Abstract

Regardless of its ontological status and seemingly subsidiary role, the beyond—real, oneiric, imaginary, or otherworldly—constitutes, I intend to argue, an indispensable and complementary component of any dystopian reality. Paradoxically, it may be claimed that what lies outside a given dystopia—beyond its impassable boundaries—determines, ultimately, whether we deal with the Orwellian or the Hollywood type of "bad world."1 Contrary to the latter, the former systematically compromises and eliminates one kind of the beyond after another, leaving its inhabitants with neither space nor time nor discourse that could allow them to imagine that they are behind the confines of dystopia. No matter how far Winston Smith...