Abstract

Dystopias matter because they make us think. They help us to imagine and envisage how the present can change into something very nasty. … Dystopias thus interrogate the now and offer warnings and sometimes prophecies about the future; they are often the jeremiads of utopianism. But sometimes they offer glimmers of hope.One way of being anti-anti-utopian is to be utopian. It's crucial to keep imagining that things could get better, and furthermore to imagine how they might get better. … So by force of will or the sheer default of emergency we make ourselves have utopian thoughts and ideas. This is the necessary next step following the dystopian moment, without which dystopia is stuck at a level of political quietism...