Utopias

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Utopias Dystopias

• An Exploration of Future Societal Visions

Triona Butler Fionn Lavery
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Aims Objectives

• Define Utopias Dystopias
• Explore why we find them interesting
• Examine Literature
• Case study The Machine Stops
• Investigate their purpose / usefulness
• Issues, Problems Criticisms

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Utopia

• Thomas More 1516
• nowhere (outopia)
• somewhere good (eutopia)
• ou - no
• eu - good
• topos - place
• ia - region

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Dystopia

• John Stuart Mill 1868
• dys denoting bad, unlucky hard

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The Machine Stops

• EM Forster
• Published 1909
• Dystopian short story

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The Machine Stops - film adaptation, 2009
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The Machine Stops

• Questions
• ethical and social evolution
• what it means to be human
• what sort of people and values we want in our
  Society

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Brave New World

• Aldous Huxley
• Published 1932

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Dystopias

• Entertainment
• Voice concerns
• Warnings

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Utopia
A map of the world that does not include a
utopia is not worth even glancing at -
Oscar Wilde

• Utopian Literature
• Utopia as a method Utopian Thinking

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Utopian Thinking

• provide us with the distance from the existing
  state of affairs which allow us to judge what we
  are doing in the light of what we could or should
  do
• - Groz 1999

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Advantages of Utopian Thinking

• Holistic or Joined-Up thinking
• Allows separation from the present
• Making explicit alternative scenarios for the
  future
• Question what kind of people we want society to
  encourage.

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Criticism of Utopias

• Fictious nature
• Implementation through totalitarianism
• Warped to suit the minority

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Whose Utopia?

• Cao Fei
• Video Installation
• The Osram light bulb factory
• Guangzhou, China
• Galway Arts Festival

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Whose Utopia?
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Conclusion

• Utopias Dystopias - Future Societal Visions
• Dystopias as Warning
• Utopias as theme
• Utopian Thinking as method
• Reimaging society
• Vast area
• revival and renunciation of genres and study