Abstract
The power of imagination is the path that Atwood follows in the analysis of the economic crisis she carried out both in Payback 2009 and in The Heart Goes Last 2015. In particular, Atwood seems inspired by the aftermath of the series of economic and social changes triggered by the 2008 financial crisis and economic meltdown. In her words, the debt that caused the crisis is a “collective delusion” made up by imagination and memory. The mental faculty of imagination becomes shared memory thanks to language. For Atwood debt is a by-product of language interweaved in a fiction. The Heart… is the story of how Stan and Charmaine got into debt and how they got overwhelmed by it. The story is set in Consilence-Positron, a perfect example of a hetorotopia of deviation. The protagonists will trade their miserable but free lives with the commodities advertised by the Cons-Pos Project in the hope that the possession of property and the consumption of goods would bring to welfare and wellbeing. The project is a socio-economic experiment based upon the voluntary sacrifice of freedom and free will in exchange for a house and every commodity seen as ‘essential’ in a world ruled by a neoliberal economy. Atwood depicts a society based on alienation and consumerism instead of on belongingness and sustainability. In this reverse utopia she finds a way to engage the reader in a fertile dialogue between literature and society and to trace a path to explore the possibilities of utopian thinking.
Presenters
Elisa FortunatoAssociate Professor, Ricerca e Innovazione Umanistica, Università degli Studi di Bari, Bari, Italy
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Civic, Political, and Community Studies
KEYWORDS
Dystopia Alienation consumerism belongingness sustainability
