M. Keith Booker

While literary utopias depict an ideal society and reflect an optimistic belief in the triumph of humanity and government, dystopias present a society marked by suffering caused by human and political evils. This book offers a detailed study of several literary dystopias and analyzes them as social criticism. The volume begins with a discussion of utopias, dystopias, and social criticism. By drawing upon the theories of Freud, Nietzsche, and others, Booker sets a firm theoretical foundation for the literary explorations that follow. The chapters that come next discuss Zamyatin's We, Huxley's Brave New World, and Orwell's 1984 as social criticism of totalitarianism, Stalinism, the dangers of capitalism, and fascism. Later chapters consider dystopias after World War II, contemporary communist dystopias, and postmodernist dystopias in the West.

In ""Techniques of Subversion in Modern Literature"", Booker maintains that literary works contribute to genuine social change. When read with ""transgressive energy"", he says, these works chip away at oppressive political structures and undermine authoritarian ideologies. The hard evidence of such power is the terror with which totalitarian regimes traditionally have regarded ""dangerous"" literary works. A number of recent theoretical discourses frame his exploration of the dynamics of literary transgressions, including especially the notions of the carnival as put forth by Mikhail Bakhtin and of the abject as put forth by Julia Kristeva. What this book adds to recent discussion is the specific application of the theory to detailed readings of such authors as Rushdie, Carter, Barnes, Pynchon, Fowles, Sorrentino, Wittig, Calvino and even Chaucer. All the authors share ""a tendency to break rules, transgress boundaries, destabilize hierarchies, and question authority,"" Booker says. ""Techniques of Subversion"" should be of especial interest to scholars of modern and postmodern literature, particularly those who approach it within the context of poststructuralism, cultural criticism and politics.