Utopia and dystopia in the age of the Anthropocene

• Autor(a) principal: Vieira, Patrícia
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10316/106028; https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7976.2020.e72386
• topic: Utopia; Dystopia; Anthropocene

A product of Modernity, utopian and dystopian thought has always hinged upon an assessment as to whether humanity would be able to fulfil the promise of socio-economic, political and techno-scientific progress. In this paper, I argue that the predominantly dystopian outlook of the past century or so marked a move away from former views on human progress. Rather than commenting on humanity’s inability to build a better society, current dystopianism betrays the view that the human species as such is an impediment to harmonious life on Earth. I discuss the shift from utopia to dystopia (and back) as a result of regarding humans as a force that does more harm than good, and I consider the possibility of human extinction within the framework of dystopian and utopian visions. The final section of the chapter turns to Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy as a fictional example that plays out the prospect of a world in which humans have all but become extinct.