they do not escape the anguish, distresses reinforced by their incapacity to put words on what they can test. From where the regular recourse to a drug (named " soma") without which them life could not be bearable. Here still, the Utopia did not succeed in making a new man.

The against-Utopias thus denounce, one saw it, the utopian claim to change the man by conditioning. Claim which leads only to the Aliénation, the Refoulement and the Névrose.

Some precursory texts of the dystopie

Satirical accounts of voyage

The parallelization of two universes, the real universe and a fictitious universe, often make it possible an author to exert his talents of satirist. The Satire can be exerted in two different ways:

  • the imaginary universe is a satire of the real universe. Through fictitious world are an exaggeration of those of the real-world and are to denounce them. This process, largely used in Brave New World (critical of the consumer society) but also in 1984 (caricatures Soviet mode) finds in many accounts of whimsical voyages of such as the comic Histoire of Estats and empires of the Moon and the comic Histoire of Estats and Empires of the Sun of Cyrano of Bergerac, or the Gulliver's Travels of Jonathan Swift.
  • the critic of the real-world is done by the voice of the inhabitants of the fictitious world. Huxley also plays on this table, because if the world that it describes us can seem to us pushing back, it as regularly evokes during its novel the dislike as our world inspires with its characters. the Utopia of Thomas More made already use of this process and one can more see in this text an indirect criticism of England, by contrast with the world of justice of the Utopia, that a true political program. More also refers to fear and the astonishment which cause at Utopiens European manners. The Lettres Persians of Montesquieu use the voice from abroad (the Persan ones, in fact) to denounce the defects of France of the 18th century.

The science fiction novel

The heritage of the dystopic set of themes

The number of works concerned with the against-Utopia in a strict sense of the term is rather restricted. The most famous against-Utopias however created a set of themes whose influence was very important on the current science fiction. One finds in many science-fiction novels the following topics:
  • the loneliness of the character who refuses to adhere to the values unanimously shared by the company where it saw. Central reason for all the traditional against-Utopias, it also finds in Fahrenheit 451 of Ray Bradbury.
  • the use of medical means to control the individuals violent one, protestors or more simply to deaden the anguish is one of the pillars of the Meilleur worlds . the Clockwork orange of Anthony Burgess takes up this idea in a more brutal way in the inflicted treatment Alex to remove in him any possibility of showing violent one.
  • the control and the total monitoring of all, in the middle of 1984 and others is to Us the topic of an insupportable happiness .
  • suppression of any freedom in the name of safety and the happiness of all ( Globalia ).
  • the topic of a company very organized, closed again on itself and separated by walls from a chaotic world ( Wang ), ( Monades urban ).
  • the broader topic of an either radiant future, but worrying and without hope, and that of a concentration of all the capacity enters the hands of a small elite.

Except the science-fiction novels, most of the Cartoon (in particular the Manga S) and cinema integrated these topics.

Some examples of dystopies

Dystopies

(chronological order)

The utopian socialist company, even naturalist, of Galligènes, these antipodean people drawing his origin from the French, see his social ideal gradually being sapped at the base, transforming the speech of the novel into a against-Utopia. This novel describes a levelling and completely centralized company where the State manages and plans the least aspects of the life of the citizens. Those live in houses of glass enabling them to escape any moment taking into consideration the others. This text, which is probably the first true against-Utopia, was composed in 1920 in Soviet Union and very largely inspired 1984 of George Orwell. Any moral value is replaced by the economy. Science is with the service of the conditioning of the men. But all that is imaginary returns to the universe of reference of the reader (electric shocks, assembled Nazism). The against-Utopia is planetary. The creation of an imaginary world terrifying makes it possible the author to show what risk to become our company. In the against-Utopia, the author uses the code of the fantastic literature. A world where reign overpopulation, the eugenism and terrorism in All in Zanzibar (1968), violence, the racial hate and the complex militaro-industrialist in the jagged orbit (1969), pollution, ecological activism and the all-powerful corporations in the herd plugs (1972), the data-processing networks, the viruses and the handling of information in On the shock wave (1974). In the world described by Will go Levin, happiness is imposed. Each one is carrying a bracelet which makes it possible the host computer to manage the life of the carrier: choice of its trade to that of joint (sa) sound (E), all is managed by an enormous machine. The hero then tries to leave this system, but well quickly realizes of the complexity of the thing. A Utopia mainly centered on obligatory procreation and the sexual release most complete to bring closer to that of Huxley. A future company characterized by an oppression " soft" freely agreed by its inhabitants, allegory visionary of the ultimate result of the advanced capitalist system, the " thought unique" and of universalization.

Texts of dystopic inspiration

They are fictions beginning again of the topics or the typically against-utopian problems. They cannot however be completely qualified against-Utopias, because the world where they are held is described only summarily, that is to say is not of really utopian nature.

  • Fahrenheit 451 of Ray Bradbury: In the future described by Bradbury, the firemen burn the books, people are invited to denounce their neighbors, their friends and even their parents when they surprise them with reading. A novel which denounces inculture through the example marking of the Autodafé.

  • Fetus-Party of Pierre Pelot: In a world over-populated and invaded by the concrete, the human ones do not try even any more to escape their fate and await death like a relief. A black book, without hope on the future of Humanity.

  • Neuromancien of William Gibson: Regarded as the novel founder of the movement Cyberpunk. A central network (kind of Internet) is the target of all the impassioned pirates and other of the cyberspace which is connected to it thanks to powerful connections neurales.

  • Which wants the death of Internet? of Yannick Lord of the manor: A conference joins together 230 controlling which projetent the introduction of a new world order of the Internet, through the description of a company of the future post September eleven, this book denounces the totalitarian evolution of our current society.

With the cinema

(alphabetically)

See too

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