Shared-dreaming fiction encodes its era’s political economy, collective versus commercial.

Evidence

In Priest’s novel, a group of researcher-volunteers use a ‘dream projector’ to enter into a shared dream of a (then) future England. Like the dreamsharing addicts we briefly glimpse in one of Inception’s most suggestive scenes, some of the characters in A Dream of Wessex inevitably prefer the simulated environment to the real world, and, unlike Cobb, they choose to stay there. The differences in the way that the concept of shared dreaming is handled in 1977 and 2010 tell us a great deal about the contrasts between social democracy and neoliberalism. While Inception’s dreamsharing technology is – like the internet – a military invention turned into a commercial application, Priest’s shared dream project is government-run. The Wessex dream world is lyrical and languid, still part of the hazy afterglow of 60s psychedelia. It’s all a far cry from Inception’s noise and fury, the mind as a militarised zone. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 521

Categorization

• XREF: The social-democratic versus neoliberal contrast of escapist technology parallels themes in Fisher’s broader hauntology project and the gold-clause/digital economy material. — connects to: Each era’s capitalist dynamics generate a corresponding novelistic form — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 133; Speculation now pervades economic, social, and political life as an imagined collective enactment — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 85; Social and political forces drive the speculative imagination’s history and swings. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 260 (+5 more)
• SEED: Essay angle: how the same speculative premise handled in 1977 and 2010 reveals the shift from public to privatized infrastructure — could extend to other fictional technologies reframed across eras.

Broader Connections

• Each era’s capitalist dynamics generate a corresponding novelistic form #corroborates (0.85) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 133
• Late capitalism makes people identical with their jobs, colonizing sleep and dreams #exemplifies (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1629
• Social and political forces drive the speculative imagination’s history and swings. #expands (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 260
• Capitalism’s temporal and material conditions shape societies’ shared imagined futures #expands (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 158
• Even identical aesthetic features differ in meaning across economic epochs. #corroborates (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 45
• Finance shapes modern societies’ collective myths and imagined communities, not just economies #expands (0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 19
• Speculation now pervades economic, social, and political life as an imagined collective enactment #corroborates (0.70) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 85
• Fictitious capital means finance depends on society’s shared fictions #expands (0.70) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 42