Critical Dystopia

Abstract

This chapter argues that, from its elaboration during the 1980s and through to the early 2000s, the concept of the critical dystopia has provided a useful framework to work through issues related to dystopic genres, modes, and politics. Tom Moylan’s Scraps of the Untainted Sky (2000) is a key departure point, due to its nuanced probing of the concept. By looking at academic studies on the critical dystopia, I examine the approaches to the concept as a specific literary genre, a mode, and a political stance; and look at the corpus that has been read in this light. This chapter also deals with reconfigurations of the critical dystopia in recent contemporary fictions in response to intersectional and decolonial demands arising from debates in the arenas of feminism, gender and queer studies, and ecocriticism. This leads to a reflection on the possibility of “derivational successors” to the critical dystopias. Finally, I stress the ways in which critical dystopias still offer contemporary literature and culture an opportunity to intervene in respect of concrete problems in the contemporary world.