Spectacles of Dystopia: Lauren Beukes and the Geopolitics of Digital Space
2015; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/17533171.2015.1028181
ISSN1753-3171
Autores Tópico(s)Gothic Literature and Media Analysis
ResumoLauren Beukes' latest novels—The Shining Girls (2013) and Broken Monsters (2014)—present forays into new generic and geopolitical spaces, shifting from the Joburg and Cape Town-based "allegorical apartheids" of the science-fictional texts Moxyland (2008) and Zoo City (2010) to supernatural crime novels set in dystopian American cities. This paper explores the productive tension between the global and the local in her body of work, framed within the concepts of "developing world" science fiction and the figure of the hybrid. I argue that the esthetics and generic conventions of "cyberpunk" often associated with Beukes animate a seemingly ubiquitous dystopian space. Her writing explores the dissemination of commercial icons, visual fads, and digital pop-objects around and within global bodies: networked, linked electronically, and sometimes physically in what I suggest comes to form the illusion of a digital, dystopian everywhere, relentlessly performing transcendence of locality.
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