Deleuze and contemporary Dystopia


Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2018

Öğrenci: RAHİME ÇOKAY NEBİOĞLU

Danışman: NİL KORKUT NAYKI

Özet:

The turn of the new millennium has seen the rise of late capitalism and witnessed a radical change in the structure of the contemporary world, which initiated a new social formation that is seemingly more flexible and liberating yet indeed more controlling. This dissertation looks at contemporary dystopia in the light of these recent changes, arguing that there is now a new moment in the history of dystopia. This new moment suggests that, just like the contemporary world itself, contemporary dystopia has gradually moved towards the plane of immanence where it has become both a re-presentation of the current dystopian reality and an exploration of ways of affirmative resistance. This dissertation explores these aspects of contemporary dystopia through Deleuzian philosophy, which widely discusses and interprets contemporary societies’ movement from a transcendent to an immanent position. Thus, this study aims to reinterpret the history of dystopia from a Deleuzian perspective and create a new theoretical framework and critical tools for the analysis of contemporary dystopia. This dissertation also engages in a Deleuzian analysis of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (2000-2013) and China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station (2000) in order to see how this new theoretical framework applies to contemporary examples of dystopia.