Neil Bowen on
From Dystopia, A Natural History by Gregory Claeys
‘Most commonly dystopia is identified with the ‘‘failed utopia’ of twentieth-century totalitarianism’, with ‘regimes defined by extreme coercion, inequality, imprisonment and slavery’.
Often this failed utopia is ‘described as some concept of collectivism run wild’.
There are three main, interrelated forms of the concept: ‘the political dystopia; the environmental dystopia; and finally, the technological dystopia’. Of these it is the ‘political dystopia which is chiefly associated with the failure of utopian aspirations’.
Utopia and Dystopia might appear to be opposites, but the relationship is actually more complex: ‘Like the snake in the Garden of Eden, dystopian elements lurk within [More’s] Utopia’. For example in More’s version ‘unity, order and homogeneity prevail at the cost of individuality and diversity’. In fact, utopia and dystopia could be described as ‘twins, the progeny of the same parents’.
Central Orwellian theme is the ‘threat to individuals posed by groups’.
‘Both utopias and dystopias normally, though not universally, exhibit a collectivist ethos’. In dystopia, the bonds that bind individuals to societies are labelled ‘compulsory solidarity’ by Leszek Kolakowski.
‘At its bleakest, the collectivist dystopia usually exhibits an extreme ethos of sociability centring on fervent devotion to the common good, which is, in reality, despotic rather than consensual.’
Quotes Aristotle on despotism, which adopts, according the the philosopher ‘every means for making every subject as much a stranger as possible to every other’ and Hobbes, who believed the state of nature was one of ‘continual fear and danger of violent death’ which ‘vindicates despotism to keep the peace’.
Makes the analogy between prisons and death camps with dystopian societies.
Useful terms, such as ‘sociogenic illness’ & ‘mass psychoneurosis’ are used when a group or a people temporarily go mad. Because of the power dynamics in play, this group madness can be stoked [e.g. through suppression of sex] and exploited. Group madness/ fears can be focused on an enemy, real or imaginary, in order strengthen group bonds. Love of the group = hatred of the other.