Utopian and Dystopian Entanglements
In my paper, I analyze three texts: The Adventures of Don Chipote, or, When Parrots Breast-feed (1928) by Daniel Venegas; Lunar Braceros 2125-2148 (2009) by Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita; and Sleep Dealer (2009) directed by Alex Rivera. I argue that the American Dream signifies a utopia for marginalized communities in pursuit of a better life, but is also a shared ambition with dominant government and corporate structures that wield more power and influence to achieve this dream. I demonstrate the entanglement of utopia and dystopia in the science fiction texts, where the future government and corporations’ desired utopian vision is achieved through forms of neoliberalism[1], capitalism, outsourcing in global markets, and oppression – all of which render a dystopic social reality for marginalized communities.
[1] My definition of neoliberalism is from David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism, “a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade” (2).
