Pregled bibliografske jedinice broj: 690656
Surviving Utopia in Zone One
Surviving Utopia in Zone One // Facing the Crises: Anglophone Literature in the Postmodern World / Matek, Ljubica i Poljak Rehlicki, Jasna (ur.).
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. str. 2-14
CROSBI ID: 690656 Za ispravke kontaktirajte CROSBI podršku putem web obrasca
Naslov
Surviving Utopia in Zone One
Autori
Cvek, Sven
Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Poglavlja u knjigama, znanstveni
Knjiga
Facing the Crises: Anglophone Literature in the Postmodern World
Urednik/ci
Matek, Ljubica i Poljak Rehlicki, Jasna
Izdavač
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Grad
Newcastle upon Tyne
Godina
2014
Raspon stranica
2-14
ISBN
1-4438-5395-X
Ključne riječi
zombie, utopia, capitalist realism, Colson Whitehead, Zone One
Sažetak
In this article I offer a reading of Colson Whitehead’s novel Zone One (2011) in the context of contemporary speculative fictions of crisis. Following tentatively the tradition of “Gothic Marxism” the article focuses on the figure of the zombie in its contemporary, early-twenty first century articulation. My argument is twofold. First, I focus on the common recurrence of the zombie metaphor in descriptions of the state of today’s capitalist economy. In this context, Whitehead’s zombies function as morbid symptoms of the inability to imagine alternatives to the monstrosity of the existing reality. Second, I comment on the fact that the zombie metaphor is used to speak of the human consequences of capitalist development, thus enriching the repertoire of Gothic Marxism with this colonial image of enslavement. Considered in the context delineated above, Zone One appears “capitalist realist” in that the presence of zombies in the novel constantly precludes the possibility of any future-oriented action, and gives form to the contemporary failure of utopian imagination. The novel also makes a resigned step beyond the boundaries of capitalist realism, in that it argues that the economics of capitalism does not work, and depicts the consequences of existing capitalist relations as entirely destructive.
Izvorni jezik
Engleski
Znanstvena područja
Filologija
POVEZANOST RADA
Projekti:
130-0000000-3472 - Kulture hrvatske tranzicije i anglofone globalizacije: književnost i film (Knežević, Borislav, MZOS ) ( CroRIS)
Ustanove:
Filozofski fakultet, Zagreb
Profili:
Sven Cvek
(autor)