Utopianism

1516

  good  no  Plato’s The Republic (Politeia) 4th c. BC Golden Age myths: Hesiod, Works and Days (7 th c. BC)

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. (Isaiah 2:4)

fairy tales, Cokayne, Wonderland, Schlaraffenland Pieter Brueghel the Elder, "The Land of Cockaigne," 1567

Ernst Bloch ( ) The Principle of Hope (written from 1938 till 1950s) utopia as part of human nature

utopian thought: tendency to think in alternatives utopia is innate to man (wishing nature of man – fundamental aspect of being human: to measure life ‘as it is’ by a life ’as it should be’)

Utopianism communities (utopian practice) ideologies (social theory) literary representations

Fátima Vieira: The concept of utopia ( 1) the content of the imagined society (opposition to present) (2) the literary form (3) the function - blueprint utopianism (4) desire for a better life (attitude - hope) dynamism of social sciences In Gregory Claeys (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature. CUP, 2010.

utopian societies (real / fictional) monasticism hippies, eco-villages communism? nazism? Robert Owen ( ): New Harmony (Indiana)

HP2 The Mirror of Erised Albus Dumbledore: "Let me explain. The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help?" Harry Potter: "It shows us what we want… whatever we want…" Albus Dumbledore: "Yes and no. It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts.„

Utopia as a literary genre journey – guided tour – nonexistent place or time – device of displacement - isolation dynamic by essence yet as a construction often static model as frozen image focuses on everyday life as well as economic, political and social questions

the other world: (ironic) counterpart of our own not about a journey (or the future) (not reality but possibility) More: dialogue + descriptive fiction later: action – more complex plot → novel Exemplary utopian pattern conventions of travel literature correspondance to empirical (extratextual) reality boundary between reality and fiction

Literary utopias 4 th c. BCPlato, The Republic 1516 Thomas More, Utopia 1627 Francis Bacon, New Atlantis 1726 Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels 1895 H. G. Wells, The Time Machine 1924 Evgeny Zamyatin, We 1932 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World ca. 1935Sándor Szathmári: A Voyage to Kazohinia 1949 George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four 1962 Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

Paralysis of utopian imagination in 20th c. disillusionment rejection of utopianism: anti-utopia dystopia flourishes POMO: rejection of grand narratives

Utopia - dystopia Contrast concepts getting their meaning and significance from their mutual differences Or: anti-utopia parasitical to utopia (copy, negative response) ”Utopia carried the function of anti-utopia as well: it presented the writer’s world negatively, as an anti- utopia, to which utopia is the constructive positive response” Kumar, Krishan. Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times. Oxford and Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1987, 124.

Utopianism functions like a microscope: by first isolating then magnifying aspects of existing, non- utopian societies allegedly needing drastic improvements, it enables us to see more clearly their political, economic, cultural and psychological mainstreams. Segal, Howard. Utopias. A Brief History from Ancient Writings to Virtual Communities. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012 (xi)