Power of the dystopian imagination. Medial archeology of the 1980s

Abstract

The essay considers the decade of the 1980s characterised by a specific media identity: never has any other era produced such a large number of dystopian narratives and such a catastrophic anticipation of the future. By retracing the salient moments, as well as the "media principles", of this production, this research identifies alongside the dystopian tension a specular utopian tension, within a true dialectic of the imaginary.