![]() ![]() Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. ![]() Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State’s motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABI- LITY. Publication: issue 4/2024.A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. (The submission of the full articles will be January 2024. Please send your abstracts and short bio to by 15 September 2023. Subjects include: Comparative Literature, Philosophy of Ideas, Utopian Studies, Science Fiction Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Anthropocene Studies. Interdisciplinarity: This special issue features contributions in which philosophy, political thought and literary criticism intersect in multiple ways. just war theory, pacifism, cosmopolitanism) translated into fiction? Which dismissive or affirmative accounts of Eternal Peace exist in literature? In what ways do philosophical treatises avoid the “peace fatigue” frequently found in narrative fiction? Since every variation on Eternal Peace presupposes a set of universally shared values, what are the possibilities to achieve the establishment of such consensus by non-coercive means? Research questions: Individual pieces may address-but are not limited to-the following questions: Does the contrast between prescriptive visions of Eternal Peace and their sobering literary accounts point at our limits of understanding, for existing societies are not quite ready for a world of non-aggression? How are related political philosophies (e.g. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune.” The Controller in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) already knows: “Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. ![]() Especially in dystopian writing, the beneficiaries of Eternal Peace are bound to suffer from oppressive laws and homogenized lifestyles. On the other hand, the joyful prospect of Eternal Peace stands at odds with the experiences of those unlucky protagonists who indeed inhabit a society that has already been harmonized. On the last page of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy (1992–96), for example, Ann describes her new habitat in glowing terms: “Nowhere on this world were people killing each other, nowhere were they desperate for shelter or food, nowhere were they scared for their kids.” Peace has come, finally. One the one hand, the climaxes of science-fiction narratives frequently coincide with a utopian promise. While Eternal Peace represents an elusive but necessary goal in philosophy, speculative fiction evinces a striking ambivalence about its desirability. Meyer) and interspecies relationships (D. In recent years, the focus of peace scenarios has shifted from inter-human affairs to include sustainable forms of coexistence with the planet (J. Bookchin), the installation of a centralized World Government (Zhao Tingyang) and the overcoming of patriarchy (O. Engels), the advent of post-scarcity economics (M. Kant), the “withering away” of the state (F. Its success is attributed to contradictory criteria, including the worldwide installation of republics (I. In philosophy and political thought, the teleological end of history is frequently imagined as a state of Eternal Peace, even if its characteristics vary significantly. Provocatively, this also includes the question why a perennial state of peacefulness might not even be desirable. In the wake of Russia’s prolonged attack on Ukraine, this special issue of World Literature Studies reconsiders theoretical and literary ideas of how peace can be established in the long term. It publishes original, peer-reviewed scholarly articles and book reviews. World Literature Studies is a multilingual open-access scholarly journal, published quarterly by Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences since 1992. CfP Special Issue World Literature Studies ![]()
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