Microdystopias: Aesthetics and Ideologies in a Broken Moment - Hardcover

by Janne Stigen Drangsholt (Contribution by), Asbjørn Skarsvåg Grønstad (Contribution by), Henrik Gustafsson (Contribution by)

This edited collection examines the effects that macrosystems have on the figuration of our everyday--of microdystopias--and argues that microdystopic narratives are part of a genre that has emerged in contrast to classic dystopic manifestations of world-shattering events. From different methodological and theoretical positions in fieldworks ranging from literary works and young adult series to concrete places and games, the contributors in Microdystopias: Aesthetics and Ideologies in a Broken Moment sound the depths of an existential sense of shrinking horizons - spatially, temporally, emotionally, and politically. The everyday encroachment on our sense of spatial orientation that gradually and discreetly diminishes the horizons of possibilities is demonstrated by examining what the forms of the microdystopic look like when they are aesthetically configured. Contributors analyze the aesthetics that play a particularly central and complex role in mediating, as well as disrupting, the parameters of dystopian emergences and emergencies, reflecting an increasingly uneasy relationship between the fictional, the cautionary, and the real. Scholars of media studies, sociology, and philosophy will find this book of particular interest.

Author Biography

Asbjørn Grønstad is professor of visual culture in the Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen.
Lene M. Johannessen is professor of American literature in the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen.