ABOUT THIS BOOK

After centuries of contemplating utopias, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers began to warn of dystopian futures. Yet these fears extended beyond the canonical texts of dystopian fiction into postwar discourses on totalitarianism, mass society, and technology, as well as subsequent political theories of freedom and domination. Fear the Future demonstrates the centrality of dystopian thinking to twentieth century political thought, showing the pervasiveness of dystopian images, themes, and anxieties.

Offering a novel reading of major themes and thinkers, Fear the Future explores visions of the future from literary figures such as Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell; political theorists such as Max Weber, Hannah Arendt, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, and Michel Foucault; and mid-century social scientists such as Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, David Reisman, C. Wright Mills, and Jacques Ellul. It offers a comparative analysis of distinct intellectual and literary traditions, including modern utopianism and anti-utopianism, midcentury social science, Frankfurt School critical theory, and continental political philosophy. With detailed case studies of key thinkers from the Enlightenment to the late twentieth century, the book synthesizes secondary literature and research from a range of disciplinary areas, including in political theory, intellectual history, literary studies, and utopian studies. This wide-ranging reconstruction shows that while dystopian thinking has illustrated the dangers of domination and dehumanization, it has also illuminated new possibilities for freedom.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Matthew Benjamin Cole is Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Binghamton University.

REVIEWS

“This book is a significant contribution to twentieth-century Euro-American political thought. In the works of dystopian writers, Cole finds a fragile but insistent attempt to defend freedom from oppressive social, political and technological forces. This is their critical, cautionary function—and the source of their greatest value. To examine these efforts, the book combines—in an unusual, insightful, and creative manner—scholarship from political theory, intellectual history, and literary studies. The result is a compelling work of scholarship.”— Duncan Bell, University of Cambridge

“This timely and imaginative exploration of 20th century dystopian literature surveys the range of powerfully bleak interventions which projected fear-laden futures in an era defined for many by war and cataclysm. Cole deftly unpacks Ballardian, Huxleyan, Orwellian and other visions of dictatorship to focus less on natural disasters than the abuse of power, and to reveal the growing centrality of dystopia in its totalitarian form both to our world and our worldview. The growing convergence of so many of these nightmares of future and not-so-distant evils and the constant vying of the imaginary with the real for terroristic primacy makes for grim and compelling reading. We have been warned . . . so often.”— Gregory Claeys, University of London

"Fear the Future remains an original work of intellectual history that reinterprets a wide range of thinkers through a capacious notion of dystopia, enabling the author to contextualise their works as responses to a series of shared political concerns in the second half of the twentieth century. It also effectively challenges common misconceptions about dystopian thought and promotes its contemporary normative value."

— Ming Kit Wong, Contemporary Political Theory

"Fear the Future is a necessary and important provocation. Its contention that dystopia is a mood that engulfs and inflects a variety of cultural, political and social forms is especially timely. Our interest in how writers and thinkers in the gloomy moment of the mid-twentieth century navigated the closing of liberatory horizons is not purely historical. As the world once again bends towards crisis and catastrophe, we can learn much from the sensibilities of Cole's dystopians."

— Joe P. L. Davidson, Theory and Event

"[T]he book is a remarkable achievement . . . a highly original and valuable contribution to the scholarship on the question of the relation between the dystopian writers and twentieth-century political thought. The insightful political interpretations of the dystopian literature are especially insightful long overdue, while the sections on how some of the great political theorists of the preceding century were influenced by them are thoughtfully presented deftly presented."

— Thomas Holman, The Review of Politics

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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