DOCSLIB.ORG

UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title After the 'Post-Sixties': A Cultural History of Utopia in the United States Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/283035c5 Author Lane, Madeline Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ AFTER THE ‘POST-SIXTIES’: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF UTOPIA IN THE UNITED STATES A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in LITERATURE by Madeline Lane March 2016 The Dissertation of Madeline Lane is approved: ____________________________________ Professor Wlad Godzich, chair ____________________________________ Professor Christopher Leigh Connery ____________________________________ Professor Robert Sean Wilson _____________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Table of Contents List of Figures ……………………………………………………………………… iv Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………. v Acknowledgments and Dedication ………………………………………………… vi Introduction: Toward a Theory of Utopia at the End of the Post-60s …………….... 1 Part One: Periodizing Anti-Utopianism …………………………………………… 26 Chapter One: Failed Utopia and the Post-60s in Boyle’s Drop City ............ 31 Chapter Two: “There is no use pretending, now”: Reading Le Guin’s 1970s Critical Utopias Against Anti-Utopianism ………………………………… 57 Chapter Three: Finding Utopia in the Dystopian Turn: Punk Literary Utopias in the Long 1980s …………………………………………………………. 81 Part Two: Of Utopia and Recuperation: The Cultural and Spatial Imagination of the American Tech Industry ………………………………………………………….. 130 Chapter Four: “We Owe It All to the Hippies”: Undoing the Post-60s in the Techno-Utopian 1990s …………………………………………………... 136 Chapter Five: False Utopias of Silicon Valley ………………………….. 179 Part Three: Utopia as the Idea of Post-Capitalism ………………………………. 213 Chapter Six: The End of Capitalism in ‘Post-Occupy’ Dystopian Films .. 220 Chapter Seven: Notes on the Spatial Imagination of Contemporary Struggles …………………………………………………………………………… 261 Conclusion: ‘Utopia’ After Occupy …………………………………………….. 289 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………….. 304 iii List of Figures Figure 1 – Sex Pistols ……………………………………………………………… 90 Figure 2 – Mad Men 1 …………………………………………………………… 131 Figure 3 – Mad Men 2 …………………………………………………………… 134 Figure 4 – Floating City Plan ……………………………………………………. 184 Figure 5 – Googleplex 1 ………………………………………………………… 192 Figure 6 – Googleplex 2 ……………………………………………………….... 194 Figure 7 – Googleplex 3 ………………………………………………………… 198 Figure 8 – Google Bus ………………………………………………………….. 210 Figure 9 – Dawn of the Planet of the Apes ……………………………………... 224 Figure 10 – Cosmopolis ………………………………………………………… 226 Figure 11 – The Dark Knight 1 …………………………………………………. 231 Figure 12 – The Dark Knight 2 …………………………………………………. 232 Figure 13 – The Dark Knight 3 …………………………………………………. 238 Figure 14 – Snowpiercer 1 ……………………………………………………… 244 Figure 15 – Snowpiercer 2 ……………………………………………………… 248 Figure 16 – Mad Max: Fury Road 1 ……………………………………………. 250 Figure 17 – Mad Max: Fury Road 2 ……………………………………………. 251 Figure 18 – Mad Max: Fury Road 3 ……………………………………………. 254 Figure 19 – The Road ………………………………………………………….. 258 Figure 20 – Oakland Commune 1 ……………………………………………… 292 Figure 21 – Oakland Commune 2 ……………………………………………… 297 iv Abstract: After the ‘Post-Sixties’: A Cultural History in Utopia, Madeline Lane After the ‘Post-Sixties’: A Cultural History of Utopia in the United States is an historical inquiry into the cultures of utopian thought and practice. Consisting of three multi-chapter sections, this cultural history unfolds as an account of utopian, anti- utopian, and dystopian imagination through different periodizations. Each section attempts to extend Fredric Jameson’s 1984 essay “Periodizing the 60s” to a history of the present period, developing a historical framework for understanding the politics of utopia. The last section deals with utopia and dystopia as cultural tendencies in the historical imagination of the 2007-2008 financial crisis and the global explosion of social movements and uprisings that extended from the Movement of Squares in the North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of the Mediterranean, to the Occupy Wall Street encampments in the United States. The first section builds toward this account of the contemporary period, through a series of analyses of literature, film, subcultures, music, architectures, and historical phenomena that engage with communalist, feminist, punk, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist articulations of ‘utopia.’ The second section examines the recuperation of countercultural utopianism in post-1960s history of tech corporations and creative industries in the United States. In constructing a periodization of the end of the post-sixties, this cultural history considers various shifts and mutations in the political imaginary of neoliberalism, and takes up utopia as an epistemological problematic of contemporary global capitalism. The project concludes tentatively and with futurity, insisting on the correspondence between utopian imagination, historical experience, and revolutionary possibility. vi “NO ONE WAY WORKS, it will take all of us shoving at the thing from all sides to bring it down.” – Diane DiPrima, Revolutionary Letter #8 Acknowledgements and Dedication My research and pursuit of this project was nurtured by the supervision of my committee members, Wlad Godzich, Chris Connery, and Rob Sean Wilson, whose guidance will stay with me for many years to come. I want to also thank professors Hunter Bivens, Vilashini Coopan, Susan Gillman, Donna Haraway, Dee Hibbert- Jones, G.S. Sahota, and Dick Terdiman, each of whom played a key part in the development of my work. None of this would have been possible without the tireless encouragement and commitment of my colleagues Johanna Isaacson and Kenan Sharpe. I also want to thank Maya Andrea Gonzalez and Jeb Purucker, for their generosity and time in helping me to refine my ideas and politicize my thinking over the course of so many years and shared experiences. Marija Cetinic, Lisa Curran, Dylan Davis, Kendra Dority, Justin Hogg, Louis-Georges Schwartz, and Nicole Trigg are among the many friends whose support has kept me both motivated and reflexive about the process. I would not have been able to pursue this project without the love and labor of my partner, Kyle. My father, George, and my mother and step-father, Laura and Eric, are wonderful and loving grandparents who have given me the time and space to complete my dissertation within the university’s time-frame. My last acknowledgement is my dedication – to my daughter, the possibilist, and to my late friend, a utopian killed by capitalist realism. For Tuli Zinnia & Chitty vi Introduction Toward a Theory of Utopia at the End of the Post-60s “Sometimes I think the conditions of daily life, of everyday oppressions, of survival, not to mention the temporary pleasures accessible to most of us, render much of our imagination inert. We are constantly putting out fires, responding to emergencies, finding temporary refuge, all of which make it difficult to see anything other than the present… When movements have been unable to clear the clouds, it has been the poets – no matter the medium – who have succeeded in imagining the color of the sky, in rendering the kinds of dreams and futures social movements are capable of producing. Knowing the color of the sky is far more important than counting the clouds.” – Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination “The purpose of a thought-experiment [is] not to predict the future… but to describe reality, the present world.” – Ursula K. Le Guin, introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness The following work draws out a history of ‘utopia,’ as a critical dimension to the cultural imagination since the end of the 1960s. According to a certain periodization of political foreclosure and neoliberal capitalism, the end of the 1960s marks a juncture of waning utopian imagination – an outmoding of utopia that maps onto the end of grand narratives pronounced by Jean-Francois Lyotard as the conditions of postmodernity. The “end of the 60s,” as Fredric Jameson suggests at the height of this foreclosure in 1986, “will be characterized by an effort, on a world scale, to proletarianize all those unbound social forces which gave the 60s their energy, by an extension of class struggle [into] the farthest reaches of the globe,” in addition to “the most minute configurations of local institutions (such as the university system).” (Jameson, “Periodizing” 208) It is through such a critique of the ‘post-60s’ paradigm that the outmoding of utopia may be reassessed and historicized 1 in terms of the cultural recuperation of the 1960s. However, the political stakes of this periodization have changed in recent years – more specifically, it seems possible to articulate a history of utopia positioned after this ‘end of the 60s.’ The cultural moment of this end of the post-60s – for which the encampments of Occupy Wall Street in 2011 are only a fleeting interlude – represents a shift in utopian imagination stimulated by a juncture of economic crisis and global recession. This is the long 2011, stretching from the brink of financial crisis in late 2007 to the insurrections that continue to proliferate on a global scale, in various mutations. In the United States, 2012 was dominated by political confusion and melancholia within radical
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Libertarian Marxism Mao-Spontex Open Marxism Popular Assembly Sovereign Citizen Movement Spontaneism Sui Iuris
    Autonomist Marxist Theory and Practice in the Current Crisis Brian Marks1 University of Arizona School of Geography and Development [email protected] Abstract Autonomist Marxism is a political tendency premised on the autonomy of the proletariat. Working class autonomy is manifested in the self-activity of the working class independent of formal organizations and representations, the multiplicity of forms that struggles take, and the role of class composition in shaping the overall balance of power in capitalist societies, not least in the relationship of class struggles to the character of capitalist crises. Class composition analysis is applied here to narrate the recent history of capitalism leading up to the current crisis, giving particular attention to China and the United States. A global wave of struggles in the mid-2000s was constituitive of the kinds of working class responses to the crisis that unfolded in 2008-10. The circulation of those struggles and resultant trends of recomposition and/or decomposition are argued to be important factors in the balance of political forces across the varied geography of the present crisis. The whirlwind of crises and the autonomist perspective The whirlwind of crises (Marks, 2010) that swept the world in 2008, financial panic upon food crisis upon energy shock upon inflationary spiral, receded temporarily only to surge forward again, leaving us in a turbulent world, full of possibility and peril. Is this the end of Neoliberalism or its retrenchment? A new 1 Published under the Creative Commons licence: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works Autonomist Marxist Theory and Practice in the Current Crisis 468 New Deal or a new Great Depression? The end of American hegemony or the rise of an “imperialism with Chinese characteristics?” Or all of those at once? This paper brings the political tendency known as autonomist Marxism (H.
    [Show full text]
  • Contemporary Art Magazine Issue # Sixteen December | January Twothousandnine Spedizione in A.P
    contemporary art magazine issue # sixteen december | january twothousandnine Spedizione in a.p. -70% _ DCB Milano NOVEMBER TO JANUARY, 2009 KAREN KILIMNIK NOVEMBER TO JANUARY, 2009 WadeGUYTON BLURRY CatherineSULLIVAN in collaboration with Sean Griffin, Dylan Skybrook and Kunle Afolayan Triangle of Need VibekeTANDBERG The hamburger turns in my stomach and I throw up on you. RENOIR Liquid hamburger. Then I hit you. After that we are both out of words. January - February 2009 DEBUSSY URS FISCHER GALERIE EVA PRESENHUBER WWW.PRESENHUBER.COM TEL: +41 (0) 43 444 70 50 / FAX: +41 (0) 43 444 70 60 LIMMATSTRASSE 270, P.O.BOX 1517, CH–8031 ZURICH GALLERY HOURS: TUE-FR 12-6, SA 11-5 DOUG AITKEN, EMMANUELLE ANTILLE, MONIKA BAER, MARTIN BOYCE, ANGELA BULLOCH, VALENTIN CARRON, VERNE DAWSON, TRISHA DONNELLY, MARIA EICHHORN, URS FISCHER, PETER FISCHLI/DAVID WEISS, SYLVIE FLEURY, LIAM GILLICK, DOUGLAS GORDON, MARK HANDFORTH, CANDIDA HÖFER, KAREN KILIMNIK, ANDREW LORD, HUGO MARKL, RICHARD PRINCE, GERWALD ROCKENSCHAUB, TIM ROLLINS AND K.O.S., UGO RONDINONE, DIETER ROTH, EVA ROTHSCHILD, JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC SCHNYDER, STEVEN SHEARER, JOSH SMITH, BEAT STREULI, FRANZ WEST, SUE WILLIAMS DOUBLESTANDARDS.NET 1012_MOUSSE_AD_Dec2008.indd 1 28.11.2008 16:55:12 Uhr Galleria Emi Fontana MICHAEL SMITH Viale Bligny 42 20136 Milano Opening 17 January 2009 T. +39 0258322237 18 January - 28 February F. +39 0258306855 [email protected] www.galleriaemifontana.com Photo General Idea, 1981 David Lamelas, The Violent Tapes of 1975, 1975 - courtesy: Galerie Kienzie & GmpH, Berlin L’allarme è generale. Iper e sovraproduzione, scialo e vacche grasse si sono tra- sformati di colpo in inflazione, deflazione e stagflazione.
    [Show full text]
  • You Are Not Welcome Among Us: Pirates and the State
    International Journal of Communication 9(2015), 890–908 1932–8036/20150005 You Are Not Welcome Among Us: Pirates and the State JESSICA L. BEYER University of Washington, USA FENWICK MCKELVEY1 Concordia University, Canada In a historical review focused on digital piracy, we explore the relationship between hacker politics and the state. We distinguish between two core aspects of piracy—the challenge to property rights and the challenge to state power—and argue that digital piracy should be considered more broadly as a challenge to the authority of the state. We trace generations of peer-to-peer networking, showing that digital piracy is a key component in the development of a political platform that advocates for a set of ideals grounded in collaborative culture, nonhierarchical organization, and a reliance on the network. We assert that this politics expresses itself in a philosophy that was formed together with the development of the state-evading forms of communication that perpetuate unmanageable networks. Keywords: pirates, information politics, intellectual property, state networks Introduction Digital piracy is most frequently framed as a challenge to property rights or as theft. This framing is not incorrect, but it overemphasizes intellectual property regimes and, in doing so, underemphasizes the broader political challenge posed by digital pirates. In fact, digital pirates and broader “hacker culture” are part of a political challenge to the state, as well as a challenge to property rights regimes. This challenge is articulated in terms of contributory culture, in contrast to the commodification and enclosures of capitalist culture; as nonhierarchical, in contrast to the strict hierarchies of the modern state; and as faith in the potential of a seemingly uncontrollable communication technology that makes all of this possible, in contrast to a fear of the potential chaos that unsurveilled spaces can bring.
    [Show full text]
  • Dissertação Final Corrigida
    Universidade Estadual Paulista “Julio de Mesquita Filho” Instituto de Artes ALINE PIRES LUZ A ARTE PSICODÉLICA E SUA RELAÇÃO COM A ARTE CONTEMPORÂNEA NORTE-AMERICANA E INGLESA DOS ANOS 1960: uma dissolução de fronteiras São Paulo 2014 ALINE PIRES LUZ A ARTE PSICODÉLICA E SUA RELAÇÃO COM A ARTE CONTEMPORÂNEA NORTE-AMERICANA E INGLESA DOS ANOS 1960: uma dissolução de fronteiras Dissertação apresentada ao curso de Pós- Graduação em Artes, do Instituto de Artes da Universidade Estadual Paulista – UNESP, como requisito parcial para obtenção do título de Mestre em Artes Visuais, Área de concentração: História da Arte. Linha de Pesquisa: Abordagens Teóricas, Históricas e Culturais da Arte. Orientador: Prof. Dr. Omar Khouri. São Paulo 2014 ALINE PIRES LUZ A ARTE PSICODÉLICA E SUA RELAÇÃO COM A ARTE CONTEMPORÂNEA NORTE-AMERICANA E INGLESA DOS ANOS 1960: uma dissolução de fronteiras Dissertação aprovada como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Artes Visuais no curso de Pós-Graduação em Artes, do Instituto de Artes da Universidades Estadual Paulista – UNESP, com área de concentração em História da Arte, pela seguinte banca examinadora: __________________________________________ Prof. Dr. Omar Khouri Instituto de Artes (UNESP) – Orientador. __________________________________________ Prof. Dr. Sérgio Mauro Romagnolo Instituto de Artes (UNESP) __________________________________________ Dr. Júlio César Mendonça Pontifícia Universidade Católica – PUC/SP São Paulo, 10 de Junho de 2014 RESUMO Tem-se por objetivo situar a produção de arte psicodélica vinculada ao movimento de contracultura da década de 1960, em relação à chamada arte contemporânea, que se iniciava no mesmo período e que pode ser tomada como uma arte que se deu no âmbito mainstream , por circular nas principais galerias, museus e fazer parte da História da Arte.
    [Show full text]
  • Life Under the Jolly Roger
    7. Bibliography Acker, Kathy. Pussy, King of the Pirates. New York: Grove Press, 1996. Agamben, Giorgi. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Originally published as Homo sacer: Il potere sovrado e la nuda vita. Torino: Einaudi, 1995. Ali, Tariq. Pirates of the Caribbean. London/New York: Verso, 2006. Anderson, John L. “Piracy and World History: An Economic Perspective on Maritime Predation.” In Bandits at Sea, edited by C. R. Pennell, 82–106. New York: New York University Press, 2001. Anonymous. Evasion. Atlanta: CrimethInc., 2001. Anonymous. “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death,” Do or Die, Issue 8, 1999. Quoted from www.eco-action.org/dod/no8/pirate.html. Apestegui, Cruz. Pirates in the Caribbean: Buccaneers, Privateers, Freebooters and Filibusters 1493–1720. Translated by Richard Lewis Rees. London: Conway Maritime Press, 2002. Originally published as Piratas en el Caribe: Corsarios, filibusteros y bucaneros, 1493–1700. Barcelona: Lunwerg, 2000. Appleby, John C. “Women and Piracy in Ireland: From Gráinne O’Malley to Anne Bonny.” In Bandits at Sea, edited by C. R. Pennell, 283–298. New York: New York University Press, 2001. Baer, Joel. Pirates. Stroud: Gloucestershire 2007. Bark, Trevor. “Victory of the Wreckers.” Mayday: Magazine for Anarchist/ Libertarian Ideas and Action no. 1 (Winter 07/08): 16–18. 188 Life Under the Jolly Roger Barnes, Colin, Geof Mercer and Tom Shakespeare. Exploring Disability: A Sociological Introduction, second edition. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2002. Basso, Ellen B. “The Status of Carib Ethnology.” InCarib-Speaking Indians: Culture, Society and Language.
    [Show full text]
  • Objects in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia
    Cercles 22 (2012) ANIMAL, VEGETABLE OR MINERAL? OBJECTS IN TOM STOPPARD’S ARCADIA SUSAN BLATTÈS Université Stendhal—Grenoble 3 The simplicity of the single set in Arcadia1 with its rather austere furniture, bare floor and uncurtained windows has been pointed out by critics, notably in comparison with some of Stoppard’s earlier work. This relatively timeless set provides, on one level, an unchanging backdrop for the play’s multiple complexities in terms of plot, ideas and temporal structure. However we should not conclude that the set plays a secondary role in the play since the mysteries at the centre of the plot can only be solved here and with this particular group of characters. Furthermore, I would like to suggest that the on-stage objects play a similarly vital role by gradually transforming our first impressions and contributing to the multi-layered meaning of the play. In his study on the theatre from a phenomenological perspective, Bert O. States writes: “Theater is the medium, par excellence, that consumes the real in its realest forms […] Its permanent spectacle is the parade of objects and processes in transit from environment to imagery” [STATES 1985 : 40]. This paper will look at some of the parading or paraded objects in Arcadia. The objects are many and various, as can be seen in the list provided in the Samuel French acting edition (along with lists of lighting and sound effects). We will see that there are not only many different objects, but also that each object can be called upon to assume different functions at different moments, hence the rather playful question in the title of this paper (an allusion to the popular game “Twenty Questions” in which the identity of an object has to be guessed), suggesting we consider the objects as a kind of challenge to the spectator, who is set the task of identifying and interpreting them.
    [Show full text]
  • Anarcho-Surrealism in Chicago
    44 1 ANARCHO-SURREALISM IN CHICAGO SELECTED TEXTS DREAMS OF ARSON & THE ARSON OF DREAMS: 3 SURREALISM IN ‘68 Don LaCross THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF WORK 19 Penelope Rosemont DISOBEDIENCE: THE ANTIDOTE FOR MISERABLISM 22 Penelope Rosemont MUTUAL ACQUIESCENCE OR MUTUAL AID? 26 Ron Sakolsky ILL WILL EDITIONS • ill-will-editions.tumblr.com 2 43 AK Press, 2010, p. 193. [22] Laurance Labadie, “On Competition” in Enemies of Society: An Anthology of Individualist and Egoist Thought (Ardent Press, San Francisco, 2011) p. 249. The underpinnings of Labadie’s point of view, which are similar to those of many other authors featured in this seminal volume, are based on the assumption that communitarian forms of mutual aid do not necessarily lead to individual emancipation. Rather, from this perspective, their actual practice involves the inherent danger of creating an even more insidious form of servitude based upon a herd mentality that crushes individuality in the name of mutuality, even when their practitioners intend or claim to respect individual freedom as an anarchist principle. [23] The Invisible Committee. The Coming Insurrection. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2009. [24] Anonymous. “Taking Communion at the End of History” in Politics is not a Banana: The Journal of Vulgar Discourse. Institute for Experimental Freedom, 2009, p. 70. [25] Anonymous. Desert. St. Kilda: Stac an Armin Press, 2011, p 7. [26] Ibid, p 68. [27] James C. Scott. The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. [28] PM. Bolo Bolo. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 1995, pp 58–60. [29] Richard Day.
    [Show full text]
  • The Paris Diary of Albert Brisbane, American Fourierist
    Syracuse University SURFACE The Courier Libraries 1997 Dreams and Expectations: The Paris Diary of Albert Brisbane, American Fourierist Abigail Mellen Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/libassoc Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Mellen, Abigail. "Dreams and Expectations: The Paris Diary of Albert Brisbane, American Fourierist," The Courier 1997: 195-122. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Libraries at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Courier by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ASSOCIATES COURIER VOLUME XXXII· 1997 SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ASSOCIATES COURIER VOLUME XXXII 1997 Ivan Mestrovic in Syracuse, 1947-1955 By David Tatham, Professor ofFine Arts 5 Syracuse University In 1947 Chancellor William P. Tolley brought the great Croatian sculptor to Syracuse University as artist-in-residence and professor ofsculpture. Tatham discusses the his­ torical antecedents and the significance, for Mdtrovic and the University, ofthat eight-and-a-half-year association. Declaration ofIndependence: Mary Colum as Autobiographer By Sanford Sternlicht, Professor ofEnglish 25 Syracuse University Sternlicht describes the struggles ofMary Colum, as a woman and a writer, to achieve equality in the male-dominated literary worlds ofIreland and America. A CharlesJackson Diptych ByJohn W Crowley, Professor ofEnglish 35 Syracuse University In writings about homosexuality and alcoholism, CharlesJackson, author ofThe Lost TtVeekend, seems to have drawn on an experience he had as a freshman at Syracuse University. Mter discussingJackson's troubled life, Crowley introduces Marty Mann, founder ofthe National Council on Alcoholism. Among her papers Crowley found a CharlesJackson teleplay, about an alcoholic woman, that is here published for the first time.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Introduction It Is My Goal in This Paper to Offer a Strategy For
    Three Archetypes for the Clarification Christopher Yorke Of Utopian Theorizing University of Glasgow Introduction It is my goal in this paper to offer a strategy for translating universal statements about utopia into particular statements. This is accomplished by drawing out their implicit, temporally embedded, points of reference. Universal statements of the kind I find troublesome are those of the form ‘Utopia is x’, where ‘x’ can be anything from ‘the receding horizon’ to ‘the nation of the virtuous’. To such statements, I want to put the questions: ‘Which utopias?’; ‘In what sense?’; and ‘When was that, is that, or will that be, the case for utopias?’ Through an exploration of these lines of questioning, I arrive at three archetypes of utopian theorizing which serve to provide the answers: namely, utopian historicism, utopian presentism, and utopian futurism. The employment of these archetypes temporally grounds statements about utopia in the past, present, or future, and thus forces discussion of discrete particulars instead of abstract universals with no meaningful referents. Given the vague manner in which the term ‘utopia’ is employed in discourse—whether academic or non-academic—confusion frequently, and rightly, ensues. There are various possible sources for this confusion, the first of which is the sheer volume and wide variety of socio-political schemes that have been regarded as utopian, by utopian theorists, historians, or authors of fiction. Bibliographers of utopian literature (such as Lyman Tower Sargent) face the onerous task of sorting out those visions of other worlds that belong in the utopian canon from those that do not. However, utopian bibliographies generally err on the side of inclusiveness, and a sufficient range and number of utopias remain in the realm of discourse to make the practice of distinguishing a utopia from a non-utopia (or even a dystopia) challenging at best and baffling at worst.
    [Show full text]
  • Sos Political Science & Public Administration M.A.Political Science
    Sos Political science & Public administration M.A.Political Science II Sem Political Philosophy:Mordan Political Thought, Theory & contemporary Ideologies(201) UNIT-IV Topic Name-Utopian Socialism What is utopian society? • A utopia is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens.The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia. • Utopia focuses on equality in economics, government and justice, though by no means exclusively, with the method and structure of proposed implementation varying based on ideology.According to Lyman Tower SargentSargent argues that utopia's nature is inherently contradictory, because societies are not homogenous and have desires which conflict and therefore cannot simultaneously be satisfied. • The term utopia was created from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island society in the south Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South America Who started utopian socialism? • Charles Fourier was a French socialist who lived from 1772 until 1837 and is credited with being an early Utopian Socialist similar to Robert Owen. He wrote several works related to his socialist ideas which centered on his main idea for society: small communities based on cooperation Definition of utopian socialism • socialism based on a belief that social ownership of the means of production can be achieved by voluntary and peaceful surrender of their holdings by propertied groups What is the goal of utopian societies? • The aim of a utopian society is to promote the highest quality of living possible. The word 'utopia' was coined by the English philosopher, Sir Thomas More, in his 1516 book, Utopia, which is about a fictional island community.
    [Show full text]
  • ARQUITECTURA E AUTONOMIA EXPERIMENTAÇÃO NA PERIURBANIDADE António Coxito
    ARQUITECTURA E AUTONOMIA EXPERIMENTAÇÃO NA PERIURBANIDADE António Coxito Tese apresentada à Universidade de Évora para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Arquitectura ORIENTADORES: Professor Doutor João Soares Professor Doutor Joaquim Moreno Professor Doutor João Mendes Ribeiro ÉVORA, JANEIRO 2016 INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGAÇÃO E FORMAÇÃO AVANÇADA ARQUITECTURA E AUTONOMIA EXPERIMENTAÇÃO NA PERIURBANIDADE António Coxito Tese apresentada à Universidade de Évora para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Arquitectura ORIENTADORES: Professor Doutor João Soares Professor Doutor Joaquim Moreno Professor Doutor João Mendes Ribeiro ÉVORA, JANEIRO 2016 INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGAÇÃO E FORMAÇÃO AVANÇADA DEDICATÓRIA Para a Luísa, o plano onde me desloco, suficientemente inclinado para cultivar a imponderabilidade. AGRADECIMENTOS Ao arquitecto João Soares, pela confiança depositada na razão de ser da minha dúvida. Pelas incansáveis sessões de acompanhamento onde foi feita a sugestão subliminar de referências pecaminosas que se revelariam radicais. Mas também pela definição de limites. Ao arquitecto Joaquim Moreno, consciência sempre presente do fascínio e responsabilidade de um trabalho de investigação. Particularmente, pela informação disponibilizada para o enquadramento das utopias americanas e da sua counter[european]culture. Ao doutor Jorge Rivera, pelas expressões de apreensão sobre as questões epistemológicas, que levaram ao seu acerto e rigor. Ao arquitecto João Mendes Ribeiro, pelas chamadas de atenção à forma do documento como meio de comunicação inteligível do conhecimento. Ao Luís Coutinho e à Graça Passos, que me receberam na Herdade da Tojeira e me proporcionaram as condições logísticas necessárias para desenvolver a minha investigação através da acção. Ao Domingos, ao Zé Gato, ao Lopes e ao Miguel Gomes, pelo apoio muscular e anímico durante a experimentação.
    [Show full text]
  • History and Vision in Byron, the Shelleys, and Keats Timothy Ruppert
    Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 2008 "Is Not the Past All Shadow?": History and Vision in Byron, the Shelleys, and Keats Timothy Ruppert Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Ruppert, T. (2008). "Is Not the Past All Shadow?": History and Vision in Byron, the Shelleys, and Keats (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/1132 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “IS NOT THE PAST ALL SHADOW?”: HISTORY AND VISION IN BYRON, THE SHELLEYS, AND KEATS A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Timothy Ruppert March 2008 Copyright by Timothy Ruppert 2008 “IS NOT THE PAST ALL SHADOW?”: HISTORY AND VISION IN BYRON, THE SHELLEYS, AND KEATS By Timothy Ruppert Approved March 25, 2008 _____________________________ _____________________________ Daniel P. Watkins, Ph.D. Jean E. Hunter , Ph.D. Professor of English Professor of History (Dissertation Director) (Committee Member) _____________________________ _____________________________ Albert C. Labriola, Ph.D. Magali Cornier Michael, Ph.D. Professor of English Professor of English (Committee Member) (Chair, Department of English) _____________________________ Albert C. Labriola, Ph.D. Dean, McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Professor of English iii ABSTRACT “IS NOT THE PAST ALL SHADOW?”: HISTORY AND VISION IN BYRON, THE SHELLEYS, AND KEATS By Timothy Ruppert March 2008 Dissertation Supervised by Professor Daniel P.
    [Show full text]