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Communication and the Construction of the Ideal in the West

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Communication and the Construction of the Ideal in the West Communication and the Construction of the Ideal in the West by Adriana Dragomir A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto © Copyright by Adriana Dragomir 2011 Communication and the Construction of the Ideal in the West Adriana Dragomir Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto 2011 Abstract This dissertation examines the conceptualization of the ideal society in Western culture in relation to changes in communication modes. The utopian discourse is defined by a concern with the relationship between language and reality. I explore this concern as a reflection of the theoretical disposition invited by changes in communication modes, which are perceived as crises of representation. Plato and Thomas More‟s enlightened communities in the Republic and Utopia reflect comparable idealistic perspectives on education. In my view, this optimism stems from the social reality of growing literacies with the advent of the alphabet and printing, respectively. I contend that these writers are animated by an ethical impulse to teach their readers that language is representation. From the vantage point of this knowledge, each individual may employ language symbolically in order to create and perpetuate a moral and spiritual mode of thought. I argue that the discourse of the ideal is the symbolic expression of humanity‟s engagement with death, the ultimate existential concern made acute by the aspect of historical discontinuity in the crisis of representation. Plato and More exhibit comparable efforts to open to their readers the superior ii space of critical reflexivity which they themselves inhabit. From this conceptual, pre- representational space of conscious choice, language is subjected to achieving spiritual progress. I introduce the concept of post-utopia, which describes a pragmatic moment when the relationship between author and the ideal society is brought into the foreground and reinforced as a way of addressing concerns with textual authority. I examine these developments in Augustine‟s De Civitate Dei, François Rabelais‟s episode of the Abbaye de Thélème in Gargantua, and Francis Bacon‟s New Atlantis. These authors draw on the ideologies of representation inherent in utopian discourse, and position the authorial figure as link between scriptural teleology and history, ensuring spiritual and societal betterment in the textual cultures of late antiquity and early modernity. The figure of the author emerges as a symbol of history and of man‟s ability to assume the limits of the mind and of language. iii Acknowledgments I would never have written this thesis without unwavering support from some incredible individuals. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Julie LeBlanc, who guided my study of representation theory for the past eight years. Her insights helped me define my intellectual affinities and ultimately find my scholarly identity. I am also grateful to her for ever so patiently challenging me to clarify my ideas and expression and for helping me keep a healthy perspective on things throughout the writing process. I extend a special thank you to Professors David Galbraith and Patricia Fleming, who generously lent their extraordinary knowledge and critical thought and gently but firmly guided me through the labyrinths of Western textual culture. They helped me keep my argument rooted in history when my speculative mind would take me into shaky territory. I would like to thank Professors Brian Stock and Thomas Lahusen, who supported my work and provided many valuable suggestions. I owe to Brian Stock my first systematic exploration of Western utopian thought. I am grateful to the Government of Ontario‟s Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities for financial support of my doctoral work in the form of Ontario Graduate Scholarships, to the School of Graduate Studies for generous research and conference grants, and to the professors and administrators of the Centre for Comparative Literature, my intellectual home for nine short years. I was seven and ill with scarlet fever when my mother gave me my first epic to read and got me hooked on books. She took responsibility for it and always encouraged my interest in literature. Passionately and unselfishly she helped me care for my daughter who was born as I was starting to write this thesis. I could not have completed this work without her generous help. Every day, my daughter Antonia forces me to question the authenticity of my scholarly and creative quests. I hope this work will inspire her in her own endeavors. Finally, I would like to thank my husband George Dragomir Turia, uncompromising artist who never fails to practise what he preaches. During our twenty years together he has been an example that circumstances cannot prevent one from being who one is. The other, no less important lesson he taught me is that when in doubt, work. The trials of doctoral studies and raising a family together have only strengthened my love and respect for him. iv Table of Contents Introduction Historicizing Utopia: Communication, Representation, and the Discourse of the Ideal 1 For a Humanistic Approach to Utopia: Culture and Individual in Dialogue 4 From Crisis to Self-Transcendence: The Author of Utopia as Ethical Figure 9 Repeating Histories: Constructing Continuities 15 Chapter 1 Reflexivity and Transcendence: The Symbolic Production of the Ideal 23 1. Crisis: Individual versus Community 25 2. Reality in the Making: Ernst Cassirer‟s Symbolic Ideal 30 3. The Missing Materiality of Cassirer‟s Synthesis. Technology and Reflexivity 35 4. Conceptualizing the Utopian Intermediateness: Reflexivity, Symbol, and Immortality in Plato‟s Republic 40 5. Reading with the Angels: Thomas More‟s Utopia as Exercise in Humility 47 6. Post-utopia: The Authorizing Limits of Language 59 Chapter 2 Representation and Symbolic Knowledge in Plato‟s Republic 72 Krisis: Judgment and Choice 74 1. Plato on Writing: Evaluating Culture 74 2. Interpreting Text, Life: Writing, Difference, Reflexivity 79 3. Creating Krisis: Death, Learning, and the Moral Choice 82 4. Writing and Objectivity: Envisioning the Ideal 87 5. Teaching Prudence: Imitating the Transformative Discourse 90 Interpreting the Republic: The Symbolic Ideal and Critical Thought 96 1. Inviting Critical Thinking: The Absent Author of the Republic 96 2. Crisis and Ethics: Intermediateness and the Transformative Interpretation 98 3. Unveiling Presence: Understanding and Permanence 103 4. The Empowered Interpreter: Symbolic Practice and the Ideal Society 109 Chapter 3 Humble Fictions: Fashioning the Ideal in Thomas More‟s Utopia 118 Protean Man, Perfidious Pride: Crisis 120 1. Interpretation: Building Fictions of Pride 120 2. The Man that Mirrored God: Crisis 123 v 3. Protean Pride: Deconstructing Illusions of Freedom 128 4. Textual Fictions of Power: Shaping Pico‟s Library, Life 133 5. A Time of Glory: Scriptural Interpretation and the Ideal Man 138 6. The Toils of the Word: Writing the Self, Un-writing Friendship 142 7. The Body as „Real‟ Fiction of the Soul 148 Synthesis: Humble Practices, Angelic Man 155 1. Angelic Humility and the Limits of Representation 155 2. Fictions of Illness: Galenic Anatomy and the Purposeful Order 163 3. Fictions of Health: Re-Imagining History 167 4. The Map of Utopia: Memento Mori 174 Chapter 4 Post-utopia: Authorizing Representation in St. Augustine, François Rabelais, and Francis Bacon 181 Augustine‟s Two Cities: The Author as Symbol of Change 183 1. The Heavenly City as Post-Textual Ideal 183 2. A Model of Becoming: Grace and Interpretive Self-authoring 189 3. History as Symbolic Image of Man: Inviting the Will for Grace 195 4. The Limits of Language and the Desire for Grace 200 5. A Rhetoric of Sacrifice: Authorship and the Christian Teleology of History 204 Gargantua: Authoring the Responsible Interpretation 210 1. The Inspired Author and the Responsible Interpreter 210 2. God‟s Helper: Evoking a Revealed Ideal 215 3. The Limits of Language and the Doctrine of Love 218 4. Un-challenging Authority 222 Authorship and Salvation History: Francis Bacon‟s New Atlantis 226 1. The Earthly Ideal Society as Sign of Salvation 226 2. Authorship and the Ideal Society in Early Modern Print Culture 230 3. Scripture, Revelation, and the Authorial Imagination 234 4. Mediating Humility: Language and Contemplation 241 Conclusion Empowering Words: The Universal Core of a Teleology of Expression 248 vi List of Figures Figure 1: The Utopian Alphabet 175 Figure 2: The Map of Utopia by Ambrosius Holbein (1516) 178 Figure 3: The Map of Utopia by Ambrosius Holbein (1518) 179 vii 1 Introduction “the making is a remaking” Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking Historicizing Utopia: Communication, Representation, and the Discourse of the Ideal In his 1973 Utopiques: Jeux d‟espaces, Louis Marin argues that utopia, the self-referential, ambiguous concept meaning both „no-place‟ (from the Greek „outopos‟) and „good place‟ („eutopos‟) consecrated by Thomas More‟s eponymous fiction proposes an equivalence between its referent (“ce dont elle parle, son projet spécifique”) and its codes of emission, reception, and transmission.1 A utopia, he suggests, engages the reader in a game of significations; it invites him to insinuate his own image of the future in the discontinuities of the discourse. For Marin, the concept of utopia mirrors the change in the modes of representation in early modern Europe. It is “liée au livre, au monde du discours comme articulation du monde et de l‟histoire, à l‟imprimerie et aux signes que la Renaissance substitue, dans la visualité, au monde de la parole et de l‟écoute” (92). This perspective is reinforced in De la représentation (1994), where Marin argues that the books mentioned in More‟s text, belonging to both the Old and the New Worlds, are the utopian blind center - the non-place - representing the emerging industrial order.2 1 Louis Marin, Utopiques: Jeux d‟espaces (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1973) 24.
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