Description
What is the purpose of social dreaming under conditions of the ongoing climate emergency? Despite worries about escapism, my argument in this paper is that both eutopian and dystopian visions have important roles to play in the epoch we have come to call the “Anthropocene”. One common way of envisaging these roles says that, while the former seek to galvanize an apathetic or shell-shocked audience, the latter try to warn us about future dangers yet to emerge. The problem with this picture of social dreaming’s multiple functions is that it misrepresents the complexity of inhabiting a climate-changed world. Through a reading of various examples of recent climate fiction, I shall claim that a more nuanced account is needed to explain how both eutopian and dystopian stories contribute to a better understanding of our current predicament. Such an account would have to demonstrate that hope and despair are in fact much more entwined with one another than is usually assumed.
