Mediums of surveillance and resistance in Noughts and Crosses, TKNLG and Noble Conflict

Abstract 

Power is a theme inherent in the titles and content of The Knife of Never Letting Go, Noughts and Crosses, and Noble Conflict. In this essay, I explore ‘power’ as it is presented in these three texts, as it manifests itself in the agency of its child and adolescent protagonists. In re-envisioning the dystopian world they live in, our protagonists are both the creators of and participators in a counter-discourse. This essay’s interpretation of the texts relies heavily on a Foucauldian conceptualisation of power, as presented in Discipline and Punishment.

Keywords: dystopia, discourse, counter-discourse, surveillance, resistance

Mediums of surveillance and resistance in Noughts and Crosses, TKNLG and Noble Conflict[JO1]  [JO2] [JO3] 

The young adult dystopian genre has always intrigued me; and yet, only now, in my adulthood, can I truly appreciate Ness and Blackman’s works as creative commentaries on society and the adolescent experience. In recent years, 2000s and onwards, there has been a surge in YA dystopian books and book-to-film adaptations: Roth’s Divergent trilogy, Collins’ The Hunger Games series, James Dashner’s Maze Runner series to name a few (Basu, Balaka, et al 2). Some of these books appear to be a literary study of the human response to apocalyptic events; others, a magnification (or an absence) of one or other human traits or customs, like identity, marriage and love. But what factors contributed to the emergence of this entire sub-genre? To what extent are these texts mediums for the author to comment on society? And, perhaps most important of all for this present discussion, what role does the young protagonist play in all of this?

Before we proceed with this discussion or at least attempt to answer the final question, we need to begin with a shared understanding of dystopian fiction, what Moylan calls the “hybrid genre” (148). Several definitions for this term, ‘dystopia,’ have been offered, namely ‘non-existent societies intended to be read as “‘considerably worse” than the readers own” (Basu, Balaka, et al 2) and as ‘[that which] situates itself in direct opposition to utopian thought, warning against the potential negative consequences of arrant utopianism” (Booker 3). Dystopian fiction and the utopian literary tradition are, to an extent, inextricably connected: As Moylan argues, dystopias “negotiate the social terrain” of the utopian tradition (148). Dystopias are the product of a societies’ pursuit of an unattainable idealistic vision of how society (and by extension its inhabitants’ lives) should be.  Nonetheless, within the dystopian tradition, amid its oftentimes bleak portrait of humanity, there often lies a utopian impulse, or visions of an idealised world (Booker 13; Moylan 155).  I am particularly interested in this utopian impulse, frequently embodied in the adolescent protagonists of YA (critical) dystopias.

In this article, I will consider three young adult dystopian texts: Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses and Noble Conflict and Patrick Ness’ The Knife of Never Letting Go (which for the sake of conciseness will henceforth be known as TKNLG). Young Adult dystopian fiction is markedly distinct from the dystopian genre insofar as it is (for the most part) written for younger audiences – adolescents bordering on adulthood. For Trites, “Young Adult novels depict some postmodern tension the genre exhibits between individuals and institutions” (52). Hunt defines the sub-genre as one in which “an adolescent hero or heroine [is] seen coming to terms with the world and self,” (147). Bradford et al argue that “utopian or dystopian fiction for young adults is meant to offer shape to children’s anxieties and aspirations” (86).[1] To what extent do we see this in the three aforementioned texts? In Noughts and Crosses, Blackman reimagines Jim Crow, presenting one white hero and one black heroine’s coming-of-age and coming to terms with their unjust world, their identities, and their relationship with each other in it. Noble Conflict addresses themes of colonisation and conquest in its depiction of our protagonist’s quest to reconcile the Alliance’s dark past with his identity as a Guardian. The Knife of Never Letting Go (TKNLG) integrates a fantastical dimension to our male child protagonist’s emergence into manhood – perhaps, reflecting the very real anxieties that children have around the prospect of growing up. 

Noughts and Crosses, TKNLG, and Noble Conflict all use their dystopian narratives to explore contemporary social and political themes, namely, that of race and discrimination, colonisation and oppression; and their protagonists, Callum and Sephy, Kaspar, Todd and Viola, have an important role to play in bridging the gap between the adult world and the potential for change. In this article, I argue that the young protagonists in each of these to-be-explored texts are envisioners, resistors and “catalysts for change,” (Bradford et al, 2008) that strive to surmount the challenges of adolescence and the contradictions in their dystopian world.[2]  

 

An inversion of historical racialised power relations

The power hierarchy in Noughts and Crosses, in which Crosses are superior to noughts, is not too dissimilar from an epoch in our own historical past. It is a past characterised by the emergence of race as what Hoyt calls “a new ideology in the world” (45) - that is, increased consciousness of racial disparities. One might even suggest that there is an analogous connection between a game of chess or noughts-and-crosses and the racial hierarchy of power in Noughts and Crosses. Chess is a game that consists of moves, rules and power play. After the pieces are positioned on the chequered chess board, the players compete for dominion over their opponent’s king – the embodiment of power and conquest of the entire board. Likewise, in the game of noughts-and-crosses, the winner is often the better or more successful strategist (or just fortunate). In Noughts and Crosses, power play is predicated on strategies of control and coercion. The Cross elite exercise their power through these strategies, the aim being to propagate the dominant discourse[3] – that noughts and crosses can’t and don’t mix. Foucault argues that 

 

“the power exercised on the body is conceived not as a property, but as a strategy […] it is not the ‘privilege,’ acquired or preserved, of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its strategic positions” (Foucault, Discipline and Punish26).

 

In Noughts and Crosses, we see a ‘disciplinary power’ that is exercised on both society – that is, the ‘social body’ - and on nought and Cross bodies in and through ordinary citizens and public institutions, namely, the education and prison systems. There is ‘a perpetual battle’ over nought and Cross bodies. Take for example public hangings, which have a similar deterring effect that regulates the behaviour of observers, and which Foucault may have typified as belonging to a more feudalised system of corporal punishment. 

We also see the Crosses’ exercise their power and control over the corporeal nought body: through the implicit identification and then alienation of noughts through surveillance techniques. The effect of this repression through surveillance is exemplified in Callum’s encounter with a ticket inspection officer, as himself and Sephy are aboard a “first-class train carriage” full of Cross passengers to Celebration Park (Blackman, Noughts and Crosses 105-112). The train inspection officer serves as one of many formal modes of the Foucauldian capillary network surveillance presented in Noughts and Crosses. The officer’s prejudice is hidden under the guise of regimentation, law and justice. Callum is not just noticeable because of his skin colour; he is made visible. He is differentiated, categorised as out of place, easily discernible against a landscape of Cross bodies, as is implied in Callum’s internal response to the officer’s remark that he is “a long way from home boy,”: “How dare a nought sit in first class? It’s outrageous...Disinfect that seat at once” (Blackman, Noughts and Crosses 109-10). 

Noughts and Crosses also explores what Hintz calls “the political life of the individual” (255). Here, our protagonist’s dystopian society’s contradictory and segregated condition as a political problem, is also a personal and ‘contemporary problem.’ Our protagonists, Callum and Sephy, strive to surmount the dominant discourse, which frustrates their friendship and reminds them of their incompatibility for one another. As ‘artist-heroes’ their friendship points to their resistance and subversion of the system; and an envisioning of a reality comparatively better than their own. This reflects Sargent’s notion of social dreaming: how “groups of people arrange their lives, and…envision a radically different society than the one in which the dreamers live,” (cited in Bradford 351). In one of Meggie McGreggor and her husband’s “what if games,” Meggie watches the innocent play between her son and Sephy, and wonders “What if Callum and Sephy…?” (Blackman, Noughts and Crosses8-9). However, her later experience with discrimination in the system (including expulsion from her job and the disintegration of her own family) squash any hope of there ever being a relationship between Sephy and Callum in the future, as “I’m not as naïve as I used to be” (Blackman, Noughts and Crosses 36) suggests. For noughts, it seems, power is only illusory, and that believing, as she once did, that it was possible for noughts and Crosses to mix, is a naïve hope. 

The dominant discourse is expressed, perhaps more subtly, through capitalism, specifically the idea of ‘inclusion and exclusion’ inherent in everyday household commodities such as plasters, orange juice and magazines. Ownership of (and recognition of one’s exclusion from taken-for-granted access to) these products symbolises cultural power. Sephy reveals that she has never seen “any pink plasters. Plasters were the colour of us Crosses, not the noughts” (Blackman, Noughts and Crosses73-4); and that she has never seen a nought in her mother’s magazines: ‘Not one. No white or pink faces anywhere’ (Blackman, Noughts and Crosses 125). Blackman’s emphasis on these consumer products is a response to the “unprecedented capitalist hegemony,” inherent in contemporary society (Wilkie-Stibbs 237). These taken-for-granted products, magazines and plasters, are significant insofar as they transcend the physical, to reveal the subtle ways in which the noughts continue to be repressed. 

 

The Counter-discourse: Resistance and Secrecy

 

 

“The dystopian worlds are bleak not because they are meant to stand as mere cautionary tales, but because they are designed to display – in sharp relief – the possibility of utopian change even in the darkest of circumstances,” (Basu, Balaka, et al 3).

 

Foucault argues that “discourse can be…a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy” (The History of Sexuality 100). As ‘catalysts for change,’ Sephy and Callum resist and undermine the dominant discourse, and actively create and engage with the counter-discourse, as it is variously manifested. For example, the counter-discourse manifests itself in the Liberation Militia, a group of self-proclaimed “Freedom Fighters,” that Callum joins. Hintz argues that “Freedom…is figured as a political issue…and a negotiation between adolescents and their families or friends” (263). Heathcroft has failed to give Callum an equal status with Crosses, and the legal system, in its discrimination against noughts, unjustly condemned his father to death. Both disciplinary institutions cannot bring about the justice Callum seeks, and so he turns to the only available (but illegal) avenue to attain and exercise the justice and agency that society has denied him. His interaction with the LM, therefore, signifies his “negotiat[ion] for power or autonomy,” which is a negotiation that, as Hintz writes, is “a more powerfully etched out struggle within a utopian or dystopian society” (Hintz 255).  

In deciding to join an unnamed resistance group in her new boarding school, Sephy too “transcends . . . [her society’s] limitations in order to bring about needed reform” (Hintz 255). Though, as a Cross, she is better advantageously and strategically positioned to transcend society’s limitations, and ‘bring about needed reform.’ Ultimately, Callum and Sephy’s participation in resistance groups is underscored by the desire to “make a difference,” and to “take matters into their own hands” (Hintz 260). This desire is also exhibited in their rebellion against parental control. For example, they actively rebel against their parents by continuing in their spontaneous, secret rendezvous, which become a subversive expression of agency as ‘a point of resistance’ that culminates in their sexual encounter.

Noble conflict is slightly different. Its title ‘Noble Conflict’ is oxymoronic, much like Yeats’ “terrible beauty” in “Easter 1916.” It is characterised by the coexistence of two seemingly irreconcilable concepts – that something beautiful might also be terrible. This linguistic and conceptual contradiction alludes to contradictions which are inherent in the text’s dystopian world.In Noble Conflict, power is literally monopolized by the twenty-one members of the High Council, a political body that is “elected to serve for all time the needs of the Alliance” (Blackman, Noble Conflict 79) and which conceals its corruptness under the pretence of justice, integrity and benignity, appropriate history to serve its own corrupt agenda, and foster in its citizens’ minds a Manichaean-like dichotomy in which those within the Alliance are at war against enemy forces, otherwise known as the Insurgents.

Take for example Sister Madeleine’s reiteration of “ours is a noble conflict” (Blackman, Noble Conflict 29).  The ‘ours’ again points to a Manichaean-like dichotomy between us and them. In her rhetorically charged description of the war as a ‘noble conflict,’ one might discern a conflict of interests: between the High Council’s interests, which are labelled as noble, and other subordinated interests (i.e., that of the citizens and the Insurgents). The shift from they-to-we accentuates the ‘dualistic mechanisms of exclusion’ that underscore and govern the dominant discourse – of us against them. Nonetheless, and as will be explored shortly, what this does reveal is the unquestioned authority of the High Council’s writings which assume an almost scriptural status in the ‘enclosure’ that the Alliance might be said to represent (Foucault 141).[4] The High Council perpetuate “their vision, their extracts, their version of history” (Blackman, Noble Conflict 353).

Surveillance in the Alliance is primarily regulated through ‘Normalizing Judgement,’ which is as Foucault describes, a pervasive normalizing presence that “...imposes homogeneity…[that through comparison, differentiation, hierarchization and exclusion]...supervises every instant in the disciplinary institutions” (Foucault, Discipline and Punish 195-6). An example of this ‘normalization’ is in the scapegoating and vilification of the Insurgents as enemies of the state. Mallan describes scapegoating as “entail[ing] lies about an innocent subject […] blaming an individual or group for the misfortunes befalling a society or community, and . . . becomes the ‘necessary’ means used by the community for restoring social order,” (65). The Insurgents are sacrifices, and as such, might be said to be both the enemy and a surviving faction exploited by the High Council to protect the High council’s ownership of the land they have usurped and the power that they wield (Mallan 66).  For example, the Insurgents are blamed for the ‘Loring School massacre’ (Blackman, Noble Conflict 194) – which reminds Alliance citizens of who the enemy is, and further cements the High Council’s power as a “monolithic adult authority” (Basu, Balaka, et al 4).  

The High Council paradoxically (1) exert their power through and (2) find their power undermined by secrecy. Bok argues that for coercive governments, secrecy is both “essential to every aspect of the exercise of power” and “the central means of resistance and survival for those who oppose such regimes” (as cited in Mallan 116). This paradox, of secrecy as a ‘means of resistance’ and as ‘essential’ to ‘the exercise of power,’ is most closely and overtly epitomised in Noble Conflict. In Noble Conflict, state surveillance and behaviour regulation are achieved through the media and agents of the state. However, it’s challenge, in the counter-discourse, comes from nature, the personal, the forbidden, the sensual, the imperceptible and the irrational, as is represented in the Insurgent’s touch tele-empathic ability. It is this touch telepathic ability that enables Kaspar (who is unaffected by the state manipulation of the country’s water reservoir) to access the Insurgent’s hope – their utopian vision of the Badlands prior to their expulsion from it: “a place worth dying for” (Blackman, Noble Conflict 154). In this hope, lie the traces of a similar Utopian vision in Haven in TKNLG. 

The Badlands are an intangible place that no longer exists, saturated with nature that engages with the human senses lost in the mechanistic world of the Capital city of the Alliance. As Ostry writes: “In nature, teenagers find the unmediated, raw experience that cities cannot give them,” (106). Thus, the dominant discourse that magnifies difference (between Insurgents and Non-Insurgents) is expressed through the retelling and dissemination of myths and the concealment of truth. Both are intimately connected to the themes of memory and history: the memories Rhea inherits from her predecessors, and the history of the origination of the Alliance, High Council and Insurgents. Rhea’s “handed-down memories” (Blackman, Noble Conflict 317) are contingent on human sensations, sensations which are devalued by the technologically driven Alliance. The devaluing of these sensations might be said to imply the deleterious effects of man’s imposition on nature. 

The counter-discourse is also exemplified in Kaspar’s initial attempts to distance himself from the parental surveillance his parents’ legacy and uncle’s influence represent. Comparisons can be made to Sephy and Callum’s train journey to Celebration Park. Sephy’s emphasis on the day being ‘theirs’ suggests that the journey is, for her, an escape from her regulative parents’ surveillance, a sporadically alcoholic mother and MP father, and society. For Sephy, purchasing two first-class tickets by herself and with money she procured from her own bank account is precisely what makes the day theirs, “because the money was mine and nothing to do with my mother or anyone else” (Blackman, Noughts and Crosses 107). It suggests a reclaiming ownership of an identity and a relationship that is distinct from the labels that others would attach to her and to it. 

In Noble Conflict, Kaspar leaves his uncle’s farm, enrols as a guardian and, in his application, refrains from disclosing his parents’ identities; and yet, he remains indivisible from his mother whose legacy, post-mortem, continues to shape the agency he is permitted in shaping his identity and, like Callum, make a difference. Kaspar, and his fellow guardians’ naivety to the truth hinders their “capacity to act” of their own accord (Mallan 96), and as an agent or “lackey” (Blackman, Noble Conflict353) of the state possessing no true agency, his performance and ‘parading’ as Guardian mascot is not too dissimilar from his actual role as a Guardian. His body has been made ‘legible’ under the High Council’s surveillance mechanisms, as one vehicle through which the dominant discourse is perpetuated (Foucault, Discipline and Punish 188). For this reason, he is driven or acts on the basis of an illusory “civic responsibility” (Ames 4), which is later replaced by an authentic ‘civic responsibility’ in his confrontation with his government’s corruption. 

By the book’s end, Kasper moves from a state of “apparent contentment” with the status quo “into an experience of alienation and resistance” against it and what it represents (Baccolini and Moylan 7). He releases his mother, Insurgents and rebels against the High Council’s authority, in the North Wing, from the catatonic state and torture they have been subjected to for years. The High Council are killed, and Mac, and perhaps other civilians, are left ‘hunting down the truth” (Blackman, Noble Conflict 350). While, Kaspar does not come out unscathed, the door is opened for the possibility of change, as is epitomised, for example, in Mac’s post on the datanet, which points to the shared guilt of Alliance citizens who, in their complacency, refused to ask questions or interrogate their reality. There is perhaps an interesting allusion between this datanet post and social media as a powerful catalyst for change today, “like a phoenix rising from the ashes,” (Blackman, Noble Conflict 353). We will consider this motif of knowing further in the ensuing section. 

Agency and Memory 

 

“In emphasizing the trials of adolescents, YA dystopias recapitulate the conventions of the classic Bildungsroman, using political strife, environmental disaster, or other forms of turmoil as the catalyst for achieving adulthood. The novels detail how the conditions of the dystopian society force protagonists to fall from innocence and achieve maturity as they realise the dystopian realities in which they live” (Basu, Balaka, et al 7). 

 

Let’s now turn to our final text: TKNLG. There are two fundamental allusions in TKNLG Part 1 to the text’s critical dystopian inflections. The first is Todd’s innocently spoken “we’d aimed to start a new life of purity and brotherhood in a whole new Eden” (Ness, TKNLG 25), in which “a whole new Eden” and the sense of hopefulness that underscores it, highlight how visions of utopia can warp into dystopian nightmares. Such a dystopian nightmare is especially depicted in Part 3 of TKNLG, with the Prentisstown men, now an “army of killers” (Ness, TKNLG 215) marching towards the Farbranch settlement[5] and in the symbolic fall from innocence that Prentisstown’s rite of passage into manhood suggests. This notion of a symbolic fall is inherent in the phrase “if one of us falls, we all fall” which, as Todd observes, Aaron preaches “a lot” (Ness, TKNLG 26). 

In clinging to his identity as opposed to the collective ‘Prentisstown’ identity, Todd resists and asserts (albeit with difficulty) his own identity, as is highlighted by his repeated “I am Todd Hewitt.” His internal battle and confusion as he confronts “new stuff” (86) that undermine the reality (including his encounter with Viola and the Spackle) he has long held to be true is masterfully conveyed in several key ways. It is conveyed through a marked shift in the frequency of punctuation[6]and the hallucinatory images of ‘a boy’ – himself – and of Aaron. The nameless boy also points to and is an externalising of Todd’s quest to come to terms with the world as he once knew it, the world as it is now with his eyes opened (perhaps not unlike Adam in the garden of Eden), and his identity in it (Hunt 147).

One might suggest that there are marked Biblical parallels between the fall represented in TKNLG and the first man’s fall in the Garden of Eden – sin being the catalyst. To become a man, boys in Prentisstown must fulfil one obligation: kill another man. However, the turning point in the narrative and in Todd’s ‘hero’s quest’ is marked by Todd’s realisation, with Viola’s help, that his power lies both in his refusal to kill and in the boyhood he longed to cast off. As the following excerpt suggests: 

“But a knife ain’t just a thing, is it? It’s a choice, its something you do. A knife says yes or no, cut not, die or don’t. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again,” (84). 

Todd’s power lies first in his innocence, then in his agency. He is not the ‘coward’ or “the biggest, effing waste of nothing known to man” for being unable to kill Aaron. It might also be said that we see a kind of wish fulfilment in Todd’s escape from Pretisstown (5) – a young boy venturing on his own adventure, fighting the bad guys, and saving the girl. But it is more than that. Day et al. argue that young adult dystopias, and by extension adolescence, “occupy a liminal space between childhood and adulthood” (4).  I would posit that Todd\s escape from Prentisstown is also an allegorical interpretation of this liminal space and rite of passage as a corruption of Todd’s innocence.  

Todd’s power also lies in his ignorance. The second allusion to the text’s critical dystopian inflections is Mayor Prentiss’ decision “to burn all the books, every single one of them,” as Todd casually recalls in his walk back from the Swamp through town (Ness, TKNLG 18). Here, book burning symbolises the repression of individual agency and one’s capacity to think and imagine for themselves. As books are euphemistically understood to embody knowledge or information, book burning hinders the acquisition of knowledge. Therefore, power is exercised by the corrupt Prentisstown leaders through the stifling of dissent, and in the concealment of the truth from children so that they remain unsuspecting of the truth and do not rebel. As Milan Kundera argues “The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history” (cited in Baccolini 125). 

In Part 1, the reader meets Todd who, bordering on adolescence (and adulthood), is inexperienced and in a state of complete ignorance and confusion. His confusion is reflected in his noise, as the reader is catapulted into his and other people’s thoughts. Unlike Todd, Ben and Cillian know why Todd must leave Prentisstown, and it is this that instigates his escape. It alludes to human anxieties around growing up and the loss of innocence that inevitably comes with it, as is suggested by Ben’s repeated ‘Knowledge is dangerous.’ 

In TKNLG, we see the motif of reading, not only books and words on a page, but Noise, which is what makes individuals who they are. In his inability to hear Viola’s thoughts, Todd is unable to read her and, ultimately, label her. Noise reveals thoughts, it ‘reveals you.’ Noise is a product of ‘everything on this planet talk[ing] to each other,’ (TKNLG 390). While the Spackle evolved to live with the Noise, Prentisstown men have reappropriated it to serve as an invasive form of constant surveillance that threatens Todd and Viola’s survival in their escape from Prentisstown. It means an absence of secrets and a vulnerability to being read. On another level, Noise is significant because it points to two kinds of knowledge – one subjugated, though no less of value: the first, a knowledge being what is seen and felt – what is tangible as opposed to the second, what is, perhaps like the telepathic ability we see in Noble Conflict, unreal. Ultimately, Todd learns that there are other ways to know.

 

The counter discourse manifests in Viola and Todd’s mother’s journal and offers an alternative to the themes of colonisation and conquest inherent in the dominant discourse that controls the Prentisstown men. Take for example, chapter 36 where Viola reads Todd’s mother’s journal to him. It marks one of several key moments in TKNLG where the reader sees Todd’s gradual ‘awakening’ to Prentisstown’s “rigid and repressive regime” (Basu, Balaka, et al 4) and “sad history” (155).

Foucault asserts that, “we must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes,’ it ‘represses,’ it ‘censors’ (…) In fact power produces; it produces reality; it produces…rituals of truth” (Foucault, Discipline and Punish 197). In TKNLG we witness the erasure of the memory as a tool for producing reality, as we do in Noble Conflict and perhaps also (to a smaller extent) in Callum’s history class in Noughts and Crosses.  At Heathcroft, nought history is dismissed, as can be observed with Callum’s observation that “all the history books are written by Crosses and you never write about anyone else except your own” (Blackman, Noughts and Crosses 37). Ultimately, Noughts are denied a history (in the miscommunication of the past), a present (in the suffusion of bias and discrimination) and a future (in barring from noughts the necessary mediums to assert a voice, or authority).  By contrast, in TKNLG, the dominant discourse, that the Spackle are evil animalistic creatures and that “there ain’t nothing but Noise in this world…ever since the Spackles released the Noise germ during the war…” (Ness, TKNLG 13) is perpetuated in the Noise and in Aaron’s preaching. It both sustains reality as Todd knows it and conceals the reality that Todd is unaware exists. 

Conclusion

YA dystopias are a vivid snapshot of contemporary cultural anxieties (Basu, Balaka, et al 13): the transition from childhood to adolescence, discrimination, injustice, and what it means to be human. In their ‘awakened’ state, dissatisfied with their societies and alive to the truth that lurks beneath them, the young protagonists in each of the texts discussed in this article are a powerful force for change. We, as the readers, see the sacrifices made by adult figures for the child and young adults who they see is the only hope and catalyst for change in these worlds.[7] Resistance is desirable; however, it is not without its costs. With the YA dystopian wave now passing its peak and in light of recent social movements and global developments, it will be interesting to see the direction the genre takes and the ‘contemporary cultural anxieties’ the genre captures.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Blackman, Malorie. Noughts and Crosses. Corgi, 2001.

----. Noble Conflict. Corgi, 2013. 

Ames, Melissa R. “Engaging ‘Apolitical’ Adolescents: Analyzing the Popularity and Educational Potential of Dystopian Literature Post-9/11.” The High School Journal, vol. 97, no. 1, 2013, pp. 3–20, https://thekeep.eiu.edu/eng_fac/11. 

Basu, Balaska, et al. “Introduction.” Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers, edited by Basu, Balaska, et al., Routledge, 2013, pp. 1-18.   

Booker, Keith M. “The Critical Reception of Speculative Fiction.” Critical Insights: Contemporary Speculative Fiction, edited by M. K. Booker, Greyhouse publishing, 2013, pp. 3-17. 

Bradford, Clare, et al. “New World Orders and the dystopian turn: transforming visions of territoriality and belonging in recent Australian children's fiction.” Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 32, no. 3, 2008, pp.  349-359, DOI: 10.1080/14443050802294091. 

Day, Sarah K, et al. “Introduction: From “New Woman” to “Future Girl”: The Roots and the Rise of the Female of Protagonist in Contemporary Young Adult Dystopias.” Female Rebellion in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction, edited by Day, Sarah K, et al, Routledge, 2014, pp. 1-16. 

Enciso, Patricia, et al. “Children's Literature: Standing in the Shadow of Adults.” Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 45, no. 2, 2010, pp. 252–263, DOI:10.1598/RRQ.45.2.5. 

Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Penguin, 1991. 

Hintz, Carrie. “Monica Hughes, Lois Lowry, and Young Adult Dystopias.” The Lion and the Unicorn, 26(2), 2002, pp. 254-264, 10.1353/uni.2002.0022. 

Hoyt, Carlos. The Arc of a Bad Idea: Understanding and Transcending Race. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Lianos, Michalis. “Social Control after Foucault.” Surveillance & Society, 2003, 412-430, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253195686_Social_Control_after_Foucault. 

Marks, Peter. “Imagining Surveillance: Utopian Visions and Surveillance Studies.” Surveillance & Society, vol. 3, no. 2/3, 2005, pp. 222-239, https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v3i2/3.3503.

Mallan, K. Secrets, Lies and Children’s Fiction. Palgrave, 2013. 

Moylan Tom, Baccolini Raffaella. “Introduction. Dystopia and histories.” Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination, edited by Moylan, Tom, Baccolini, first name, Routledge, 2003, pp. 1-12.

Moylan, Tom. “‘The moment is here…and it’s important’” State, Agency, and Dystopia in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Antartica and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Telling.” Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination, edited by Moylan, Tom, Baccolini, first name, Routledge, 2003, pp. 1-12.

Ness, Patrick. The Knife of Never Letting Go. Candlewick Press, 2014.

Ostry, Elaine. “On the Brink: The Role of Young Adult Culture in Environmental Degradation.” Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers, edited by Basu, Balaska, et al., Routledge, 2013, pp. 101-117. 

Trites, Roberta Seelinger. Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature. University of Iowa, 1998. 

Wilkie-Stibbs, Christine. “The "Other" Country: Memory, Voices, and Experiences of Colonized Childhoods.” Children's Literary Association Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 3, 2016, pp. 237-259, 10.1353/chq.2006.0055. 

 

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[1]As Moylan (2000) surmises, ‘the dystopia generates its own didactic account in the critical encounter that ensues as the citizen confronts…the contradictions of the society,’ (p. 148).

[2] I have, of course, I have taken inspiration from Trites’s (2010) use of the phrase ‘artist-hero’; however here, it will adopt a different meaning. 

 

[3]I have based my understanding of what a discourse is on Mills, S. The New Critical Idiom: Discourse. Routledge, 1997.

[4] Foucault refers to an ‘enclosure’ as ‘the specification of a place heterogeneous to all others and closed in upon itself (Foucault, Discipline and Punish 141).

[5]The first settlement our protagonists arrive at in their escape from both Prentisstown and Aaron.

[6]“This makes no sense, no sense at all, and everything feels like its starting to slip, like the world is a table tiled on its side and everything on it is tipping over. (…) I am Todd Hewitt, I think to myself but who knows if that’s even true anymore.” (TKNLG 74).

[7] For example, Ben and Callin sacrifice their lives to protect Todd and, as a result, become complicit in Prentisstown’s sin.

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 [JO1]Make this thesis more specific (and not generally applicable to the genre as a whole), to make the connections between their chosen texts much more explicit, and to put my argument in dialogue with extantsecondary criticism. 

 

 [JO2]Reduce use of “might,” “perhaps,” and “seems.”

 [JO3]Add references to references to Mary Hilton and Maria Nikolajeva’s collection Contemporary Adolescent Literature and Culture: The Emergent Adult (Ashgate, 2012). 

 

Refer to secondary criticism referenced on Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy.