Spazio distopico e soggetto utopico in transito: indagine nella letteratura distopica e fantascientifica contemporanea in lingua inglese

This dissertation analyses urban spatial representations in contemporary utopian and science fiction novels, published in the last decade and written in English, with a particular attention devoted to the relationship between space and the characters who inhabit and live that space. The thesis is structured in five chapters. The analysis of the three texts considered - On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee (2014, cfr. Cap. 3), Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014, cfr. Cap. 4) and MaddAddam, by Margaret Atwood (2013, cfr. Cap. 5) - shows an overall dystopian landscape in which the traditional city has disappeared, and a new fragmentation of communities is prevailing. In such a scenario, however, the subjects who embody a utopian impulse embrace a diasporic status which enables him/her to counteract, as a political gesture, against the dystopian space and its powers. The texts can be considered the heirs of science-fiction and fantasy author Ursula K. Le Guin and her short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (1973), in which the inhabitants of a seemingly utopian city choose to leave it because of what they consider to be an unbearable injustice. As a way of a political gesture, they decide to start walking away from the city towards an unknown destination and to never come back. The first chapter presents the main theoretical references of the research: utopian studies, space studies, literary space studies, the notion of diaspora borrowed from Postcolonial Theory, theories revolving around walking as a cultural and political act, nomadism. The second chapter presents the corpus and the dystopian genre, with a particular focus on ‘critical dystopias.’ The last three chapters consist of the analysis.