American Nightmares

It has always been clear that dystopias, despite their future setting, are a direct critique of the present (Atwood 2011; Moylan 2014; Pagetti 2012; Wegner 2014). Hence, they acquire particular relevance in times of crisis: the link between the current society and those portrayed in dystopian fiction becomes more evident, more explicit.

This volume aims at investigating such a bond, focusing on American dystopias of the twenty-first century. It asks what commentaries and critiques these fictional works are currently providing, what themes are most relevant and common. In doing so, it attempts to expose their above-mentioned link to reality by deploying sociological theories to analyse fictional dystopian societies – for sociology and literature, it has been argued, share a similar subject of enquiry (Bauman and Mazzeo 2016; Kaplan 2016).

It will become apparent that dystopian fiction expresses both a warning for our real society and one of its fundamental features: in depicting worst-case scenarios, it alerts us to the consequences of our present choices and actions, while articulating the intrinsic (and, perhaps, unavoidable) human yearning for change, fostered by hope. This, as we will see, is especially true of so-called critical dystopias.

A few words, then, on the self-imposed boundaries of this work. As mentioned earlier, the focus of this volume is American dystopian fiction of the twenty-first century. This allows us to limit the sociological theories to the national level, introducing a commentary on the status of the American collective identity, and fixes a timeframe coinciding with the beginning of a rather noticeable shift towards pessimistic outlooks for the future (marked, most evidently, by the 9/11 terrorist attacks).

This work is divided into two parts. Part I, ‘Framing Dystopia’, lays the foundations for the textual analyses of Part II. The first two chapters investigate the definition of dystopia and its relationship with other fictional genres, retracing its evolution from utopian fiction and its strong link to science fiction. Together, they should offer a bird’s-eye view of the available scholarship on dystopia. In striving to include as many takes on the genre as possible, I have listed diverging opinions and, at times, taken a side. I have nevertheless tried to collate most, if not all, of them into a cohesive narrative of the birth and growth of dystopia.

Chapters 3 and 4 move away from the literary perusal of dystopia to focus on the status of the American society. In ‘Confronting the American Myth’, I explore the crisis of the Frontier and of American exceptionalism, two of the most durable foundational narratives of the United States, and I trace the repercussions of such a crisis on society and on the national collective identity. In ‘Is This Dystopia?’, I expand my reflection on contemporaneity through the identification of some of the most pervasive features of American society recurring in dystopian fiction – most notably its questioning of progress led by technological and scientific advances, its loss of hope for the future and its reliance on the individual dimension, rather than the collective. I also articulate the reasons that make sociology a fitting framework to analyse dystopian fiction.

Without further ado, then, we might begin our journey into what Mathias Thaler has aptly called bleak dreams (2019). For dystopia, ever attuned to the ills of society, is now alerting us that we are producing a ‘literature of (social) exhaustion’, to displace and adjust Barth’s expression. At the end of an era, when social issues have acquired a global dimension and seem increasingly unsolvable, these tales narrate of despair and resignation, of the desire to relinquish any futile attempt to avoid social collapse. Yet, they do not limit themselves to the blunt reproduction of thwarted hopes. Most dystopias of the twenty-first century are combative; their open endings, placed on the cusp of radical change, show that a way forward is possible, that radical change may come.

Thus, I stand with Thaler: most contemporary dystopias are bleak dreams, not nightmares – and it makes all the difference.