Wordplay “Loss” in Translation:

Wordplay can be described as the way of making or using words to create additional meaning for some purposes. Using a qualitative approach, this study discusses the wordplay translation in literary work especially in dystopian fiction using Delabastita’s translation techniques of wordplay. The data derived from a novel entitled The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood as the source text and its subsequent translation in Bahasa Indonesia entitled The Handmaid’s Tale – Kisah Sang Handmaid as the target text. From 50 data retrieved, the result shows that the most frequently applied technique in wordplay translation is Wordplay to Non-Wordplay that appears 25 times or 50%. The result of this study illustrates that the translation of wordplay in this literary work tends not to preserve the author’s style of writing but one of the author’s intended meanings.

New Futures, same old Fear: Gender-based Violence and Victim Coping in Contemporary Young Adult Dystopian Fiction

The ability of dystopian fiction to offer critical views of futures riddled with the devastating consequences of today’s failures is pervasive also in its literary subgenre targeting young readers. While scholarship on these novels is extensive, the prevalence of sexual assaults in this subgenre requires attention. This study offers an introductory analysis of two contemporary young adult dystopian trilogies, Veronica Roth’s Divergent (2011-2013) and Beth Revis’ Across the Universe (2011-2013), with a focus on the sexual assaults the protagonists endure. The discussion draws on trauma and sexual abuse research to ascertain how and if these future societies and heroines challenge traditional representations of this crime.

Speculative Fiction, Sociology, and Surveillance Studies: Towards a Methodology of the Surveillance Imaginary

Utopian theorists often speak about the merits of reading utopian fiction in order to reimagine and rebuild a better world, but dystopian fiction is often overlooked. This is, in my view, misguided because dystopian fiction, like utopian fiction, diagnoses issues with the present, inspires activism and resistance, and, in the twenty-first century, often presents ideas of how to effect positive change through collective activism. As speculative literary genres concerned with world-building, utopian and dystopian fiction have inherent sociological concerns. These texts can therefore be utilised by sociologists and other researchers beyond the arts and humanities. Speculative fiction is important to the field of surveillance studies not only because surveillance is a major theme in these literary texts but also because their formal properties provide us with the language, imagery, and feelings associated with being under surveillance. Twenty-first-century utopian and dystopian fiction has not been thoroughly examined by surveillance scholars. Analysis of utopian and dystopian fiction in this field has also focused on texts set in, and written by authors from, the global north. Considering the plethora of dystopian novels in and beyond the global north published in recent years that discuss surveillance, the neglect of the study of these texts to date is an oversight.

Something old, something blue: bereavement and institutional ageism in The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil

The dystopian fiction genre within Western media has historically highlighted the flaws associated with societal attempts to achieve an unattainable ideal – or utopia. Through storytelling, these texts highlight the present issues in society, and among them, readers find deeply concerning messages about dehumanisation and oppression. The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil by Stephen Collins is uniquely placed within this larger genre due to the exceptional use of negative space; that is, the text communicates multiple meanings through what Collins includes and does not include. The following article engages in a deep reading of The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil through textual analysis to interpret and describe the message Collins communicates highlighting institutional ageism and bereavement. Consideration for the use of both negative and positive space within narrative construction reveals a story that encourages societal and social change to better care for the mentally ill, geriatric population.

Endgame and the Life to Come

This paper revisits the interpretations of Endgame by Theodor Adorno and Stanley Cavell via an unusual route: Samuel Scheffler’s afterlife conjecture. Scheffler’s thought experiment—based on a doomsday scenario that Beckett’s characters already appear to inhabit—seeks the achievement of the ordinary in an age of climate change by disclosing our evaluative dependence on future generations. I suggest that the paradigm shift to a global subject lies not in the dystopian fiction Scheffler looks to, however, but the “shudder” of the ‘I’ in aesthetic experience, the model for which is Beckett’s Endgame.

Gonnermann, Annika: Absent Rebels. Criticism and Network Power in 21st Century Dytopian Fiction. Narr Francke Attempto, 2021.

Review of Absent Rebels. Criticism and Network Power in 21st Century Dystopian Fiction by Annika Gonnermann.

kamaugawar and the creation of a dystopian reality: A study in hassan Blasim's "Crossword" and Ambrose Bierce's "Chi

The study shows how war can create a dystopian reality worse than the reality depicted in the dystopian stories. War creates a circular or enclosed world that has no exit where people cannot see the end of the tunnel. The study discusses two short stories, one is for the Iraqi writer Hassan Blasim entitled "Crosswords" and the other for the American writer Ambrose Bierce entitled "Chickamauga". These two short stories fit one of the categories of dystopian fiction where the society witnesses the effects of war and civilians and soldiers become the victims. Though the two stories do not adhere to the futuristic perspective of dystopian fiction, they could express the thought of their writers' that what is going on in the society though it is real but it is at the same time, dystopian. Key Words: Dystopia, War, Defamiliarization, Hassan Blasim, Ambrose Bierce.

(Re)Writing Canadian Space: Dystopian Geographies in Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl and M.G. Vassanji’s Nostalgia

This paper examines how dystopian fiction opens up a productive space for disrupting naturalized assumptions, and shifting our understanding of taken-for-granted spaces. Drawing on Doreen Massey’s (2005) proposal that space must be seen as the product of constant interrelations, I argue that dystopian literature can similarly prompt us to reconsider our relationship to the spaces we inhabit. Using the concept of the “critical dystopia,” I examine how dystopian frameworks are operationalized in the Canadian context through a comparative analysis of two novels that speculate distinctly Canadian dystopian futures: Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl (2002) and M.G. Vassanji’s Nostalgia (2016). By applying Massey’s theorization of space—its multiplicities, complexities, and political potentialities—to an examination of how Canadian spaces are transformed in the dystopian context, I then analyze how those representations challenge the spatial ideologies associated with globalization, and resist the neoliberal view of space as a surface to be crossed and conquered (Massey, 2005).