AUC Philologica (Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philologica) is an academic journal published by Charles University. It publishes scholarly articles in a large number of disciplines (English, German, Greek and Latin, Oriental, Romance and Slavonic studies, as well as in phonetics and translation studies), both on linguistic and on literary and cultural topics. Apart from articles it publishes reviews of new academic books or special issues of academic journals.
The journal is indexed in CEEOL, DOAJ, EBSCO, and ERIH PLUS.
AUC PHILOLOGICA, Vol 2021 No 3 (2021), 107–133
A Topology of Hope: Utopia, Dystopia, and Heterotopia in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction
Mingwei Song
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/24646830.2022.6
published online: 15. 02. 2022
abstract
This essay investigates how utopian thinking met with dystopian variations in contemporary Chinese science fiction. The dystopian gaze into the utopian dreams, the alternative histories contending with the utopian narratives, and the heterotopian experiments challenging ideological orthodoxy are the focus of my analysis. Reading the dystopian fiction by Chan Koonchung and science fiction stories and novels by Han Song, Bao Shu and Hao Jingfang etc., I do not intend to illustrate the utopian/ dystopian interventions in the political sense, but rather to explore the vigorous, multifaceted variations of utopia, dystopia, and heterotopia that these authors have created as discursive constructs to suggest alternatives to the utopia/dystopian dualism. Contemporary science fiction authors write back to the usual literary practice taking words as reflections of the world. To these writers, words are worlds.
keywords: contemporary Chinese science fiction; utopia; dystopia; heterotopia; uchronia; alternative history
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A Topology of Hope: Utopia, Dystopia, and Heterotopia in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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