Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
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2025-03-20T00:00:00Z, 2025-03-20T00:00:00Z
This thesis explores the conceptual mechanisms that underlie utopian world-making and rest on grammatical structures, identified as ‘grammars of utopia’. Examining case studies from modern and...Show moreThis thesis explores the conceptual mechanisms that underlie utopian world-making and rest on grammatical structures, identified as ‘grammars of utopia’. Examining case studies from modern and contemporary English and Greek literature, the thesis shows utopia to be both beyond and within grammatical limits: the conception of an ideal society, which a utopia is, is a gesture away from a given reality – its limitations, more precisely – as well as towards an alternative one, and this latter is the one drawing limits to the utopian thought anew. Herbert George Wells’ A Modern Utopia (1905), James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Aldous Huxley’s Island (1962), and Sotiris Dimitriou’s The Silence of the Dry Weed (2011) map five categories without which we cannot make sense of or construe utopian narratives: modality, polarity, conditionality, subjectivity, and mood. Therefore, close reading these works provides a first grammatical ‘study of Utopian fantasy mechanics’, as proposed by Fredric Jameson (2005, xiii). Αt the same time, all texts try (and more or less succeed) to remap these five configurations and invite possibilities of alternative grammars of utopia that are yet to come.Show less
The analogy of the city and the soul in Plato's "Republic" has often been criticised in academic literature, perhaps most famously by Bernard Williams in his 1973 essay "The Analogy of City and...Show moreThe analogy of the city and the soul in Plato's "Republic" has often been criticised in academic literature, perhaps most famously by Bernard Williams in his 1973 essay "The Analogy of City and Soul in Plato's Republic". Building on the refutation of this criticism in an earlier essay, this thesis attempts to establish an integral interpretation of the city-soul analogy which is both conceptually and narratively adequate. A close study of the introduction of the analogy in book II of the "Republic" informs us that the analogy implies a similar structure between city and soul, but no correlation, and that it is not intended as an argument or principle, but rather as a guiding hypothesis for Socrates' experimental investigation of justice. This interpretation allows for the refutation of numerous criticisms of Plato's elaboration of the analogy in Callipolis. Finally, the combination of this interpretation with insight in the psychologically realist character of Callipolis, enables us to understand the working of the analogy in the "City of Pigs", and the role of this short-lived utopia in Plato's ethical and political theory, leading us to the conclusion that Plato's "Republic", if properly understood, is everything but a highlight of utopian thinking.Show less
The dystopian genre has had a surge of popularity in television and movies the past few years with movies such as the Hunger Games and series such as Netflix’s Black Mirror. However, the genre’s...Show moreThe dystopian genre has had a surge of popularity in television and movies the past few years with movies such as the Hunger Games and series such as Netflix’s Black Mirror. However, the genre’s popularity had its beginning in the early years of the twentieth century, in particular, thanks to the contributions of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. Their books, Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), are to this day lauded for their prophetic elements. On the one hand, Brave New World explores scientific progress and the negative consequences it could entail. Some of the inventions present in the novel were not yet invented at the time that Huxley wrote them, such as for example birth control for women. On the other hand, Orwell’s exploration of cruelty by totalitarian regimes and the high-tech espionage of their citizens through cameras in Nineteen Eighty Four, well before the Soviet Union’s KGB and the East-German Stasi applied them during the Cold War, prophesied the rise of surveillance technologies in modern technocracies. These two foundational dystopian novels have their origins in the two authors’ critique of optimistic utopian narratives. The works of H.G. Wells, in particular, were viewed adversely by Huxley and Orwell. Despite the negative incentive, there are clear similarities between the novels of these three public intellectuals. H.G. Wells had a ground-breaking approach to communicating his ideas about science and society to a wider audience. In his scientific romances he combined aspects of the social novel with scientific theories about the progress of human civilization in order to express his vision of how to rid the world of its ills, which ultimately inspired, on the one hand, the scientific explorations of utopia in Brave New World and, on the other hand, the social protest against dystopian developments in Western society that Nineteen Eighty-four was to become. These would ultimately become two distinct kinds of dystopian literature: Huxley’s science-fiction dystopias and Orwell’s social dystopias. There are of course also combinations of both. The close readings of H.G. Wells’ Perez 4 Men Like Gods (1923), Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four will highlight the similarities between the three novels in terms of their treatment of the utopia/dystopia dichotomy and will show that the authors’ personal backgrounds played an important role in determining each different approach to the building of a utopia/dystopia in the respective novels.Show less
By examining two of the most acclaimed and popular televisual productions recently released, Mr. Robot (USA Network, 2015 - present) and Black Mirror (Channel 4/Netflix, 2011 - present), I wish to...Show moreBy examining two of the most acclaimed and popular televisual productions recently released, Mr. Robot (USA Network, 2015 - present) and Black Mirror (Channel 4/Netflix, 2011 - present), I wish to show up to what extent they portray the expansion of capitalism into the political, cultural and social dimensions of our Western contemporary reality as a phenomenon weakening our utopian sense of the future. Drawing upon the field of social theory, I will argue that Mr. Robot, with its emphasis on the political and cultural domains, shows how mechanisms of control and manipulation responding to the logic of late capitalism and consumerism are influencing our ability to imagine a new and alternative system to the current one. In the case of Black Mirror, criticism towards late capitalism revolves around the use and abuse of new technologies, which implement the spiral of image addiction, the power of commodities, and cause a dramatic change in the way we perceive the boundaries between life and death. Throughout my analysis, I will refer to the utopian genre, and, specifically, its most recent variation of critical dystopia, with the aim of considering the tension and interaction between utopia and dystopia in the two TV series as a strategy, first, to raise awareness in the public about the most degrading aspects of our reality and, secondly, to reinvigorate a concept of utopia not as escapist thinking, but as a transformative impulse to change society and potentially overcome the cultural deadlock of capitalism.Show less
This thesis investigates the reasons for the reappearance of late modernist utopian architectural projects in recent artist films. Three films by three different artists (Martha Rosler, Dorit...Show moreThis thesis investigates the reasons for the reappearance of late modernist utopian architectural projects in recent artist films. Three films by three different artists (Martha Rosler, Dorit Margreiter and Patrick Keiller) have been selected for their critical use of post-war architecture in film or video and the way they look specifically at suggestions of revolutionary social changes to the concept of the house. In each chapter one film or video is examined in relation to the architectural project(s) it discusses, specifically with regards to the intentions of the architect. Rosler, Margreiter and Keiller show three ways of reflecting upon the way we think about late modernist housing, a type of housing that was extremely ambitious in attempting to change the way we think about shelter and social communities, and is, at least stylistically, still of great influence to the architectural projects that are built today. All three artists have a distinct political awareness that appears in the way they discuss architecture. Consisting of structures that consolidate ideology, architecture is fascinating for the profound influence it has on our everyday life. I argue that the return of modernist utopias in the collective cultural imagination shows a need for a cautiously hopeful attitude towards a future that moves beyond the so-called end of history. These three artists look towards futures that were suggested in the recent past, futures that have been long since dismissed, and try to find elements that may be salvaged from their way of looking towards structural social change that might be of use for us today in combating the effects of neo-liberal influence on everyday life. Because of its contingent, disembodied and fragmented nature, film proves to be the ideal medium for investigation and can be seen as creating its own version of radically subjective utopia in each case study.Show less
