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Unpacking Utopia: Uncustomary Inspections of the Ideological Baggage of Exploration, Empire, and Otherness in Selected English and American Utopian Fictions
Unpacking Utopia Uncustomary Inspections of the Ideological Baggage of Exploration Empire and Otherness in Selected English and American Utopian Fictions Author:Jennifer Nelson English and American literary utopias often begin as travelers' tales, reminding readers of real-life explorers and their adventures in lands foreign to them. Utopias may rely on this narrative ruse to lend credibility and utility to fantastic discoveries and vicarious estrangements otherwise dismissed as mere entertainments, but what if imitat... more »ion is more than flattery? What becomes of utopianism's claims to find intellectual and speculative resources for human liberation, communal perfection, and civilized progress in the cultures of imaginary foreigners once utopian literature's reproductions of the imperialist, colonialist, and capitalist ideologies of so-called Western nations have been exposed? For literary scholars, cultural historians, and others interested in studying utopian fiction's romanticizations of the alienation and exploitation that have empowered 500 years of Anglophone empire-building, this book offers its deconstructive analyses of paradoxical utopia's parodies of global travel and its discourses.« less