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Antiutopianism, Social Darwinism, and Self-Preservation: Some Reflections
- Utopian Studies
- Penn State University Press
- Volume 34, Number 2, 2023
- pp. 312-318
- Article
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abstract:
This essay responds to Darko Suvin by focusing on his observations on self hood and personality. Antiutopias are defined as narrative texts framed by fear and anxiety regarding the self-preservation of individuality and by subscription to the principle of relentless struggle for survival amid resource scarcity. The ambiguities that insinuate themselves within this framework include: first, the conflation of “self-preservation” with domination over others; second, the oscillation of self-preservation between a “biopolitical” pole and a “cultural” one. Turning to Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, the article explicates why, in their view, “self- preservation” destroys “the very thing that is to be preserved.” The conclusion involves examining a few literary texts both as instances of the “pleasures of misery” imposed by the antiutopian obsession with “self-preservation,” and—contrastively—as ways of exploring the high cost and risk involved in a utopian transformation of self hood beyond the dictates of “self-preservation.”