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Utopian Philosophy As Literature and Practice

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Utopian Philosophy As Literature and Practice View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Online Repository of Birkbeck Institutional Theses ORBIT - Online Repository of Birkbeck Institutional Theses Enabling Open Access to Birkbecks Research Degree output Etherotopia, an ideal state and a state of mind : utopian philosophy as literature and practice http://bbktheses.da.ulcc.ac.uk/118/ Version: Full Version Citation: Callow, Christos (2015) Etherotopia, an ideal state and a state of mind : utopian philosophy as literature and practice. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London. c 2015 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copyright law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit guide Contact: email 1 Etherotopia, an Ideal State and a State of Mind: Utopian Philosophy as Literature and Practice Christos Callow Birkbeck, University of London PhD 2014 2 I, Christos Callow, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm this has been indicated in my thesis. ------------------------------------------------ 3 Abstract This thesis examines the concept of Etherotopia (which literally translates to ‗ethereal place‘), by which I define the combination of utopian philosophy with certain ideas of individual perfection such as nirvana. The argument is made that the separation of utopian visions into social utopias and individual ones (states and states of mind) is a false dilemma, since a complete utopian theory should include both. In relation to my own utopian writing and as a transition from the critical to the creative part of this thesis, I examine the question of genre in utopian literature and, following from the view that literary genres are subjective and conventional, I argue that utopian literature doesn‘t need to be labelled as a literary genre but rather that it is utopian philosophy in literary form, and therefore philosophical writing. Having argued for the need of a contemporary Etherotopian theory and having discussed the relationship between utopian writing and genre, I proceed to introducing my portfolio of creative writing, a short story collection with the title Etherotopias, which is a series of diverse utopian/dystopian fictions that in some cases expand on the concept of Etherotopia either philosophically or aesthetically, while in other cases provide literary responses to conflicting utopian theories popular in contemporary society and its consumer culture. The collection is therefore a series of arguments and criticisms in the form of stories that range from political and satirical to religious and existential and address social issues as well as utopian and dystopian states of mind. 4 Acknowledgements I would like first of all to thank my parents, Christos and Eftychia, because first of all I was born, which I understand is an essential first step towards studying for a PhD. I am also most grateful to have graduated from the greatest university: the kind of Greek family that one thinks – or should think – of with admiration when one uses the term Greek family. I would like to thank Dr. Caroline Edwards, who has been my supervisor since I began this project at the University of Lincoln and later at Birkbeck, and has always been there not only as a supervisor, but most importantly as a friend. If this project has achieved what it set out to achieve, it is her success as much as it is mine. Also, special thanks to a great thinker and friend, my former tutor Prof. Johan Siebers, who has generously shared his wisdom on all matters utopian and helped me form my own utopian theory. I am honoured to have been a Birkbeck student and would thus like to thank my supervisor Toby Litt who has offered invaluable advice on my writing during my studies at Birkbeck. Finally, I‘m grateful to Prof. Carol Watts and Anthony Shepherd for their support and to Birkbeck‘s School of Arts for being the fantastic place that it is, a small intellectual utopia in a big dystopian city. 5 Contents Introduction 7 Chapter One Etherotopia, or a Country in the Mind 15 Chapter Two Zenre Fiction, or Towards a Zen Literary Theory 30 Writing Utopia Beyond Genre 36 Chapter Three Introduction to Etherotopias, a short story collection 39 Commentary on the first group of stories, ‗States of Mind‘ 43 Portfolio, Part I: ‘States of Mind’ A Boy, Alone 51 Bears 55 Etherotopia 65 The Painter‘s Dream 73 Chapter Four Commentary on the second group of stories, ‗Utopia and Aesthetics‘ 81 Portfolio, Part II: ‘Utopia and Aesthetics’ Cannibal Popular 85 The War of Appearances 88 Martian Arts 94 The Way to Dante 103 Chapter Five Commentary on the third group of stories, ‗The Anti-Utopian Stories‘ 109 Portfolio, Part III: ‘The Anti-Utopian Stories’ Black List Magazine 114 Margaret‘s World 119 6 The Doers 132 Parts of me that aren‘t mine 142 Chapter Six Commentary on the fourth group of stories, ‗Utopian/Dystopian Perspectives‘ 151 Portfolio, Part IV: ‘Utopian/Dystopian Perspectives’ Curiosity is my middle name 156 Karyatis Unbound 159 The Very First Man 164 The Owl 169 Chapter Seven Commentary on the fifth group of stories, ‗Conclusions‘ 178 Portfolio, Part V: ‘Conclusions’ The New Emotion 185 The Brain in Chains 191 The World We Want 201 Phantom Jesus 211 Conclusion 218 Bibliography 222 7 Introduction This thesis, the outcome of a creative writing – and thus a practice-based – research, consists of a short story collection and a series of essays that explore the philosophical ideas and aesthetics of the creative work. I have titled the collection of stories Etherotopias, plural of Etherotopia, a term I coined in the first year of my research, combining the words ‗ethereal‘ and ‗topos‘ (‗place‘). This concept is the central idea of the critical work and also provides a thematic bond for the stories in the collection; it is finally the title of one of the stories. Some of the main questions Etherotopia deals with are the conceivability of utopia, its aesthetics, the application of utopia in everyday life and therefore the utopian theorist‘s responsibility to his or her theory, as well as the possibility (or impossibility) of a ‗local‘ utopia (be it a city, country or planet) within a broader dystopian reality. Etherotopia concerns what I see as an underdeveloped branch of contemporary utopian philosophy; the combination of theories of social perfection and theories of personal perfection; ideal states and ideal states of mind; utopia(s) and nirvana(s). Both utopia and nirvana are, I understand, fairly common terms. However I provide some relevant definitions in the first essay. Here, for the purposes of this introduction, I want to say I am particularly fond of the following approach by Prof. Miriam Eliav-Feldon: ‗A utopia is an invitation to perceive the distance between things as they are and things as they should be‘ and that utopia, since ‗it is an appeal to perfect the social environment, it expresses explicit and implicit criticism of the things as they are.‘1 If these are the two main aspects of utopia (criticising ‗things as they are‘ while imagining ‗how things could be‘), the reader will find that both the creative and the critical writing in this thesis deal with both approaches and therefore examine both Etherotopia and its opposites. In that sense, each of the stories included here functions within the collection as an argument either supporting the Etherotopian perspective or criticising popular utopian ideas that contrast it. By this I mean that my thesis is not a conventional critique of beliefs and worldviews already considered unpopular in contemporary society; this would be, in my view, insufficient motivation to write philosophical fiction. I prefer, in 1 Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Realistic Utopias: The Ideal Imaginary Societies of the Renaissance, 1516 – 1630 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1982), 1. 8 both my creative and critical writing, to address philosophical issues in unconventional, and potentially controversial, ways. I do not claim that the stories, as a collection of fictionalised arguments, form a complete ideology or manifesto. Several of these present utopianism as a work-in- progress and as an inconceivable alternative and are therefore focused not as much on the politics and practicalities of a utopia, but on the process of imagining utopia, its philosophy and aesthetics. In regards to the literary aspect of these stories, there is a balance of humorous and ‗serious‘ stories, different narrative techniques and a mix of genres interconnected to one another, but mainly science fiction and fantasy. Finally, the stories are all in some sense utopian or dystopian fiction, though I am conscious that, in the essays preceding the stories, my definition of utopian literature is the broadest possible one. To clarify this; like a science fiction story is not necessarily about science, many of the utopian stories in the collection are not about utopias, but rather about utopian perspectives of the world; in other words, these are exploring states of mind. Some are even about nirvana or about a Christ or Buddha figure. As to the logic of the stories, in the majority of them – if not in all – the aim is to demonstrate a radical critical thinking where, whatever the result, the action – and this is another element that connects the stories – is always a form of rejection. Often it is the rejection of the idea of ‗here and now‘ presented as an escape to a better planet (elsewhere), a journey to a better time (elsewhen), or an allegorical denial of experience. At other times, it is the collapse of a pseudo-utopian model and a symbol or a personality that represents it.
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