Utopian Studies

Diana Palardy's book is a remarkable work bringing contemporary Spanish interpretations of dystopia to a wider audience. Her work is incisive, thoughtful, and challenging in its analysis while remaining approachable. The text is broken into seven sections, each focusing on a particular narrative that provides a key element to Palardy's conclusion. Each section is delivered in manageable subsections that allow new readers to ease into the material while still providing for the rigor more familiar scholars will appreciate.

The key themes of the book are built around Palardy's position that an urban cultural studies approach is not only relevant but necessary, because "more dystopias take place in urban settings than in rural environments" (3). Drawing on the urban cultural approach Palardy examines buildings and maps as well as the spatial construction that occurs in works of fiction, adding new layers to the ways scholars should think about the dystopian landscape generally, not just of the Spanish imagination. Following a thorough survey of dystopian definitions meant to frame her own arguments, Palardy outlines a set of criteria for identifying dystopias that adds depth to her analysis, [End Page 637]allowing her to focus on artifacts of literature and film in places real and imagined with equal success.

In chapter 2, Palardy focuses on the allure of consumption and the decadence of dystopias to explore "spatial relationships that reflect how the illusion of autonomy actually contributes to a dystopian atmosphere … and how the outer landscapes mirror the protagonist's inner landscapes" (30). One of the critical takeaways from Palardy's arguments in chapter 2 is that the link between desir/ability and place is corrupted by neoliberal economics to the point that places become "nonplaces," which ultimately leads to an erasure in the dystopian space, creating "nonpersons." This insight is bolstered by her work on memory and inheritance, which culminates in the observation that how we experience space and place through global media alters how we "see" and "experience" the spaces and places we inhabit, which ultimately exacerbates the devaluation of "where" we exist.

Chapter 3's focus is immigration and the control of peoples, evoking Michel Foucault's notion of disciplinary power. By dissecting the various ways dystopia achieves oppressiveness in the environment through spatial constructions, including "spaces of enclosure, ranking, partitioning, and other forms of conditioning to control human behavior …, … [especially] governmental policies and societal structures" (65–66), Palardy makes revelatory, and much-needed, claims about the experiences of individuals caught in the ebb and flow of diasporas. Palardy makes superb use of both film and graphic novels for her arguments regarding the erasure of identities and the transformation of persons into "docile bodies" ripe for exploitation, or, following Foucault, "bodies that 'may be subjected, used, transformed or improved' for the purposes of providing some sort of utility for individuals in positions of power" (79). By extending her analysis of individuals' experiences of disciplinary power, having examined both direct and more subtle, indirect configurations of disciplinary power, Palardy argues that her analysis can be used to develop better understandings of not just the control of peoples but also colonialism, imperialism, slavery, various modes of trafficking, and immigration across culturally diverse boundaries.

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 comprise an approach to dystopia and postapocalyptica defined by different "ages." Chapter 4, on the age of avarice, is explicitly about the dystopian nature of construction or, more generally, urban development, which is a hallmark of the capitalist dystopianism at the heart of Palardy's analysis. Though the chapter is focused on Ion de Sosa's film Sueñan [End Page 638] los androides, Palardy provides a systematic investigation of an actual urban landscape that is the result of the very principles at work in the film. In this way she is able to meld together theoretical analysis of the fictional and factual to generate a comprehensive critique of the ways "avarice drives the pursuit of...