MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Jennifer Pullen MAPACA Proposal/Abstract 10 June 2015
Dystopia/Utopia

In the 20th and 21st century post-apocalyptic and dystopian narratives seem to be everywhere, from Atwood’s MaddAadam trilogy, to The Hunger Games, Interstellar, and Storm Constantine’s cult classic series, the Wraethu trilogy. Similarly, in the 19th century utopian and dystopian narratives multiplied as writers reacted to the vast technological and cultural changes of industrialism, much the way 20th and 21st century narratives wrestle with the implications of climate change. Post-apocalyptic and dystopian narratives can seem at times to be at odds with the utopian vision, given the pessimism inherent with depictions of the collapse of society. But dystopian and post-apocalyptic narratives can also be seen as the prelude to a utopia. In essence, dystopian and post-apocalyptic narratives often contain an incipient potential for a utopia, and vice versa.

Storm Constantine’s trilogy takes place in a post-apocalyptic society where the environment has been destroyed and humans are slowly being wiped out and transformed into an androgynous humanoid species. Constantine creates a harsh and violent world, full of warring groups of humans and Har (the species humans are turning into), however, many of the characters believe that they have the chance to create a new world, one where gender binaries don’t exist and people operate on the basis of equality. I argue that current dystopian and post-apocalyptic narratives often depict generative destruction, illustrating that only through attempting to wipe the cultural slate clean can change occur. The instability of utopian and dystopian societies means the generative destruction is often cyclical, utopia leading to dystopia, and so on and so forth. For support I will compare Storm Constantine’s dystopian Wraethu trilogy to William Morris’s seminal 19th century utopia novel, News From Nowhere.