A cidade do Futuro: Neoliberalismo, Movimento Punk e Distopia

Abstract

The cities imagined in cyberpunk dystopias were not born out of nowhere. They are the fruit of a time, the turn of the 1970s to the 1980s. And they had as their nurturers the economic crisis of western capitalism and the neoliberal methods of overcoming it — implemented by the economic-political-social primer of leaders such as Margareth Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. However, its roots originated in the Punk Movement. The rebellion of young punks of the London’s street was a mixture of revolt and resistance to destructive policies that aimed the welfare state. Initially recognized for your violence and attacks to status quo, the punk become being incorporated by art, especially music and literature, but also by fashion. Knowing the historical processes related to the History of Cities can help us understand how a society managed to develop. Likewise, it allows us to understand who were excluded in its construction and why. Literature, on the other hand, can help us understand how people perceived such a construction. When we seek the imaginary of cities in dystopias, we enter into the fears and nightmares and the ways these would be if they took the form of the worst possible future. This work weaves together History and Literature to look at imagined cities and the fate of real cities.