Start Date
26-5-2026 2:45 PM
End Date
26-5-2026 3:00 PM
Description
In dystopian fantasy fiction and the more recent subgenre of hopepunk, representations of food—growing and scavenging it, preparing and eating it—reveal distinct but evolving perspectives on the collapse of human societies facing environmental, political, and economic disasters. As we examine these bodies of literature, contrasts abound. There is never enough food in dystopian fantasy. What is available is bland, repetitive, and dubiously nutritious. Trauma around food is ongoing. Scavenging highlights the anxiety of diminishing resources, while consumption is either solitary and lonely, or shared among small and struggling groups where meals only contribute to abiding grief. In all, food insecurity results from the loss of stable communities and the demise of worlds shaped by dependable abundance. Admittedly, much dystopian fiction is “grimdark” (to use a popular descriptor) in its outlook, even if some of it offers the possibility of eventual societal renewal. Hopepunk pushes beyond the tentatively hopeful to celebrate growth past scarcity and sharing food with the maximum number of people in well-ordered societies that serve a human sensibility to live full and balanced lives in communion with the natural world. Here, commensality has been reborn. Fantasy literature has long held space for readers to process concerns with the unpredictable realities we inhabit. In our focus on food we define two ways this space functions. Dystopian fantasy sounds the warning of privation and isolation in a world fallen apart through misuse, while hopepunk asserts that optimistic visions of a communal, nurturing world provides readers with hope and a goal to work toward.
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Included in
“It’s the End of the World as We Know it” and I feel Hungry: Food in Dystopian and Utopian Fictional Futures
In dystopian fantasy fiction and the more recent subgenre of hopepunk, representations of food—growing and scavenging it, preparing and eating it—reveal distinct but evolving perspectives on the collapse of human societies facing environmental, political, and economic disasters. As we examine these bodies of literature, contrasts abound. There is never enough food in dystopian fantasy. What is available is bland, repetitive, and dubiously nutritious. Trauma around food is ongoing. Scavenging highlights the anxiety of diminishing resources, while consumption is either solitary and lonely, or shared among small and struggling groups where meals only contribute to abiding grief. In all, food insecurity results from the loss of stable communities and the demise of worlds shaped by dependable abundance. Admittedly, much dystopian fiction is “grimdark” (to use a popular descriptor) in its outlook, even if some of it offers the possibility of eventual societal renewal. Hopepunk pushes beyond the tentatively hopeful to celebrate growth past scarcity and sharing food with the maximum number of people in well-ordered societies that serve a human sensibility to live full and balanced lives in communion with the natural world. Here, commensality has been reborn. Fantasy literature has long held space for readers to process concerns with the unpredictable realities we inhabit. In our focus on food we define two ways this space functions. Dystopian fantasy sounds the warning of privation and isolation in a world fallen apart through misuse, while hopepunk asserts that optimistic visions of a communal, nurturing world provides readers with hope and a goal to work toward.