Analysing Darkness and Light: Dystopias and Beyond

Martta Heikkilä obtained her Ph.D. in aesthetics in 2007 at the University of Helsinki, where she is now a researcher and an adjunct professor. She is the author of Deconstruction and the Work of Art (2021).Irina Poleshchuk earned her doctorate in practical philosophy in 2010 at the University of Helsinki, where she is a senior researcher. Her most recent publications include “Lived Body in Pain” (2022) and “Temporality of Maternity, Chronic Pain, and Ethics” (2021).Erika Ruonakoski obtained her Ph.D. in theoretical philosophy in 2011 at the University of Helsinki, where she continues as senior researcher in practical philosophy. She is the author of Sisters of the Brotherhood: Alienation and Inclusion in Learning Philosophy (2023).

• AcknowledgementsList of FiguresNotes on ContributorsIntroduction: Dystopias and BeyondMartta Heikkilä, Irina Poleschuk and Erika RuonakoskiPART 1: Dystopias of Meaninglessness1 Waiting for Catastrophe in the Dark: Public Obscurity and Viktor Pelevin’s Homo ZapiensAri-Elmeri Hyvönen2 Work and Play: the Dystopic Environments in Terry Gilliam’s BrazilMartta Heikkilä3 A Brave New World in the Making: Fully Automated Luxury Communism as a Political DystopiaJoonas MartikainenPART 2: Techno-Euphoria vs. Terror of Technology4 Thematising Technological Dystopias and Anxiety through Hans BlumenbergMichał Wieczorek5 The Limits of Control: Industrial Dystopias and Techno Utopias in Mika Vainio’s MusicJanne Vanhanen6 Can the Future Be Cancelled? On the Technological Dystopia in Melanie Gilligan’s The Common SenseSaara HacklinPART 3: Dystopias Come True?7 The Liberal Dystopia: Joseph de Maistre’s Grim Visions on theEnlightenment and DemocracyMarianne Sandelin8 Ethical Temporality, Justice, and Dystopia of Being-for-the-Other:Between Ethics and PoliticsIrina Poleshchuk9 Experiential Shifts in the covid-19 Pandemic: from the Epochē toInterspace and “Normality”Erika RuonakoskiIndex