Special issue: Imagining alternatives: utopias - dystopias - heterotopias

Beginning of the Introduction Despite frequent proclamations of an end to utopian thought and practice, fuelled inter alia by the brutal and ongoing realities of technological warfare, by economic and ecological crisis, and by pronouncements such as the “end of history”, there seems nevertheless to be general agreement that something of a “utopian revival in popular and political spheres” has occurred since the turn of the millennium. According to Robert J. Tally, while the older sort of “‘blueprint’ utopias” that imagine idealized states with an existence based on spatial or temporal displacement and distance are no longer suited to a globalized world system, “the critical project of utopia as a form of opposition to the apparently intractable state of affairs is all the more vital”. In fact, Tally argues that “utopia has not only made a comeback in the postmodern age of globalization, persisting long after the epoch to which it would seem most suited, but has become a powerful discursive mode and object of enquiry in literature, critical theory, cultural studies and social thought over the past few decades.” Captured in the anti-capitalism slogan ‘another world is possible’, contemporary concern with utopian possibilities has manifested itself in the myriad micro-utopias flourishing especially in the global space of social networks. These may harbour the potential of the Foucauldian heterotope, a complex space in which, as in a mirror, we envision our absence from the place where we are by looking at ourselves ‘elsewhere’. At the same time, fears sparked by high-profile cases of information-trafficking, -infiltrations, and -censorship, of violent religious fundamentalism and the destructive power of untrammelled capital, remind us of the proximity between utopia and dystopia: what for some might constitute a vision of a better world could spell disaster and suffering for others. Nevertheless, the utopian impulse remains at the heart of dystopian visions, because they express the sense that things could or should be better. Fátima Vieira argues that dystopias that “leave no room for hope do in fact fail in their mission”. Therefore, although they may portray a vision far removed from the ideal scenarios of the utopia, dystopias ought to be seen as “a variant of the same social dreaming that gives impulse to utopian literature.”. Table of contents: KLAUS BIRNSTIEL Raum der Zeit, Zeit des Raumes: Zur Frage nach einer ‚kopernikanischen Wende‘ in der deutschsprachigen utopischen Tradition. TINA-KAREN PUSSE Trembling Drums. The Permeable Membranes of Rilke’s “Weltinnenraum” DOMINIK ORTH Erzählwelten der Einsamkeit. Auflösungsformen der Gesellschaft in Thomas Lehrs 42 und Thomas Glavinics Die Arbeit der Nacht SYLVIE GRIMM-HAMEN „Endstation Sehnsucht“. Postmoderne Utopieentwürfe in Raoul Schrotts Tristan da Cunha (2003) und Christoph Ransmayrs Der fliegende Berg (2006) REBECCA MCMULLAN Island in the Sun. Pre-modern Nostalgia and Hyperreality in Christian Kracht’s Imperium ACHIM KÜPPER Areas of Marginality in the Last World: Dystopian Elements in Christoph Ransmayr’s Fiction INGA KETELS Der Einzug des Politischen in die Gegenwartsliteratur. Imaginierte Alternativen als Neuverhandlung von Möglichkeitsräumen bei Christian Kracht, Juli Zeh und Dorothee Elmiger SIMONE SCHROTH “Bedrohung verlangt Wachsamkeit”: Health and Healthcare as Instruments of Control in Two Recent Dystopias ELISABETH TROPPER Analytische Apokalyptiker. Überlegungen zum Dystopischen in Theatertexten von Falk Richter und Juli Zeh