(Im)perfection Subverted, Reloaded and Networked: Utopian Discourse across Media

Barbara Klonowska, Zofia Kolbuszewska and Grzegorz Maziarczyk work in the Departments of English and American Literature and Culture at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. They are members of the Utopian Studies Society, Europe and co-edited Echoes of Utopia. Notions, Rhetoric, Poetics (2012).

• Contents: Artur Blaim: «Nowhere Plans for Nobody»: Constructing Utopia in Popular Music – Barbara Klonowska: Coming through Dystopia: Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis – Andrzej Sławomir Kowalczyk: «Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!» The BBC Children’s Animation Bob the Builder, Project: Build It as an Ecotopia – Katarzyna Pisarska: Science, Power and Utopia in the Appleseed Universe – Marta Komsta: Destination - Eutopia: Nowa Huta in Polish Documentaries – Patrycja Podgajna: Slapstick as a Utopian Weapon in Juliusz Machulski’s Embassy – Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga: The City in 3D: Dystopian Past, Utopian Moment – Justyna Galant: The Carnivalesque Sense of the Armageddon: Richard Kelly’s Menippea – Ludmiła Gruszewska-Blaim: Fan Fiction and Dystopian Classics: Utopianising Disruptions – Elżbieta Perkowska-Gawlik: The Taming of Dystopia in Progress: A Collage of Narrative Strategies in Barry J. Gardner’s Webcomic Hyperbolic Dystopia – Zofia Kolbuszewska: Utopia, Affective Turn, Remediation and Transmediality: From the Dystopian Electronic World of We Are The Strange to the Utopia of the International Community Support for an Alternative Filmmaker – Mateusz Liwiński: Nostalgia for Dystopia: Critical Nostalgia in Lucas Pope’s Papers, Please – Grzegorz Maziarczyk: Playable Dystopia? Interactivity and Narrativity in BioShock and BioShock Infinite.

(Im)perfection Subverted is a well-conceived, thought-provoking and original volume that will be of interest to scholars and students working in media studies, literary and cultural studies, baroque studies and cultural history. The collection builds on several traditions of critical thinking on the subject of utopianism and dystopia, on the one hand, and recent media theory on the other. This dual focus is one of the major strengths of the volume and a key organizing principle, from the competent editor’s introduction to the final piece on «playable dystopias» in interactive game media. Readers will be equally impressed by the sustained quality of the essays and the expansive scope of the collection, encompassing a wide array of media products from cultural contexts as different as post-World War II U.S. and Poland and today’s globalized «culture of convergence». (David Castillo, SUNY Buffalo)