A Concealed Utopia: Uncovering the Repressed Utopian Impulses and Wish Pictures in Select Popular Visual Artistic Expressions

Date of Award

5-1-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts major in Literary and Cultural Studies

First Advisor

Vincenz C. Serrano, PhD

Abstract

Given the observably dystopian nature of popular culture and indeed, of our lived experience, this thesis positions itself as an attempt to uncover what critic Fredric Jameson, following Ernst Bloch, calls “utopian impulse,” silent rhythms of the utopian imagination that persist and operate even in the most dystopian of places. In this thesis, these “utopian impulses” will be extracted from dystopian popular visual narratives, particularly in select reincarnation Isekai anime series and Korean visual narratives (K- drama series and films). Using two levels of analysis, historico-materialist theories to contextualize the texts and various Marxist theoretical methods (such as modified forms of symptomatic reading, theory of alienation, and Jamesonian spatial theory among others), in order to uncover the utopian impulses and wish pictures hidden in the texts. The thesis ultimately aims to paint a contrapuntal narrative, a narrative of hope and possibilities, to the seemingly hopeless trajectory that our collective imagination traces in the present. The thesis concludes with a summary of the previous chapters and a call for further studies on the utopian and dystopian underpinnings of popular culture particularly of anime and Korean visual narratives.

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS