English Critics - Dystopia

Waddell - refugees

• MRo1984RiDoR, bFPRiDoR

‘many readers of Nineteen Eighty-Four remember its depiction of rats, but few people remember its depiction of refugees’

Waddell - loathing

• aNOWFoL

‘a novel obsessed with forms of loathing’

Waddell - sexual encounters

• tWTPitHaUtISEEaAoGF, tAtCfI (a,tI,fR)

‘those who take part in the Hate are unable to imagine sexual encounters except as acts of grotesque fierceness, thereby annihilating their capacity for intimacy (and, through intimacy, for resistance)’

Waddell - the hate

• tHiaFoPS, aRotSDiPaX

‘the Hate is a form of perverted sexuality, a redirecting of the sexual drive into paranoia and xenophobia’

Fran Desmet - emotion

• tOGEiE

‘the oppressor's greatest enemy is emotion’

Fran Desmet - sedation

• NtKiSiaCSoIS

‘necessary to keep its subjects in a constant state of intellectual sedation’

Gordon Bowker - God belief

• BiG, HT, WAtERbBiaS, aH, oM

“Belief in God, he thought, was all too easily replaced by belief in a Stalin, a Hitler or Mussolini”

Gordon Bowker - Orwell Against Religion

• OMAARWtiTIiP, HPTS, aOtWtD

“Orwell’s main argument against religion was that it turned individuals into pawns, hampered progress towards socialism, and opened the way to dictatorship.”

Atwood - hell

• HiOWYGYTtIH

‘Hell is often what you get when you try to impose heaven’

Atwood - the powerless

• tWLPASMttS

‘Those who lack power always see more than they say’

Atwood - political disagreement

• PDiPD ; PDWaT,iH

“Political disagreement is political disagreement ; Political disagreement with a theocracy, is heresy”

Atwood - Devil and Details

• NIG, NIL, NIA. GiitD, tS. sitD

‘No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities. God is in the details, they say. So is the Devil.’

Atwood - Twisted Intentions

• IDNWtbAoD,TI,ooMtHPfDB

I did not wish to be accused of dark, twisted inventions, or of misrepresenting the human potential for deplorable behaviour.

Atwood - Salem

• SWMMD…SaLhRftT

Salem was much more dignified … Salem at least had rules for the trials.

Madeline Davies - dissident networks

• DtCDWYaRtSPL ‘Pb’

‘Difficult to create dissident networks when you are restricted to stock phrases like ‘praise be’’

Madeline Davies - female illiteracy

• tSiGiaRtFI

“The situation in Gilead is a return to female illiteracy’

Madeline Davies - internalisation

• ItVotItTY

internalise the values of the ideology that traps you’‘

Madeline Davies - Walking Womb

• NOhF, iiHOF

‘Not only her prime function, it is her only function’ [on her status as a ‘walking womb’]

Fran Desmet - science and religion

• tSBSaRPObN, WFtBotSToIaUToiF

‘the similarity between science and religion pointed out by Nietzsche, who felt that both of these systems thrive on imposing a univocal truth on its followers’

Nussbaum - fake news…

• iAFN, PT, tAN

‘It’s about fake news, political trauma, the abnormal normalized,”'

Stillman and Johnson - Jezebels

• tPEW

‘the power elite's whorehouse’

Stillman and Johnson - barrel of a gun

• GPPGOotBoaG, URLaP, aISbtIoEW, tFoHSW

Gilead’s political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, utilises repressive laws and politics, and is solidified by the isolation of each woman, the fragmentation of her social world

Stillman and Johnson - relations

• RaSW,DaDt…MoDaCoPF,PP…aIbtWaSttR

‘relations are so weakened, degraded, and debased that…modes of domination and control of physical force, political power…are internalised by those who are subjected to the regime’

Fran Desmet - Poetic Language

• PLiFiANaaIoL

poetic language is foregrounded in Atwood's novel as an instrument of liberation

Fran Desmet - Femininity

• FiNOItM, bIFDNEE, aCT, P, NbD

femininity is not only inferior to masculinity, but in fact does not even exist and can therefore, perhaps, not be defined

Fran Desmet - utopian space

• SiAWRMP

"structured in accordance with rigid masculine principles"

Fran Desmet - Art Forms

• AFaOtFVoRiDN

art forms are often the first victims of repression in dystopian narratives

Stillman and Johnson -- Gender Distinctions

• FNStPiG, tGDaPaE, attPaPI

feminist novels show that power is gendered, that gender distinctions are pervasive and extensive, and that the personal and political interweave.

Daniel Barkass-Williamson - Patriarchy, Different Identities

• tPFtDI [different clothing] aCtaTbt’T’tPMBPbCDIWaCHtC

The patriarchy fears these different identities [created by different clothing] and considers them a threat because they ‘trick’ the previously mentioned body politic by creating distinguishable identities which are consequently harder to control.

Daniel Barkass-Williamson - body

• OaSoHPS

Offred’s [body] a symbol of her perpetual servitude

Jane Beal - cultural forces

• M-DCFitFCStEWBiVotW

Male-dominated cultural forces in their fictions consistently seek to exploit women’s bodies in violation of their will

Daniel Barkass-Williamson - Unseen Body

• NoFOaUPW. tPECtUB

notions of faint optimism are ultimately proved wrong. The patriarchy eventually characterises the unseen body

Theo Finigan - Telescreen

• tUTFaaMAC, RWtTdNBtH

The ubiquitous telescreen functions as a monstrous alarm clock, reminding winston that time does not belong to him

Theo Finigan - Mechanically Rehearse

• tHMRaCoGaB

The handmaids mechanically rehearse a catechism of guilt and blame

Theo Finigan - Biologism

• LIhBSotAoB

love itself has been sacrificed on the altar of biologism

Theo Finigan - Triumpth

• tFToTWCiaFiWtPNLEaS

The final triumph of totalitarianism will come in a future in which the past no longer exists as such

Theo Finigan - Expressions

• IEoDFaAoO

Illicit expressions of desire function as assertions of ownership

Naomi Jacobs - Desire

• AtRtDoIBwtNotBP

[dystopian fiction] ‘attempts to reconcile the desires of individual bodies with the needs of the body politic

Hannah Arendt - Totalitarianism

• MFiH

[totalitarianism involves] ‘Monstrous forgeries in historiography’

Derrida - Archive

• tiNPPWCotA,iNoM

There is no political power without control of the archive, if not of memory

Courtine - Language

• LitLMoMaOHaSfIR

language is the living memory of man and offers him a space for inner resistance

Courtine - Power

• PMTBMoL

power must thus become master of language