In canonical utopias and dystopias, romantic love and deep emotional connection are either discouraged or strongly prohibited. Examples range from Plato’s Republic in the fourth century BC, which bans romantic and familial relationships to enhance one’s loyalty to the state, to Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), which fosters promiscuity and technological procreation, to Orwell’s 1984 (1949), which punishes those who engage in passionate sexual relationships. The same aversion to love, both between partners and between parents and children, can be found in young adult dystopias, such as Lauren Oliver’s Delirium trilogy (2011–2013). Although The Lobster (2015, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos) is not the sole counterexample, it is among the rare dystopian narratives in which romantic love is forced on individuals. In the film, single and divorced people are placed in a “Hotel” for a limited amount of time, during which they have to find a romantic partner. If they fail to do so, they are turned into an animal of their choice. The residents must not masturbate but are exposed to daily sexual stimulation by the Hotel staff, as well as to social propaganda on the benefits of partnerships. By using Foucault’s theory of biopolitics and administered sexuality, the article aims to disclose the practices used to achieve romantic coupledom in The Lobster as a biopolitical dystopian mechanism that forces people to conform to an abstract yet merciless social system or literally dehumanizes them by transforming them into animals.
Uredništvo časopisa Anafora donijelo je 13. svibnja 2026. odluku o povlačenju sljedećeg članka: Novkinić, Sandra. “Women’s Voices in Contemporary Irish Theatre: Postfeminist and Ethical Issues in Marina Carr’s Marble and Nancy Harris’ No Romance.” Anafora, vol. IX, no. 1, 2022, pp. 45–61. https://doi.org/10.29162/ANAFORA.v9i1.3 Nakon zaprimljene prijave prof. dr. sc. Márije Kurdi, profesorice emerite Sveučilišta u Pečuhu te nakon provedene istrage, Uredništvo je utvrdilo da članak sadržava znatne dijelove teksta preuzete iz ranije objavljene publikacije prof. dr. sc. Márije Kurdi bez citiranja i bez navođenja izvora u bibliografiji: Kurdi, Mária. “Postfeminism and Ethical Issues in Post-Celtic Tiger Irish Plays by Women,” The Palgrave Handbook of Irish Theatre and Performance, edited by Eamonn Jordan and Eric Weitz, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 799–817. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58588-2 Dr. sc. Sandra Novkinić suglasna je s povlačenjem članka. Tijekom uredničkog postupka provedenog 2022. godine program za detekciju nije utvrdio podudarnosti jer izvorna publikacija nije bila dostupna na mreži. Uredništvo izražava žaljenje zbog nastale situacije i upućuje ispriku prof. dr. sc. Máriji Kurdi, profesorici emeriti, i čitateljima časopisa Anafora. Tekst članka ostat će mrežno dostupan, ali jasno označen kao povučen. Osijek, 28. svibnja 2026. prof. dr. sc. Ružica Pšihistal, glavna urednica u ime Uredništva časopisa Anafora Filozofski fakultet u Osijeku
As one of the most famous fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, "Snow White" continues to provide inspiration for contemporary authors across genres and media. In 2012, Rupert Sanders's Snow White and the Huntsman pitted the protagonist against her evil stepmother who drains the life out of young women to preserve her own beauty. Most recently, Marc Webb's live-action Disneys' Snow White revolves around the princess's fight against an exploitative queen who uses her subjects to gain military power and monetary profit. This paper aims to determine how both adaptations of the fairy tale delineate different types of biopolitical exploitations. After establishing the Foucauldian theoretical context of docility, which results in both overt violence and in discursive domination, the paper will turn to Snow White and the Huntsman and situate it within the fairy tale trope of a beauty contest. In Ravenna, the evil queen in this film, this trope converges with the biopower she has over her subjects, resulting in murders of women whose essence she steals. The violence of Snow White (2025) lies in the Evil Queen's reign: the once thriving kingdom becomes grim as she discursively turns people docile and self-centred. The paper will thus show that both movies cast light on how the villains use biopolitical strategies-one a woman ready to kill others to preserve her status in the (patriarchal) society, and the other a ruler who sacrifices the wellbeing of her people for her own gain.
The American Dream is one of the most enduring myths in American history, politics, culture, and fiction. Its hypothetical promises of upward mobility, comfortable life, wealth, economic independence, respectable job, equality, and home ownership have offered almost everyone a fair chance to succeed in the United States. As any dream, the American Dream must be regularly reexamined, even questioned, to ensure at least the illusion of its viability for the people and nation it serves. Such a reexamination occurs in Marsha Norman’s play ‘night, Mother (1982), where the sustainability of domestic felicity, unnegotiable social equality, and the pursuit of material wealth as symbolic incarnations of the American Dream myth are challenged by being turned into minus devices that lead to the breakdown of the American nuclear family. This paper aims to question the American Dream myth in Marsha Norman’s play ‘night, Mother through the lens of Marina Katnić-Bakaršić’s stylistics of drama discourse (2013) to show that different stylistic strategies are used to create various aspects of the unsustainable American Dream, as well as to emphasize the possible impact of their textual meaning on the depiction of problems arising from the individual–society–American Dream interrelationship.
The article examines Sandra Newman’s Julia (2023) with particular attention to its engagement with the conventions of young adult (YA) dystopian fiction and its strategic use of intertextuality. While the novel is fundamentally a feminist retelling of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), the article argues that it also draws extensively on developments within YA dystopias over the past seven decades, especially in its portrayal of the intertwined coming-of-age trajectories of its two protagonists, Julia and Vicky. The analysis further highlights the novel’s allusions to canonical works such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and James Joyce’s Ulysses. These intertexts—each offering depictions of women shaped by male authors—complicate the novel’s feminist project: by invoking and reframing them, Newman both critiques the patriarchal literary canon and positions Julia within a broader lineage of narratives concerned with the constraints imposed on women. Finally, the article identifies a biblical layer that offers a distinctive solution to the central dystopian problem of hope, suggesting forgiveness and love as potential antidotes to the forms of damnation totalitarian systems attempt to impose on their subjects.
