Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0193
Kaveh Hemmat
abstract:Besila is a paradisical setting in the Kushnameh, an early twelfth-century Persian epic that combines the ancient Iranian messianic legend of Kangdez with more recent geographical knowledge, based on travelers' reports, of China and Korea. Besila’s messianic role in the narrative, its antipodal location, and its quasi-fictional status are quintessentially utopian, and yet little is revealed about the society of Besila. The Kushnameh instead emphasizes the means by which paradises are formed, including the rational origins of Besila’s monotheistic creed, organic growth, translatio imperii, travel, and geographical knowledge. The Kushnameh’s vision of universal monotheism anticipates the story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, a later utopia with important connections to the development of Islamic political theory. The case of Besila thus suggests that the early modern genre of utopia has deep roots in the medieval discourse of travel and travelers.
摘要:《库什纳》是一部 12 世纪早期的波斯史诗，它将伊朗古代的康德兹救世主传说与基于旅行者报告的有关中国和朝鲜的最新地理知识结合在一起。贝西拉在叙事中的救世主角色、它的对偶位置以及它的准虚构地位都是乌托邦的典型特征，但对贝西拉的社会却知之甚少。库什纳》反而强调了天堂形成的途径，包括贝西拉一神论信条的理性起源、有机生长、帝国翻译、旅行和地理知识。库什纳的普世一神教愿景预示了后来的乌托邦故事 Hayy ibn Yaqzan，与伊斯兰政治理论的发展有着重要联系。因此，《贝西拉》的案例表明，现代早期的乌托邦体裁深深植根于中世纪的旅行和旅行者话语中。
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Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0210
Chun Liang Lin, Mark Hansley Chua
abstract:This article presents previous attempts to map Utopia, a fictional island in the book Utopia by Thomas More, and proposes another possibility, based on the assumption that Utopia is an enclosed garden on an artificial island that is not flat, but has piedmont slopes of 2.5:1. Our mapping experiment is founded on the Renaissance analogy between the domestication of wild nature, and the civilization of the human beings in More’s enclosed garden; and on the anecdotal similarities between the Inca Empire and Utopia. This approach is not only consistent with the island’s dimensional specifications, which have hampered previous mapping attempts due to their mathematical incompatibility, but it also addresses the educative capacity of utopian life not considered by previous mapping efforts. Utopia, as a result, is to be understood as a series of performative spatial arrangements where the physical and geographical specifications would inform the vernacular life of its inhabitants in the direction of self-enhancement.
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Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0319
Patricia McManus
abstract:To obliterate history from any narrative model, you must flatten that model so that no temporal change is possible. One way to do this is to remove instances of conflict, another is to render conflict perpetual. The latter is the move made by Game of Thrones, a television drama treated here as an antiutopian text, a model of twenty-first century epic fantasy in its surrender not of morality but of historicity.
{"title":"The Shape of Power and of Pain in Game of Thrones","authors":"Patricia McManus","doi":"10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0319","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:To obliterate history from any narrative model, you must flatten that model so that no temporal change is possible. One way to do this is to remove instances of conflict, another is to render conflict perpetual. The latter is the move made by Game of Thrones, a television drama treated here as an antiutopian text, a model of twenty-first century epic fantasy in its surrender not of morality but of historicity.","PeriodicalId":44751,"journal":{"name":"Utopian Studies","volume":"5 1","pages":"319 - 334"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139365977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0257
Rafael Pérez Baquero
abstract:This article engages in the contemporary discussion on utopia by exploring Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez’s philosophy. The fall of the Berlin Wall has led to debates about the “end of history” and to doubts about the possibility of achieving the ideals and values embedded within the Marxist utopia. To deal with this challenge, contemporary scholars have revisited Marxist tradition to recover the hope stemming from utopia. However, these readings have not taken into consideration Sánchez Vázquez’s contribution to this topic. With a view to addressing this omission, this article analyzes philosophical assumptions underlying Sánchez Vázquez’s approach. By exploring his Philosophy of Praxis and by highlighting its anthropological assumptions, this study demonstrates the extent to which his works provide theoretical underpinnings and resources for contesting contemporary discourses on the “end of history” and for recovering utopia after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0335
Lazar Atanasković
abstract:The antiutopian effect of Game of Thrones (GoT) is examined as a form of mass entertainment. The first part of this article approaches GoT from the standpoint of dialectical contradiction between Fantasy and Realism peculiar to GoT’s eclectic nature. The second part puts forward a hypothesis about the social basis of GoT horizons, taking into account the fragmented and niched state of contemporary TV audiences.
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Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0312
Antonis Balasopoulos
abstract:This essay responds to Darko Suvin by focusing on his observations on self hood and personality. Antiutopias are defined as narrative texts framed by fear and anxiety regarding the self-preservation of individuality and by subscription to the principle of relentless struggle for survival amid resource scarcity. The ambiguities that insinuate themselves within this framework include: first, the conflation of “self-preservation” with domination over others; second, the oscillation of self-preservation between a “biopolitical” pole and a “cultural” one. Turning to Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, the article explicates why, in their view, “self- preservation” destroys “the very thing that is to be preserved.” The conclusion involves examining a few literary texts both as instances of the “pleasures of misery” imposed by the antiutopian obsession with “self-preservation,” and—contrastively—as ways of exploring the high cost and risk involved in a utopian transformation of self hood beyond the dictates of “self-preservation.”
{"title":"Antiutopianism, Social Darwinism, and Self-Preservation: Some Reflections","authors":"Antonis Balasopoulos","doi":"10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0312","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This essay responds to Darko Suvin by focusing on his observations on self hood and personality. Antiutopias are defined as narrative texts framed by fear and anxiety regarding the self-preservation of individuality and by subscription to the principle of relentless struggle for survival amid resource scarcity. The ambiguities that insinuate themselves within this framework include: first, the conflation of “self-preservation” with domination over others; second, the oscillation of self-preservation between a “biopolitical” pole and a “cultural” one. Turning to Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, the article explicates why, in their view, “self- preservation” destroys “the very thing that is to be preserved.” The conclusion involves examining a few literary texts both as instances of the “pleasures of misery” imposed by the antiutopian obsession with “self-preservation,” and—contrastively—as ways of exploring the high cost and risk involved in a utopian transformation of self hood beyond the dictates of “self-preservation.”","PeriodicalId":44751,"journal":{"name":"Utopian Studies","volume":"45 1","pages":"312 - 318"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139366087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0273
M. K. Booker
abstract:Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009) is set in twenty-third-century Thailand, in a world in which climate change and the depletion of the oil supply have led to a collapse of the global economic system. Disease and famine are rampant. And yet, in this seemingly postapocalyptic world, there are numerous signs of hope. This text, in fact, contains strong utopian energies, driven partly by the motif of genetic engineering, which suggest the possibility of rebuilding the world in a way that overcomes many of the limitations of the past in terms of the politics of race, gender, and class, but also in terms of more enlightened attitudes toward the relationship between humans and the natural world.
{"title":"A New Expansion: Climate Change, Posthumanism, and the Utopian Dimension in Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl","authors":"M. K. Booker","doi":"10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0273","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009) is set in twenty-third-century Thailand, in a world in which climate change and the depletion of the oil supply have led to a collapse of the global economic system. Disease and famine are rampant. And yet, in this seemingly postapocalyptic world, there are numerous signs of hope. This text, in fact, contains strong utopian energies, driven partly by the motif of genetic engineering, which suggest the possibility of rebuilding the world in a way that overcomes many of the limitations of the past in terms of the politics of race, gender, and class, but also in terms of more enlightened attitudes toward the relationship between humans and the natural world.","PeriodicalId":44751,"journal":{"name":"Utopian Studies","volume":"21 1","pages":"273 - 287"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139365948","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0292
Darko Suvin
abstract:This article refurbishes the view of antiutopianism as the ruling orthodoxy of late-capitalist common sense (pragmatics) and writings plus media (narrative). After a half-century descent into a contemporary neofeudalism (Fascism 2.0), the operation of totalized antiutopianism on utopian narrative genres is powerfully evident in the TV series Game of Thrones, a rigidly Social Darwinist fantasy world, reveling in mass slaughters and presupposing neofeudalism: a black fable for lesioned personalities.
摘要:本文翻新了反乌托邦主义作为晚期资本主义常识（实用主义）和著作加媒体（叙事）的统治正统的观点。在陷入当代新封建主义（法西斯主义 2.0）半个世纪之后，全面反乌托邦主义对乌托邦叙事流派的影响在电视剧《权力的游戏》（Game of Thrones）中得到了有力的体现，该剧是一个僵化的社会达尔文主义幻想世界，以大规模屠杀为乐，并预设了新封建主义：一个针对病态人格的黑色寓言。
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Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.34.2.0174
Justin Nordstrom
abstract:This article focuses on the 1954 short story “Frozen Foods 2000 A.D.,” which predicted that frozen meals and microwave cooking would ensure global cooperation and reduce domestic labor, “emancipating” women and inspiring new technologies. This frozen fantasy both reflects the structure of earlier utopian motifs and challenges their essential arguments, particularly when examined alongside Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel Looking Backward and medieval Cockaigne stories of abundant food and feasting. “Frozen Foods 2000 A.D.” also describes the culinary transformations in the United States in subsequent decades, making it a remarkably prescient utopian text, and its vision of the future was largely (though not completely) realized by the end of the twentieth century. Because frozen meals and kitchen conveniences have proliferated since its publication, “Frozen Foods 2000 A.D.” no longer seems utopian. Instead, American kitchens, and eaters, now view Williams’s futuristic vision as commonplace and expected.
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