Darko Suvin

Introduction to my book Disputing the Deluge, ed. Hugh C. O’Connell, Bloomsbury Academic.

A somewhat autobiographically inclined introduction to a new book of articles and poems 2001-21 is divided into: 1. Words Shaping the World, dealing with art as freedom and knowledge and with a hypothesis about narrative agents; 2. The World Constricting Words and Shapes: facing our epoch of breakdowns polarised between revolutionary change and fascism, freedom means to begin with understanding; that is, refusing obfuscation of our existential antiutopia, the principal imposed but fake political ontology today. It is a major novelty dateable to 2001, its bearers are mainly professional politicians, the State apparatus of violence and its embedded think-tanks, as well as capitalist mass media and careerist intellectuals, all functioning within a Social-Darwinist frame.

Keywords: narration, existential antiutopia, violence, breakdown capitalism