Notes on the Body and Corporeality in Dystopia

Abstract

The article is devoted to the body and corporality in the genre of dystopia (literary and audiovisual works). The study is an extract from an unpublished monographic work on body images, manipulations, procedures, processes, and marginal, specific objects that shape the interiors of dystopian worlds. Analytics and conceptual generalizations are carried out on the example of specific cases – classic novels by Stanislav Lem, George Orwell, Evgeny Zamyatin and relatively new works by James Dashner and Andrey Dashkov. The arbitrary choice of authors and books is determined by the specifics of the cultural and philosophical approach and the desire to avoid the dominance of totalizing logic and ideas. The general and arbitrary logic of cases is constituted by a conditional sequence of various objects – operations, procedures, body locations (topology) and marginals. Together, these objects, directly related to the physicality of the characters, form a specifically dystopian interior.

Keywords

• dystopia
• body
• operation
• procedure
• topos
• marginalia
• «betrization»
• labyrinth
• mark