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PeaceNews #2446: Everywhere and nowhere:
utopian possibilities in culture and society
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Gareth Evans explores the intersection of culture and utopian
visions, offering examples and interpretations along the way.
Come, see real flowers of this painful world- Basho
Everywhere and nowhere:
utopian possibilities in culture and society
Gareth Evans
Oscar Wilde famously observed
that he couldnt look at a map
without it present among the
nations, while Sir Thomas More
invented the word with his 1516 treatise
on the ideal society, compounding
Greek words to mean not a place,
literally nowhere.
The small matter of geographical non-existence
didnt stop More however. In
fact it was a prerequisite in his picturing
of the perfect island community. And
ever since that first named outing, utopia
has spread across the world and beyond,
becoming in the process a shorthand for
the dreamed-of settlement, for a territory
free of want and suffering.
Setting the stage
However, labelled or not, utopian aspirations
have galvanised communities,
thinkers and artists across all cultures and
eras: the sense that a better life can be
made by first imagining it is almost hard-wired
into the human psyche.
The earliest example to appear in critic
John Careys informative 1999 anthology
The Faber Book of Utopias, is a fragment,
The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, from the
Egyptian 12th dynasty (1940-1640 BC).
In many ways this and other early
attempts, most notably Platos Republic,
set the ground rules for areas of concern
that must, to a greater or lesser degree, be
resolved so that the utopia proposed has
any chance of conceptual take-up. Material
provision, justice, environmental interaction,
gender relations, sexual activity, the
impact of science and technology, the
nature of leisure, freedom and the relationship
between the individual and the
self, should all be addressed by the utopian
in question.
No surprises here: at once timeless and
contemporary, they are the issues that any
civilisation wrestles with. And it is of course
equally to be expected that the nature of
utopias changes as major social shifts
occur: the seismic upheavals of the Middle
Ages and the Industrial Revolution saw
extensive utopian writings from radical,
millennial groupings and Victorian rationalists respectively. But in Western societies
the Renaissance, Enlightenment,
Romantic Era (the French Revolution in
particular) and the American experiment,
along with the growth of Socialism and
the scientific, social and aesthetic transformations
of the 20th century, have all
informed the visions of their times, opening
up new possibilities and attendant
threats in the paradises proposed.
In a real sense, all the above movements
are utopian in themselves, pioneering
enquiries that offer a new way of seeing,
updated moral frameworks by which to
gauge the question of how to live. They
borrow from, adapt and revise each other
as needed. Similarly, culture generally,
with its remaking of the world individually
or communally, is equally enabled.
Dangers in utopianism
Having lived through the last century
however, we are justifiably sceptical of
overarching impositions. Recent history
is littered with victims of the intention to
deliver an all-too-exclusive perfection on
earth. From the Nazis (Hitlers Mein
Kampf is chillingly utopian) to the Khmer
Rouge, Stalin to American Full Spectrum
Dominance, its painfully clear
that one persons utopia can easily
become anothers hell.
Think only of numerous failed cults:
the greater the dispossession, the more
extreme the urgency of the vision. In such
cases, the dynamic exchange between means
and ends is highly dubious, as the utopian
impulse is tested versus its delivery on
the ground. Its often hazy on process, frequently
requiring a disaster to birth the
new society. Equally significant are the
omissions (from ancient Greece onward
favour has been for the few), the leaps of
faith and sacrifice required: the bigger the
leap, the more severe the strategy.
The utopian/dystopian relation is one
built on the tension between desire and
fear. Most utopias might fail on closer
enquiry but they still offer a positive
incentive to action. The best, however, do
not exclude real people and actual
human nature, with all its doubts and
failings, and do not institute an absolute
system (which ironically needs significant
change to establish it but which then
resists fluid, organic development).
Our personal utopias
What follows therefore is a personal selection
of (mainly contemporary) works in
all media that offer aspirational models
and embody wishful thinking in the
best sense. It ranges beyond formal definitions
to track utopian traces in culture:
messages in bottles, ripe with healing and
encouragement, sent out on difficult seas
into the damaged world.
It focuses on the positive; on believable
(even achievable?) futures and is inevitably
entirely incomplete and partial. Perhaps
what is most enduring about the concept
of utopia is that we all carry a version of
it within us. It is in the striving towards
its realisation that we can become fully
human.
Many of the cultural utopias discussed
might be set in the future but (like the
science-fiction they employ) deal always
with the present; and it is in that attention
on the now, on what can be done in
the current moment, that the finest lesson
of utopia resides.
In George Orwells prophetic 1984,
the beleaguered Winston consoles himself
with the image of a door opening onto a
green hill, his prisoners rag of sky
glimpsed through bars. He feels what we
all perhaps know and what Henry Miller
has described so directly, that the earth
is a paradise, the only one we will ever
know. We will realise it the moment we
open our eyes. We have only to make ourselves
fit to inhabit it.
Art
Dystopianism in art doesnt come much
bigger than Victorian John Martins epic
canvases of apocalyptic collapse. Such
landscapes find their positive correlative
in the grand sublime of the 19th century
North American landscape artists.
Contemporary environmental concerns,
expressed conceptually this time, surface
in Joseph Beuyss seminal work as a
sculptor, teacher and activist. One of the
most important artists of last century, he
is crucial to the work of London social art
collective Platform, whose 20 years of
exploratory urban projects won them the
Schumacher award recently. Its the rural
landscape that walking artists Richard
Long and Hamish Fulton document with
their ephemeral journeys (Fultons latest
exhibition will be reviewed in the next
PN). The light touch is also found in the
contemporary canvases of the Australian
Aborigines, whose dreamtime and songlines
(metaphor made real) are about as
utopian as it gets.
Fiction
All utopias are currently fiction, but some
of the most notable have been written
thus. Yevgeny Zamyatins hugely significant
dystopia We (1920), with its surgical
removal of imagination, raises the ultimate
threat creativity faces. Its the latter
that engages readers directly in Argentinian
Julio Cortazars Hopscotch (1963), a
multi-layered comedy of manners in
which the chapters can be experienced in
effectively any order. This attentive reader
engagement provided the model for Sandinista
cultural policy in Nicaragua.
Meanwhile, Ursula K le Guins beautifully
rendered Always Coming Home
(reprinted 2001) follows in the honourable
tradition of feminist utopias like Charlotte
Perkins Gilmans Herland (1915) and
Marge Piercys Woman on the Edge of Time
(1979), offering an encyclopaedic analysis
of an anarchistic tribal community in the
future Pacific Northwest.
Citywise, Italo Calvinos lyrical Invisible
Cities (1972) engages instead with
dreamlike versions of urban potential,
while Richard Jefferies Victorian After
London (1885) finds green solace in Londons
erasure.
Non-fiction
Marx and Engelss Communist Manifesto is
perhaps the definitive history-changing
example here (while not forgetting the
Bible, Koran and their like, offering final
paradises through the return to a pre-Fall
Eden) and this vital essay underpins the
highly significant and clear-sighted bodies
of work by John Berger and the
Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano: both passionate,
analytical and committed.
Red-green political possibilities are
lucidly and lyrically examined in Jeremy
Seabrook and Trevor Blackwells The Politics
of Hope (1988; see also texts by Murray
Bookchin and Rudolf Bahro).
For highly controversial but essential
thoughts on the long-overdue rights of
animals read philosopher Peter Singer.
Film and television
In Hollywood especially, film seems to be
a medium better suited to the spectacle of
dystopian meltdown. Think of the long
tradition of science-fiction, at once pre-scient
and satirical, from Things to Come to
Songs from the Second Floor via Blade
Runner, Brazil and a clutch of `70s eco-thrillers
like Soylent Green, Silent Running
and Logans Run.
However, positive visions of resistance
often emerge from these and even television
has managed to explore the Gaia theory
in the magnificent anti-nuclear drama
Edge of Darkness. Elsewhere, Armenian
director Sergei Paradjanovs unique portrayal
of his traditional culture in The
Colour of Pomegranates shows the utopian
tendency to revisit a past golden age in the
(timeless) present. More recently, Godfrey
Reggios breathtaking meditations Koyaanisqatsi
and Powaqqatsi take on contemporary
global structures from a deeply considered,
visually startling perspective.
Movements
Explicit cultural practice informs current
activism now in a way unseen since the
mid `60s. From the carnival of the anti-roads
protests via Mayday to Artists
Against the War, art is seen as both tool
and partial solution. The medium is the
message and its not a luxury but a way of
embodying possible futures.
The intentions of these global resistance
networks are of course fundamentally
utopian, but this is perhaps most effectively
realised where need is greatest (the
Brazilian Sim Terra landless movement)
or where culture directly informs theory
and action such as the writings, collected
in Our Word is Our Weapon (2001), by Subcommandante
Marcos for the Zapatistas.
Music
Crossing boundaries through aural pleasure
is a great approach: listen to the
yearning tunes of Romanian Gypsy band
Taraf de Haidouks, singing of the hard
paradise of the open road, if youre
unsure. Jazz in its origins and improvisatory
approach is a thrilling example of
the group and individual working together
for the greater tune.
But music has always offered utopian
transport (from Bach to the Bhundu Boys),
and is unequivocally the most directly
inspiring medium. Anthems provide the
clearest evidence (how about We Shall
Overcome or The Internationale?) but classical
works like Shostakovichs magnificent 7th
siege Symphony also qualify.
Performance and theatre
If, as they claim, drama is conflict, then
paradise is hard to stage: (theatrically)
great when fought for but dead on its dramatic
feet once secured. That said, the `60s
in particular saw an explosion in utopian
performance as rigid censorship structures
crumbled and playwrights like Peter
Handke, David Rudkin, Howard Barker
and Edward Bond have all written prolifically
towards the light while acknowledg-ing
the foundational dark of the times.
Peter Brook is perhaps the worlds most
adventurous director, rigorously investigating
the social uses of theatre, from carpet
shows in Africa to a nine-hour staging
of Hindu epic The Mahabharata. Very differently,
Australian performance artist Stelarc
is working towards a hybrid future, in
which human and machine are intimately
conjoined in harmonious shared purpose.
Poetry
Perhaps the great medium of personal
hope, poetry can also offer radical, communal
encouragement. Major work is pre-served
in the anthologies The Penguin Book
of Socialist Verse (1970), Poetry of the Committed
Individual (1973) and Against Forgetting:
20th Century Poetry of Witness (1993).
Both Shelley and Blake stand out for
their visionary and aesthetically innovative
reading of the revolutionary Romantic
era. Chilean Nobel prize-winner Pablo
Nerudas massive work Canto General
(1950) documented the history of an
entire continent (one especially open to
utopian schemes, as it was perceived to be
a blank slate by arriving Europeans).
Reference
There are 3000 titles listed in British and
American Utopian literature 1516-1985: An
Annotated Chronological Bibliography,
including utopias conceived around lotteries
and genetic manipulation. Michael
Tuckers Dreaming with Open Eyes: the
Shamanic Spirit in 20th Century art and
Culture (1992) is a path-breaking overview
of visionary trends, while This Sacred
Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment (edited
by Roger S Gottlieb, 1996) is a superb
anthology of writings with global reach.
Gareth Evans is a freelance writer, reviewer
and film programmer.
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