Dystopian Fiction: Can it Enable us to Think Critically about Gendered Violence and Power?

Abstract

This article discusses the issues of power sex, gender, and the law with regard to identifying and controlling violence against women. It discusses these concepts within dystopian works of fiction and their application, both actual and potential, to real life. The novels and films below have been selected for their perceived relevance to the author as examples of dystopian fiction, but importantly they engage with Gadamer’s concept of language and socially and historically affected consciousness. Hence, the themes, but also their reception, are products of their time and place.

The central themes of the novels will be those typical for dystopian fiction, such as power, governmental control and loss of individualism. However, other themes particularly pertinent to feminist dystopian fiction are also investigated, such as imagining a matriarchal society, misogyny and misandry, sexual violence, and the limitations upon the behaviour of individuals, usually female, but not always. Feminist theory has engaged with ‘essentialism’, both arguing for an essential difference between ‘males’ and ‘females’, but also disputing essentialism for limitations upon the sexes. One criticism of such works is that they are based upon biological sex and as such promote a dichotomous essentialism. However, since this article is discussing violence against women, biological or gendered, it is not engaging with the subtlety of multi-faceted ‘gendered’ identities, except in the stereotyping of such ‘attributes’.

The selected novels have enabled different interpretations over time, due to the diversity of readers, and of social norms, values, and beliefs. Whether we can distance ourselves from our socially and historically embedded understandings through these works of fiction, to critique the contemporary world is discussed. Arguably, for Attwood the critique and change potential is not guaranteed, for: “Humanity is so adaptable. Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.” This article argues that, crucially, with what, and with whom, we identify, are influential in our interpretations.