O neodistópico: metamorfoses da distopia no século XXI

Abstract

What characterizes a dystopia in the 21st century? This question represents the driving force of the present work which, based on a reflection on the historical, political and poetic aspects of dystopian fiction, analyses 21st century English language narratives that dialogue with this genre, seeking to identify and define its most representative features in contemporaneity. Thus, if the “classic” form of dystopia was established in the first half of the 20th century, and later, in the 1980s and 1990s, it changed and became the critical dystopia; today, in a historical period strongly marked by crises (political, environmental, technological), and in which there is a profusion of narratives described as dystopian (not only in literature, but also in other media), this genre has undergone significant transformations, and now one can say it is on the threshold of a new turn, a metamorphosis, which is here understood as neodystopic. Although it is no longer the classic nor the critical dystopia, the neodystopic is still connected with this literary tradition thematically and structurally, resignifying its tropes, while exploring varied literary devices — such as intertextuality, multiperspectivity and metafiction. Hence, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004), Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007), China Miéville’s The City and the City (2009), Naomi Alderman’s The power (2016), Omar El Akkad’s American war (2017), Sophie Mackintosh’s The water cure (2018), Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (2003, 2009, 2013) and The testaments (2019), among others, are read as paradigmatic of the neodystopic, thus offering a relevant sample of the elements that characterize it.