Światy władców logosu. O dystopii w narracjach literackich

Abstract

The article Worlds of Lords of Logos. Dystopian Narratives in Literary Fiction revisits fundamental terminological discrepancies functioning within utopian studies in order to propose a world-centered model for analyzing (e)u-/dystopian narratives. First and foremost, the text proposes to focus on utopian storyworlds rather than storylines and to determine their axiological attribution (i.e. whether they are ideal, eutopian, or non-ideal, dystopian) not by following a specific genre pattern, but by interacting with them as if they were not separated from the empirical reality. Utopia would, therefore, become eutopia or dystopia only when judged as such by the reader or focalizer in their hermeneutic meeting with the text. Secondly, it will be argued that utopias and dystopias prove strikingly similar from the world-building perspective, as they either utilize a travel narrative to guide the protagonist from the empirical to the counterempirical world, or shape an equivalent heterotopia, translating this dual-world opposition into a topography of the walled-off asylum and a surrounding wasteland. Since there is nothing positive or negative in such a way of world-building, any axiological valorization (and, thereby, a recognition of either eu-, or dystopia) would appear only when provided by the character narrator, who can either come from within (in an inclusive type of utopian narratives), or from without (in an adaptative type of utopian narratives) the (e)u-/dystopian world. Consequently, the paper will provide tools for interpreting utopias as eutopias or dystopias, along with a selection of world-building and philosophical categories potentially helpful in describing the imagery of dystopian storyworlds comprising the artificial paradise, “todetitis”, conjuration of reality, the founding lie, anamorphotic illusion of ideal reality, or the eponymous lordship of logos.