Boyko, M. E. Classification of Anti-Utopian Societies and Art Futurology

Abstract: It has become quite a common thing to underline that Utopias are based on real life experience because only the reality can create basis for our imagination. At the same time, it is often forgotten that facts do not always reveal the historical reality because, as a rule, first they are adjusted to ideological cliché and only then they are analyzed. As a result, artistic fiction sometimes happens to be credible than the most precise scientific research. One can easily notice that Orwell’s formula can be easily reversed and sound like ‘«He who controls the future, controls the past. He who controls the present, controls the future». For us the image of future is more important than the image of the past and this is why today there are numerous appeals to the future as the basis for legitimacy of the present. The author of the article analyzes images of the future outlined in the five anti-Utopian novels written in the XX century. The author offers to classify anti-Utopian societies as divergent and convergent. Michel Houellebecq’s project of post-human future is viewed as an antimonic synthesis of polarities.

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