Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.34.1.0137
William James Metcalf
In the field of utopian studies, Lyman Tower Sargent is well known and respected globally. His new book, Rethinking Utopia and Utopianism, is well written, witty, and persuasively argued, reflecting on, and updating, his life’s work. It includes several previously published pieces, such as Sargent’s oft-cited “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited” (1994), along with his current thinking across the broad field of utopian studies.Sargent admits to naiveté when, as a young scholar in the 1960s, he set out to write a “history of utopian literature”—probably thinking it wouldn’t take long! This field, he soon found, ever expands the more one looks. Sargent continues to look for, and discover, examples from around the world—many of which he has made available online in Utopian Literature in English: An Annotated Bibliography from 1516 to the Present.1 But now, at eighty-two years of age, he accepts that this project will require “quite a few lifetimes, lifetimes that are not available to me, so I hope that others will take up these topics” (349).Sargent thinks utopianism is best understood as “social dreaming—the dreams and nightmares that concern the ways in which groups of people arrange their lives and which usually involve a radically different society” (7). Utopia, he points out, “expresses deep-seated needs, desires and hopes” (42). This, he asserts, is a universal phenomenon—part of being human—certainly not confined to the Western Christian tradition, as some scholars have argued.We must be careful, Sargent warns, not to equate utopia with perfection; utopias are about betterment, not perfection. He argues that equating utopia with perfection is a ruse employed “by those opposed to the idea that human beings can bring about significant social change and is intended to undermine that possibility” (323). Sargent argues that all humans “need the idea that a better life is possible” (325) and this is what utopianism provides.As someone who has spent much of my professional life studying intentional communities, I have always recognized that almost all such groups have an underlying utopian impulse. So I came to utopianism research as a subset of intentional communities research. Sargent, on the other hand, sees “communitarianism as a sub-category of utopianism” (85). He acknowledges that intentional community members are “trying to find better ways of living together, making decisions about all important aspects of life, whether it is political, economic, religious, or sexual. . . . They are actually doing with their own lives what literary utopias describe in words” (93). Perhaps our different paths are a bit like asking whether the chicken or egg came first?Sargent quite correctly observes that many intentional community members reject the label of “utopian” because they confuse it with the naïve, and unobtainable notion of perfection—and I have often observed the same. Nevertheless Sargent asserts “that continued utopian thinking is essential
{"title":"Rethinking Utopia and Utopianism","authors":"William James Metcalf","doi":"10.5325/utopianstudies.34.1.0137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.34.1.0137","url":null,"abstract":"In the field of utopian studies, Lyman Tower Sargent is well known and respected globally. His new book, Rethinking Utopia and Utopianism, is well written, witty, and persuasively argued, reflecting on, and updating, his life’s work. It includes several previously published pieces, such as Sargent’s oft-cited “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited” (1994), along with his current thinking across the broad field of utopian studies.Sargent admits to naiveté when, as a young scholar in the 1960s, he set out to write a “history of utopian literature”—probably thinking it wouldn’t take long! This field, he soon found, ever expands the more one looks. Sargent continues to look for, and discover, examples from around the world—many of which he has made available online in Utopian Literature in English: An Annotated Bibliography from 1516 to the Present.1 But now, at eighty-two years of age, he accepts that this project will require “quite a few lifetimes, lifetimes that are not available to me, so I hope that others will take up these topics” (349).Sargent thinks utopianism is best understood as “social dreaming—the dreams and nightmares that concern the ways in which groups of people arrange their lives and which usually involve a radically different society” (7). Utopia, he points out, “expresses deep-seated needs, desires and hopes” (42). This, he asserts, is a universal phenomenon—part of being human—certainly not confined to the Western Christian tradition, as some scholars have argued.We must be careful, Sargent warns, not to equate utopia with perfection; utopias are about betterment, not perfection. He argues that equating utopia with perfection is a ruse employed “by those opposed to the idea that human beings can bring about significant social change and is intended to undermine that possibility” (323). Sargent argues that all humans “need the idea that a better life is possible” (325) and this is what utopianism provides.As someone who has spent much of my professional life studying intentional communities, I have always recognized that almost all such groups have an underlying utopian impulse. So I came to utopianism research as a subset of intentional communities research. Sargent, on the other hand, sees “communitarianism as a sub-category of utopianism” (85). He acknowledges that intentional community members are “trying to find better ways of living together, making decisions about all important aspects of life, whether it is political, economic, religious, or sexual. . . . They are actually doing with their own lives what literary utopias describe in words” (93). Perhaps our different paths are a bit like asking whether the chicken or egg came first?Sargent quite correctly observes that many intentional community members reject the label of “utopian” because they confuse it with the naïve, and unobtainable notion of perfection—and I have often observed the same. Nevertheless Sargent asserts “that continued utopian thinking is essential","PeriodicalId":44751,"journal":{"name":"Utopian Studies","volume":"201 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135533420","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 : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.34.1.0016
Oddvar Holmesland
ABSTRACT Thomas More’s Utopia represents not a pleasurable alternative world, but rather a debate on how to make life more pleasurable in the actual world. It involves a tussling with questions of truth in an age in which unifying transcendental answers were giving way to more instrumental solutions as demanded by the growth of mercantile city-states. This article traces the function of pleasure in Utopia as a dialectically mediating agent on the recognition that pleasure is available only in compromised form. For More, solutions must be sought through the mind’s capacity to form agreeable relations out of contradictions. It implies assembling meaning from the perspectives Utopia provides, and a constant balancing and rebalancing process in search of an overall point of view that may give pleasure.
{"title":"Dialectics of Pleasure in Thomas More’s <i>Utopia</i>","authors":"Oddvar Holmesland","doi":"10.5325/utopianstudies.34.1.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.34.1.0016","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Thomas More’s Utopia represents not a pleasurable alternative world, but rather a debate on how to make life more pleasurable in the actual world. It involves a tussling with questions of truth in an age in which unifying transcendental answers were giving way to more instrumental solutions as demanded by the growth of mercantile city-states. This article traces the function of pleasure in Utopia as a dialectically mediating agent on the recognition that pleasure is available only in compromised form. For More, solutions must be sought through the mind’s capacity to form agreeable relations out of contradictions. It implies assembling meaning from the perspectives Utopia provides, and a constant balancing and rebalancing process in search of an overall point of view that may give pleasure.","PeriodicalId":44751,"journal":{"name":"Utopian Studies","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135533425","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 : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.34.1.0100
John Welsh
ABSTRACT Though the prospect seems a million miles away, interest in the end of capitalism has been as longstanding as it is utopian, but do we really understand what we mean when we speak of the end of capitalism? Maybe we have things the wrong way round, and in our understandable preoccupation with the future we fail to appreciate how prospective ends often lie in the past. While the expression might refer to practices, experiences, and real social relations, capitalism is a conceptualization and as such is a synthetic product of the understanding. Between abstraction and the concrete, could the end of capitalism lurk somewhere in this activity? Might it be something we can experience but never know? Is our expectation of paradigmatic transformation counterproductive? Is there a role for utopias and utopianism in this, and if so what might that be?
{"title":"Why Historians Will End Capitalism","authors":"John Welsh","doi":"10.5325/utopianstudies.34.1.0100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.34.1.0100","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Though the prospect seems a million miles away, interest in the end of capitalism has been as longstanding as it is utopian, but do we really understand what we mean when we speak of the end of capitalism? Maybe we have things the wrong way round, and in our understandable preoccupation with the future we fail to appreciate how prospective ends often lie in the past. While the expression might refer to practices, experiences, and real social relations, capitalism is a conceptualization and as such is a synthetic product of the understanding. Between abstraction and the concrete, could the end of capitalism lurk somewhere in this activity? Might it be something we can experience but never know? Is our expectation of paradigmatic transformation counterproductive? Is there a role for utopias and utopianism in this, and if so what might that be?","PeriodicalId":44751,"journal":{"name":"Utopian Studies","volume":"127 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135533422","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 : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0460
Tamara Prosic
abstract:Christianity is a religion with deep utopian undercurrents that find their articulation in narratives about a utopian past, a dystopian present and a utopian future. The natural world is also part of this utopian trend, most prominently in the form of the lost Garden of Eden. While both Western and Eastern Orthodox Christianity recognize nature as part of this past utopia, their views regarding its role in the dystopian present, the future utopian condition as well as the path toward it, significantly differ, leading to quite different responses to the current ecological crisis. For Western Christianity, ecological questions are a matter of ethics, while for the Eastern Orthodox they are an ontological issue. Utilizing Bloch's ideas about "educated hope" and the distinction between abstract and concrete utopias, the article discusses these different positions and their possibility to change believers' attitudes toward nature and align their behavior with that of environmentalism and ecology.
{"title":"Utopian/Dystopian Dialectics in Christian Responses to the Ecological Crisis: Between Ethics and Ontology","authors":"Tamara Prosic","doi":"10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0460","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0460","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Christianity is a religion with deep utopian undercurrents that find their articulation in narratives about a utopian past, a dystopian present and a utopian future. The natural world is also part of this utopian trend, most prominently in the form of the lost Garden of Eden. While both Western and Eastern Orthodox Christianity recognize nature as part of this past utopia, their views regarding its role in the dystopian present, the future utopian condition as well as the path toward it, significantly differ, leading to quite different responses to the current ecological crisis. For Western Christianity, ecological questions are a matter of ethics, while for the Eastern Orthodox they are an ontological issue. Utilizing Bloch's ideas about \"educated hope\" and the distinction between abstract and concrete utopias, the article discusses these different positions and their possibility to change believers' attitudes toward nature and align their behavior with that of environmentalism and ecology.","PeriodicalId":44751,"journal":{"name":"Utopian Studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"460 - 478"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43180851","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 : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0519
Claire P. Curtis
{"title":"Epistemological Warfare and Hope in Critical Dystopia","authors":"Claire P. Curtis","doi":"10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0519","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0519","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44751,"journal":{"name":"Utopian Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43541627","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 : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0528
Yoko Nagase
{"title":"Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth (review)","authors":"Yoko Nagase","doi":"10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0528","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0528","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44751,"journal":{"name":"Utopian Studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"528 - 530"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42134434","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 : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0479
M. Jiménez
abstract:This article analyzes Claude McKay's last novel, Amiable with Big Teeth—recently discovered in 2017—as a piece of postcolonial utopianist writing. The novel participates in an important debate on the role of utopias and utopian writing as ideological mechanisms that perpetuate colonial structures such as the nation-state. Through a critique of the Popular Front project in the black community of 1930s Harlem, Amiable with Big Teeth vindicates local knowledges and the assessment of the specific conditions of the present—ever-changing and transformable—in the development of strategies for resistance. As such, the spiritual role of Ethiopia for the community depicted, rather than constitute yet another national utopia, fulfills the same role as it did for the Jamaican Rastafarians: it is a mechanism for group self-assertion and the promotion of self-esteem that subaltern communities need in order to achieve full agency.
{"title":"Postcolonial Hope and Agency as a Contestation of Ideological Utopias in Claude McKay's: Amiable with Big Teeth","authors":"M. Jiménez","doi":"10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0479","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0479","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article analyzes Claude McKay's last novel, Amiable with Big Teeth—recently discovered in 2017—as a piece of postcolonial utopianist writing. The novel participates in an important debate on the role of utopias and utopian writing as ideological mechanisms that perpetuate colonial structures such as the nation-state. Through a critique of the Popular Front project in the black community of 1930s Harlem, Amiable with Big Teeth vindicates local knowledges and the assessment of the specific conditions of the present—ever-changing and transformable—in the development of strategies for resistance. As such, the spiritual role of Ethiopia for the community depicted, rather than constitute yet another national utopia, fulfills the same role as it did for the Jamaican Rastafarians: it is a mechanism for group self-assertion and the promotion of self-esteem that subaltern communities need in order to achieve full agency.","PeriodicalId":44751,"journal":{"name":"Utopian Studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"479 - 494"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48281907","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 : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0424
Stephanie Weber
abstract:This article revisits the utopian fiction of German science-fiction writer and poet Paul Scheerbart, considering the place of race and gender in his fantastical glass architectural spaces. This is primarily done through a reading of clothing and decoration in these texts, elements that are often explicitly mentioned in relation to women and people of color. Historical context concerning modernist paradigms, metaphorical interpretations of architectural glass, the connection between clothing and architecture, and the place of women in the Werkbund provides a framework that serves to extrapolate the significance of some of Scheerbart's narrative elements, demonstrating the ways Scheerbart's philosophies both aligned with and departed from the modernist trends that were gaining force during his career. His constant self-contradiction, humor, and absurdist plots, however, undermine any notion that Scheerbart's fiction should be understood as straightforward polemics, and serve to complicate his position within the philosophical traditions he has been aligned with.
{"title":"Gender, Race, Color, Glass: A Reading of Clothing and Decoration in Paul Scheerbart's Glass Utopias","authors":"Stephanie Weber","doi":"10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0424","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0424","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article revisits the utopian fiction of German science-fiction writer and poet Paul Scheerbart, considering the place of race and gender in his fantastical glass architectural spaces. This is primarily done through a reading of clothing and decoration in these texts, elements that are often explicitly mentioned in relation to women and people of color. Historical context concerning modernist paradigms, metaphorical interpretations of architectural glass, the connection between clothing and architecture, and the place of women in the Werkbund provides a framework that serves to extrapolate the significance of some of Scheerbart's narrative elements, demonstrating the ways Scheerbart's philosophies both aligned with and departed from the modernist trends that were gaining force during his career. His constant self-contradiction, humor, and absurdist plots, however, undermine any notion that Scheerbart's fiction should be understood as straightforward polemics, and serve to complicate his position within the philosophical traditions he has been aligned with.","PeriodicalId":44751,"journal":{"name":"Utopian Studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"424 - 446"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47191947","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 : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0447
V. Burgmann, Andrew Milner
abstract:Marjorie Barnard (1897–1987) and Flora Eldershaw (1897–1956) were prolific Australian authors who co-wrote, under the pseudonym "M. Barnard Eldershaw," five novels and four works of nonfiction published between 1929 and 1947. Their final collaboration, a future fiction entitled Tomorrow and Tomorrow, first appeared in Melbourne in 1947 and was reissued by the London feminist publisher Virago in 1983. Lyman Tower Sargent's bibliography of Australian utopian fiction describes the novel thus: "Dystopia. Public opinion sampling used to limit liberty." This is a reasonable enough shorthand description of the novel's frame narrative, set in the "Tenth Commune" located somewhere in what is now the Riverina district on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, at some time in the twenty-fourth century. This article will argue, however, that the Tenth Commune is closer to a flawed eutopia than an outright dystopia; and that the novel's truly dystopian content lies in its core narrative, Knarf's novelistic account of mid-twentieth century Australia, which culminates in a quasi-apocalyptic destruction by fire of the city of Sydney. The extraordinary violence of this account will be contrasted to the essentially nonviolent character of the Tenth Commune and both will be situated in relation to Barnard's growing involvement in the pacifist Peace Pledge Union.
{"title":"Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Yesterday: Eutopia, Dystopia and Violence in Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw's Tomorrow and Tomorrow","authors":"V. Burgmann, Andrew Milner","doi":"10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0447","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Marjorie Barnard (1897–1987) and Flora Eldershaw (1897–1956) were prolific Australian authors who co-wrote, under the pseudonym \"M. Barnard Eldershaw,\" five novels and four works of nonfiction published between 1929 and 1947. Their final collaboration, a future fiction entitled Tomorrow and Tomorrow, first appeared in Melbourne in 1947 and was reissued by the London feminist publisher Virago in 1983. Lyman Tower Sargent's bibliography of Australian utopian fiction describes the novel thus: \"Dystopia. Public opinion sampling used to limit liberty.\" This is a reasonable enough shorthand description of the novel's frame narrative, set in the \"Tenth Commune\" located somewhere in what is now the Riverina district on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, at some time in the twenty-fourth century. This article will argue, however, that the Tenth Commune is closer to a flawed eutopia than an outright dystopia; and that the novel's truly dystopian content lies in its core narrative, Knarf's novelistic account of mid-twentieth century Australia, which culminates in a quasi-apocalyptic destruction by fire of the city of Sydney. The extraordinary violence of this account will be contrasted to the essentially nonviolent character of the Tenth Commune and both will be situated in relation to Barnard's growing involvement in the pacifist Peace Pledge Union.","PeriodicalId":44751,"journal":{"name":"Utopian Studies","volume":"33 1","pages":"447 - 459"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47316940","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}
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