Pere Gallardo-Torrano
Pere.gallardo@urv.cat
Universitat Rovira i Virgili
The body as utopia: Gattaca, by Andrew Niccol (1997)
Utopian texts have always boasted a wide variety of landscapes. Whether supposedly real or deliberately imaginary, whether traceable on earthly maps or floating across the universe, they have always attempted to chart believable loci for social experimentation.

Throughout the history of utopian writing the only limits have been those set by the imagination of its practitioners. However, in 1997 Andrew Niccol's film Gattaca took a step forward and suggested that while it is true that there exists an external social landscape directly related to the happiness of the individual, the limits of utopia may also overlap with those of the domesticated, tailor-made human body. The idea, which faintly echoes Brave New World, reappears in Gattaca with full-fledged vigour as it reproduces the battle of individual happiness and social welfare in an unexpected battleground: the human body.

Lisa Garforth
School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds, UK.
L.Garforth@leeds.ac.uk
Footprints and futures: utopia and environmental discourse since the 1970s
Climate change is an increasingly visible issue in public, policy and media debate. As we attempt to come to terms with its implications, the discourse of carbon footprinting is becoming more ubiquitous and popular, shaping the ways in which we think about social-natural relationships and social futures.

In this paper, I outline three successive hegemonic discourses which have framed 'the environmental problem' since the 1970s, and consider the utopian possibilities for a better future with nature that each engenders. The emergence of post-war political environmentalism was closely bound up with the rhetoric of 'the limits to growth', which plotted a stark binary choice between apocalypse and utopia. By the mid-80s, 'sustainable development' had largely supplanted the notion of environmental limits. The idea of sustainability systematically disaggregated the limits discourse's opposition between exponential industrial growth and the planet's biophysical limits. It enabled the discursive and policy construction of a story in which continued economic and social growth could be reconciled with a greener and more ethical future, introducing a processual or incremental light green utopianism which left little cultural space for the imagination of radically alternative social/natural futures.
The narrative of carbon footprinting, originally applied at the national level, is now increasingly articulated in terms of lifestyle, offering strategies for reducing personal and household carbon use. The imagination of green alternatives is focused ever more tightly and insistently on the (consuming) body and in the domestic sphere. Does the discursive framework of carbon footprinting offer any utopian possibilities?

Vincent Geoghegan
Queen's University, Belfast
Email: v.geoghegan@qub.ac.uk
Hope, Utopia and Religion
Ernst Bloch's The Principle of Hope is rightly seen as a classic work of utopian thought. Yet the concept of 'hope' is by no means a self-evident synonym for the 'utopian'. Although both concepts imply desire, and some notion of a thing to be desired, 'hope' is frequently deployed in extremis when options are closing, the chances of success are lessening, and the thing desired is of surpassing, indeed visceral, importance. It is the very last line of defence, as in the inscription at the gates of Hell in Dante's Inferno: 'abandon hope all ye who enter here'. In this sense it is doing a different type of work to most understandings of the concept 'utopian'. Not surprisingly, given religion's concern with 'limit experiences', hope has a rich religious pedigree, and it is perhaps no coincidence that Ernst Bloch, who considered the religious sphere to embody some of the deepest aspirations of humanity, should be so attracted to this concept. The paper will therefore seek to explore the relationship between hope and utopia through an analysis of religious discourse, and specifically relate this to the recent 'post-secular' turn in contemporary philosophy and political theory.
Keywords: Hope, Utopia, Religion

Sarah Meny-Gibert
MA student, Department of Sociology
University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
smenygibert@telkomsa.net
Utopia's ambiguity: a case study of utopianism in the Communist Party of South Africa (1921-1950)
My paper is concerned with the nature of utopianism in the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), both the form and content of the vision, and its function. The CPSA was established in 1921 and disbanded following the Suppression of Communism Act in 1950. The CPSA's utopianism was influenced by a modernist discourse of Marxism, characterised by a strong confidence in the realisation of a socialist future, and further shaped by the political landscape of South Africa, and the influence of the Communist International.

Utopianism played a positive role in the CPSA: I show that it was a critical tool, and a mobilising and sustaining force. I also suggest that utopianism in the CPSA revealed a destructive side, which I explore via two themes in the Party's history: the 'Bolshevisation' or purging of the CPSA in the 1930s under the directive of the Communist International, and the CPSA's often blind loyalty to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union become the embodiment of the socialist utopia for the CPSA, which generated a profound tension within the Party when the reach of Stalin's purges stretched to South African shores.

An exploration of the ambiguity of utopia is the central theoretical contribution of my research. Utopianism in the CPSA was ambiguous in that it was both a positive and (at certain times in its history) a destructive force. I explore the notion that utopia is an ambiguous presence in society more generally, but claim that utopia is a constitutive and generally desirable element of social reality.
Keywords: function (of utopia), ambiguity (of utopia), Communist Party of South Africa

Kevin Gillan
City University (London)
Kevin.gillan.1@city.ac.uk
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Carissa Honeywell
University of Sheffield
c.honeywell@shef.ac.uk
Anarchist thought, direct action: the theory and practice of prefigurative utopia
This paper first explores the role of utopia in Twentieth-Century Anglo-American anarchist thought. We highlight a spirit of impatience towards the realisation of radical ideals, embodied in anarchists' incorporation of utopian traditions. In this sense, we argue, utopianism continues to operate in political thought through anticipatory themes which reject the deferral of change. Anarchist thinkers assert the immanence of desirable social forms in existing social behaviour and emphasise congruity between means and ends in strategies for political change. They thereby develop a prefigurative ethic: action in the present must embody its goals for the future. This prefigurative notion of utopia has proved popular within recent protest against economic globalisation and the war on terror. We further specify the notion as developed within everyday political action. We highlight a sophisticated approach to symbolism through which direct action targets a synecdoche wherein one element of society is taken simultaneously as representative of a system, and a real target for political pressure. Typically informed by directly democratic decision making, direct action raises the possibility of exploring the limitations that occur when theory is brought to action. The paper utilises both theoretical and empirical materials to analyse the prefigurative nature of utopia in both anarchist thought and the practices of contemporary direct action. There emerges a view of adaptation of ideas within particular political contexts that contain novel elements, yet retain a distinctively anarchist view of utopia.
Keywords: Anarchism; direct action; utopia

Virginia A. Griffiths
Adult Education, Elverum, Norway
e-mail: vagriff@online.no
Utopianism, Literacy and Liberation: Paulo Freire's Dialogical Pedagogy, Conscientization and Political Action
I aim to examine the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire as an emancipatory project rooted in utopian thinking. I will address the relationship between utopian thought, literary utopias and eutopian projects – utopia in practice in the real world. I will first discuss how utopianism functions in contemporary political discourses, potentially contributing to social and political transformations. Then, I will investigate Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy: its foundations in hope, its processes and applications in adult literacy projects from a utopian perspective. The radical democratic aspects of Freire's pedagogy, with its dialogical approach to emancipatory learning, will be discussed through contemporary utopianism's occupation with discursive democratic praxis, autonomy, solidarity and collective political action. The process of conscientization, or radical politicization, introduced in Pedagogy of the Oppressed and central to Freire's critical pedagogy, is a process of critical analysis and intellectual discovery achieved through dialogue between equals, aimed at the empowerment and mobilization of oppressed peoples to action toward a more just society. For Freire, utopia is a fundamental element in emancipatory projects. I will conclude by analyzing some of the implications of Freire's utopian thinking as a guide toward social justice in a globalized world.
Keywords: political utopianism, liberation pedagogy, emancipatory projects

Philip Hawkins
Somerset College of Art and Design
Annphil2@aol.com
Henri Lefebvre's Radical Romanticism: Lived Time in Art and Architecture
This essay will introduce the originality of Lefebvre's radical romanticism. It presents a set of ideas about the production of lived time and the centrality of creativity and dimensionality – or of art and architecture - in the generation of social change. Lefebvre's ideas about lived time are reconsidered from a range of his writings. This includes the Dadaists, the Surrealists, references to the Cobra group, the Situationists, and Constant's Architecture. References are made to an original text by Lefebvre, and not frequently discussed in the Literature, called Introduction to Modernity. In this text he discusses the relevance of a New Romanticism. Fundamentally, the scope and forms in art and architecture with which to contribute to the production of lived time is the framework of this paper. Lefebvre's ideas bring together agency, practice and social context. His meta-theoretical contributions explore the connections of theory and practice. Themes such as the everyday and creativity are central to lived time. In contrast to Lefebvre's ideas about space, Lived time also includes the relationship of the past, the present and the future. Lived time is described neither as an essence nor a totality, and its utopian dimensons are developed out of the everyday and the present. In this sense aspects of agency and of designs - or formations - are central. Qualitative and formative aspects of lived time are therefore important to discuss and will be explored. Finally the article introduces some theoretical limitations about lived time and art. This relates specifically to attempts by Lefebvre to develop a socio-aesthetic dimension. It thereby also limits in a few specific cases the meta-theoretical scope of Lefebvre's radical romantic reach.
Keywords: Lived time, radical romanticism, Art/Architecture

Rachel Hann
University of Leeds,
email: pcrnh@leeds.ac.uk
The Theatre as a Utopian Cathedral
My specific research area is Utopian Theatre Architecture of the 1920's and 1930's, using three-dimensional computer visualisations in order to further develop my understanding of a structure/space in support of my Ph.D study. Applying digital technologies to theatre research is an emerging and exciting field of work. My own interest centres on exploring the documentation process involved in creating three-dimensional visualisations of unrealised utopian theatre designs. This paper will focus on the work of Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958), an American industrial designer who is accredited with being the first to apply aerodynamics to industrial design. Bel Geddes employed a then ground braking approach to American theatre design, attempting to establish a unity within the performance space, focusing on the theatre event as a democratic centre for social communion.Within the paper I shall discuss my research on developing a free space and discuss how I have applied it to the architectural work of Bel Geddes. A space is free when it is removed from the context of its surroundings, placing it on another level. Much like a cathedral within the Catholic Church transports you from the world of man to a small piece of heaven when entering through its arches. A free space enables the artist and spectator to share in a communion of minds, equally sharing experiences and emotions. It is outside of the normal conventions of theatre, here is a space where anything and everyone is equal, a member of a collective experience.

Naobumi Hijikata
Chuo University, Tokyo (Emeritus Professor)
naohij@tamacc.chuo-u.ac.jp
Utopianism, Utilitarianism and William Thompson
William Thompson was an Irish landowner in the nineteenth century, who was later known to be a Ricardian Socialist. He was celebrated by Jeremy Bentham for his ideas on Irish independence, and kept a close relationship with him that resulted for Thompson to stay at Bentham's house for several months. Right after his stay at the Bentham's, Thompson published his main utilitarian writings such as An Inquiry into the Principle of the Distribution of Wealth most conducive to Human Happiness (1824). Although Thompson was known to have read the works of French Enlightenment philosophers, such as Condillac, Condorcet, Diderot, and at same time, also familiarized himself with the works of Utopian Socialists, as Saint-Simon and Fourier, this period in fact saw a major shift in Thompson's idea towards Utilitarianism. Criticizing James Mill's An Essay on Government (1820), Thompson, however, became one of the earliest feminists through co-operation with Anna Wheeler. He then parted from the Benthamite group when he published his remarkable book on the early history of feminism, Appeal of One–Half the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretension of the Other Half, Men (1825).
Obviously, Thompson was more idealistic than many of Benthamites. He believed that it would be possible to immediately realize an equal society without any poverty and discrimination in terms of class, race and gender. He was inclined to and participated in the co-operative communitarian movement promoted by Robert Owen and his followers, while he never lost his loyalty to Bentham and his utilitarianism. It is a famous story that, at same time, Thompson severely opposed to Owen's unrealistic ambition and paternalism in his communitarian schemes. There are some complicated arguments in the structure of Thompson's idea. This paper will comprehensively re-consider Thompson's trajectory in the context of utilitarianism, utopianism and feminism, from Bentham to J. S. Mill via Owen.
Keywords: utilitarianism, Owenism, feminism

Corina Kesler
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
corinak@umich.edu
Utopian Novels Bypassing Censorship in Postbellic and Communist Romania: Mircea Eliade's Magical Realism in Forbidden Forrest (Noaptea de Sinziene) and Sergiu Farcasan's Uber Utopianism in An 41042 (O iubire din anul 41042)
Even though in his Utopiques: Jeux D'espaces, Louis Marin mentions that plural views on the theory and practice of utopia might have previously existed at the confluence of historical, economic and social watersheds, he does not elaborate on what these were or where they appeared: 'There are probably analogous examples of utopic discourse in formations corresponding to the passage between economic periods in history, especially between various Asian, Classical and feudal modes of production. These discursive forms may very well be in many ways comparable to the Classical European period or to the Enlightenment. Their distinguishing feature, however, would always be in their revelation of 'topic' schemata for a scientific theory of society. We could also make a specific terminological decision and use a much wider definition of utopia.' In my project, I analyze two such 'analogous examples of utopian discourse', namely the techniques practiced by Mircea Eliade in his postbellic novel Forbidden Forrest and by Sergiu Farcasan in An 41042 written during the communist regime in Romania. Although composed several decades apart, both these novels had to bypass the extreme censorship of the secret and the cultural police formed to establish and perpetuate the ideology of the communist state. Both Eliade and Farcasan used novel narrative techniques that 'fooled' the censors and managed to produce the 'critical estrangement' that is the main prerogative of the utopian endeavor: the former did so by tapping into the phantasmagorical and the magical realism of the Romanian folklore and the latter by actually paying tribute to the 'achievements' of the communist utopia he lived in. My project details and compares these utopian novels and, taking into account recent research on the Romanian utopian impulse, concludes with a proposition that will elaborate on Marin's idea of a 'wider definition of utopia.'
Keywords: Romanian Utopian Discourse

Dimitri Knobbe
Colonies of Benevolence foundation
dimitriknobbe@hotmail.com
General John van den Bosch as utopian socialist
In 1818 the Dutch Society of Benevolence was founded by general John van den Bosch, who combined notions from the utopian socialist movement with the basics of the liberal tradition. Together with New Lanark and Hofwyl in Switzerland, the Society of Benevolence was considered throughout Europe to be the most progressive and promising poor-relief project in the first half of the nineteenth century. Supported by the Dutch Royal house and over a 20.000 private subscribers, the Society built 550 small farmsteads (21.000 had been planned!). Poor and jobless families could now find a new living in agricultural colonies on the waste grounds of Holland. At first the colonists worked group wise and under supervision. After the training stage, the colonists could start maintaining the three hectares of land around their own farmstead. As soon as they had paid of their debt to the Society, the colonists were ceremonially rewarded with a golden medal and could than continue as a 'free-farmer' for their own profit. Robert Owen repeatedly claimed to be the intellectual father of the Society of Benevolence and his son Robert Dale visited the ,,Dutch co-operative communities' in 1825. It was here that he met again with Kornelis Mulder, his former fellow student at Hofwyl who was now the director of the Society's agricultural institute. Just as the workers at New Lanark, the colonists wore uniforms. Separate churches were built for the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish colonists. There was a medical service, alcohol was prohibited, and communal feasts were organized every two weeks.
Keywords: history, political and economical science, architecture

Renata Koba
Universitat Rovira I Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
renataelzbieta.koba@urv.net
New World Order Reconsidered in Wholeness and the Implicate Order by David Bohm (1980)
The necessity for change or transformation, whether individual or collective, has been a major issue for many thinkers throughout the centuries. Numerous theories from a variety of fields have been proposed to induce transformation for the better. Yet, nothing has changed and we are still far from living a utopian dream although, as it seems, we have the means to do so. However, the debate concerning change continues for the reality in which we all live demands that we changed at least some aspects of our behaviour in order to avoid further misfortunes. Fragmentation seems to be universal in present societies. It is prevailing in the world of art, science, technology and human work in general. This is then reflected in the society which has developed in such a way so as to create divisions between nations, religions or political, economic tendencies and racial groups, to quote just a few. Moreover, today, man's environment is seen as an aggregate of separately existent parts which are exploited by different groups of people. This attitude has resulted in the crises such as poverty in underdeveloped countries and spreading terrorism all over the world. This presentation proposes a series of arguments concerning fragmentation suggesting at the same time a distinct approach towards viewing of the world which is expressed in Bohm's theory of 'The Implicate Order'. To support his arguments, I would like to present his new mode of language called 'Rheomode' (from Greek 'rheo' which means 'to flow) which is the expression of the holistic view of the world.

Peter Kraftl
University of Northampton
peter.kraftl@northampton.ac.uk
The stuff of dreams: sleep, childhood and utopianism
Almost all forms of utopian imagination and theory concentrate on the intentionally produced utopias of wake-ful human subjects. This paper seeks to offer an alternative understanding of utopia that begins from the one-third of human life concerned with (trying to) sleep. The paper begins with an introduction to sleep and childhood, highlighting the lack of attention to both concepts in accounts of utopia. I argue that the former (sleep) is predominantly treated as a plot device or a practicality within literary utopias, and that the latter tends to be associated with generic notions of 'the child' which are either reactionary, romantic or excessively philanthropic. The remainder of the paper is split into two sections, in which the prospects for utopias of, for and around sleep are considered. The first section draws upon the author's empirical research on the cultural geographies of children's bedtime routines, and in particular the affective, ritualised practices involved therein. It highlights significant congruencies with contemporary (British) debates concerning children's self-esteem, well-being and their acquisition of life-skills. Such debates are often implicitly - and hopefully - concerned with the 'future of childhood' and the future of social relations in general. Hence, I demonstrate the key role of sleep to the construction of childhood, and of childhood to the construction of popular and very public discourses surrounding hope. The second section concludes the paper. Here, I suggest a number of potential theoretical directions for utopia and sleep, drawing on the empirical material presented, and upon post-structural theorisations of utopia which have questioned process, practice, emotion, embodiment and intentionality. In this way, I begin to argue a case for the creative possibilities of utopias of, for and around sleep.
Keywords: Sleep, futurity, intention

Stefan Kristensen
Utopiana (arts group, Geneva-Yerevan)
s-kristensen@utopiana.am
The 'new utopian spirit' between aesthetics and politics
A few years ago, Miguel Abensour spoke in favor of a 'new utopian spirit', by which he understood a conception of utopia as an intellectual and practical posture against totalitarianism. Relying on the suggestions of Emmanuel Levinas, he wrote that a 'society without utopia is exactly a totalitarian society'. Levinas himself, in some of his later writings, linked the ethical, the political and the aesthetical together under the motive of utopia. Behind this notion lies a crucial philosophical issue: the representation of the movement towards the other. The utopian perspective of Levinas and Abensour allows us to evaluate some trends in contemporary art, such as relational aesthetics, or the documentary turn, and to answer the very ancient and very actual question of the political engagement of the artist.

Runette Kruger
Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa
krugerr@tut.ac.za
Art in the fourth dimension: giving form to Form – the abstract paintings of Piet Mondrian
The early twentieth century was a rich breeding ground for the birth of utopias, and, in this otherwise nihilist milieu, speculation around the nature of the fourth dimension abounded. Not only scientists, such as Einstein (who conceived of the fourth dimension as time), but also philosophers and artists were formulating theories around the possible nature of the fourth dimension. Mystic philosopher Peter Demianovich Ouspensky (1878-1947), posited the fourth dimension not as time, but as a higher dimension of space, an ideal realm far superior to the three dimensions of space with which we are conversant. In his Tertium Organum (1911), Ouspensky links his formulation of a higher dimension of space with Vedantic and Daoist philosophy, Plato, German Romantic idealism (Immanuel Kant and GWF Hegel), Christian mysticism (Jacob Böhme) and the Eastern concept of the Eternal Now, and unites these concepts in a monist model. Fervently anti-posivist, Ouspensky (1981:290) inveighs: '[W]e do not realise that we rob ourselves … of all beauty, all mystery, all meaning, and then wonder why we are so bored and disgusted ... positivism wears a uniform … It rules over thought … and struggle against it is already declared a crime'. In this paper I will discuss early twentieth century Dutch painter Piet Mondrian's creation of abstract compositions as an attempt to give form to a perfect transcendental 'other', to embody Dao and Plato's Ideal Forms - an attempt to expedite the dawning of an earthly utopia.
Keywords: Fourth dimension, Mondrian, monism

Pascale LaFountain
Harvard University
plafount@fas.harvard.edu
'Dunkel, Warten, redelos' : Language, Subjectivity, and Utopian Space in Ingeborg Bachmann's Der Fall Franza
Issues of gender, spatiality, and nomadism have occupied theorists from Beauvoir to Braidotti, but all of these built upon the utopian and abstract desire for a 'feminine' space, a desire related to the simultaneous feminist discussion of 'écriture feminine' and to feminist discourses of fluidity. In this paper, I will take the approach of cultural metaphor analysis to locate and describe the utopian metaphor of fluidity as it appears in the works of Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Ingeborg Bachmann. Examining the texts simultaneously as literature and as theory, I look closely at the ways in which fluid metaphors address issues of placelessness and localizability, utopian elements within writing, theorizations of subjectivity, as well as the implications these stylistic and theoretical representations carry for the possibility of feminine writing and the feminine literary space. The first stage of my analysis consists in a theoretical description of fluidity, utopia, and the chora in Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which is Not One. Secondly, I look at Kristeva's application of utopian ideals to describe subjectivity and the semiotic non-space in Revolution in Poetic Language. Finally, I provide a reading of utopian language and the metaphor of fluidity in Ingeborg Bachmann's novelistic fragment, Der Fall Franza. My analysis shows the common critique of representation suggested by the fluid metaphor in feminist theory and literature. The poetics of theory and the poetics of literature thus flow together into a metaphorical poetics of the fluid as that utopian form and space which subverts patriarchal language, that pre-linguistic space from which the subject emerges, and that which textually even undermines artificial divisions among the very genres of theory and literature that describe it.
Keywords: Austrian Literature, Feminist Utopias, Subjectivity

David Lane
Monash University, Melbourne
David.Lane@arts.monash.edu.au
Geophilosophy, Ecology, and the Utopianism of Deleuze's Thought
Drawing upon some recent critical studies on Deleuze, this paper will problematise a perennial concern of the Deleuzian project – the distinction between immanence and transcendence – through reference to the political, ecological and utopian aspects of his work. This question will be approached by way of comparing Deleuze with Nietzsche's position on materiality and otherworldliness; if Nietzsche subverts the binary opposition of 'truth' and 'lie,' I will argue that he nonetheless retains a sense of 'truth' in terms of keeping faith with materiality. In light of Peter Hallward's recent argument that the movement of Deleuze's project is one of flight or escape 'out of this world,' Deleuze indeed appears to be at odds with Nietzsche's imperative to 'be true to the earth.' The consequences of this seeming incompatibility between Nietzsche and Deleuze - perhaps better understood as a self-contradiction of Deleuze's thought - will be discussed in terms of the political and utopian status of Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis. While Deleuze repeatedly conjures up the image of a new earth and a new people to come, I will articulate a number of critical questions that remain unanswered or unresolved within Deleuze's work: how should one interpret the rhetorical quality of this gesture, what relationship does or can Deleuze's utopianism have with the actual world, and what role can it play in justifying the philosophical distinctions and oppositions of his thought.
Keywords: otherworldliness, immanence, schizoanalysis

Ruth Levitas
University of Bristol
Ruth.Levitas@bristol.ac.uk
Pragmatism, utopia and anti-utopia
This paper explores the tension between pragmatism and utopia, especially in the comcept of 'realistic utopianism'. It argues that historically, the pragmatic and gradualist rejection of utopia has been anti-utopian in effect, notably in the case of Karl Popper. More recent attempts to argue in favour of 'realistic utopianism' or its equivalent, by writers such as Immanuel Wallerstein and Richard Rorty are also profoundly ant-utopian. They co-opt the terminology of utopia to positions that are antagonistic to radical alterity. But this is not a necessary response to the utopia/pragmatism tension: Roberto Unger, who is explicity opposed to utopia, in fact proffers a more sympathetic resolution based on the merits of vision, social improvisation and collective learning. These may lie closer to the core of the utopian project as a vehicle for the education of desire than Unger himself recognises.
Keywords: Pragmatism, Rorty, Unger

Miguel Martínez López
University of La Rioja (Spain)
miguel.martinez@unirioja.es
Urban movements and paradoxical utopianisms
The Squatters' Movement in Spain has been developing along more than twenty years. Beyond the figures of involved buildings and activists, evictions, demonstrations and so on, a rich experience in terms of political struggle at the municipal level was accumulated. How can be explained this 'success'? Part is due to structural conditions according to laws, repression, bonds between social movements, etc. Another part depends on the capacities of the movement for recreating, in practice, a counterculture that stems from the libertarian and utopian ideals from the 1960s and even from previous anarchist ideological frames. What is interesting to note is that, simultaneously, this is a post-leftist movement (and, for some, a post-modern and just life-style one) with no clear appeal neither to immediate revolution, to political parties, labour unions nor to the power of State. Therefore, I will argue that Spanish Squatters were fed by utopian and neo-anarchist ideas and they could put them in practice in very everyday life and communal terms, but, on the other hand, they broke up with the very idea of utopia in terms of its application to the whole society, political system or even the city and municipalities. Work instability, spatial nomadism and fast replacement of activists are some of the evidences that support the latter statement. The former is mainly proven by the experience of collective self-management of squatted buildings, and the opposition to institutional ways of political action. Documents, observant participation and interviews are the sources of the information used for this aim. Finally, we sustain that the social and political creativity of this minority urban movement, its persistence along the years and the flow of messages disseminated within society, require a careful attention to the utopian frames of meaning that feed back the movement once and again.
Keywords: Squatters, Neo-anarchism, Paradoxes

John McGuigan
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
mcguigaj@uww.edu
'An Amputation of the World': Modernism & the Literary Utopias of Anarchism
The anarchist utopia at the heart of E. E. Cummings's The Enormous Room is easily overlooked, for it lies buried in an aesthetically radical novel that is itself buried in the canon of a poet more famous for his later playful sentimentalism than his early political critique. In this peculiar account of being imprisoned by the French in WWI, Cummings uses experimental modernist techniques to describe—and thus create in the literary—an anarchist utopia the prisoners create within the holding center. Across boundaries of language, race, class, and nation, prisoners are bound only by their circumstance—a simple, primitive circumstance where roughly equal individuals have the same needs and pursue their self interest aware that survival and 'success' come through cooperation. Cummings's story, however, is not a mere fiction; it is also 'history,' the events really did happen. But the facts are so stylized as to become barely recognizable as 'reality,' and as a result the book's modernist aesthetic draws attention to the 'an amputation of the world' modernist writers perform—bracketing off the 'real' world in order to create a new world, a fictional world come to life in their writing. By creating an utopian paradise of self-sovereignty and mutual cooperation and claiming it already existed in the least likely of places, Cummings helps us see that anarchism's revolutionary transformation of the world will come not in the form of radical political or economic change of existing conditions, but in a radical literary transformation of human consciousness.
Keywords: Literature, Anarchist Ideology, Politics, Aesthetics

Dr Susan McManus
Queen's University, Belfast.
s.mcmanus@qub.ac.uk
Theorizing Transformative Agency, Affect, and Utopia
The urgency of interrogating possibilities for political agency is unmistakable. A striking feature of contemporary experience is the malaise of agency's denial and loss: the loss of the capacity to act and change the worlds we encounter. This vexed experience is a central issue for utopian and critical political theory. Both are vitally concerned with agency, with political transformation grounded in articulating dissident perspectives within the world and in anticipating better worlds. In this paper, drawing on a range of sources from modernity's philosophical canon (Spinoza, Hume), contemporary critical theory (Deleuze, Negri, Massumi), and contemporary politics (the zapatistas, the 'war on terror/counter-terror'), I chart the dynamics of agency by way of fresh exploration of the affective. I suggest that agency's denial/loss can be diagnostically mapped through critical interrogation of experiences of disaffection. This is diagnostic because significant contemporary formations of power are effective by way of the regulatory capture and deployment of affect (cf. biopower, Foucault; capital, Negri; the political, Agamben, et al). I trace how the affective then becomes available as a significant resource by which to orient utopian political agency. For, if agency is not solely obstructed but actively deployed by contemporary modes of power, how can these maneuvers become available for interrogation and renegotiation? Charting the affective can thus open possibilities for mapping blockages and possibilities available within our political present.
Keywords: agency, political theory, affect

Annette M. Magid
SUNY Erie Community College, Buffalo, NY
a_magid@yahoo.com
Notes on the Future: Envisionment of Future Dilemmas within Society as Recorded in Edward Bellamy's Stories and Personal Notebooks
The focus of my paper is based on the conjectures offered by Bellamy in his short stories and unpublished notebooks regarding the connectivity between mankind and earth. Because Bellamy was a sickly individual, he spent time convalescing, often in a state of depression (Morgan Bellamy 41). He recorded his thoughts regarding man's place in the cosmos as well as the effect of cataclysmic events related to mankind. His speculations are impressively interesting. Because Bellamy was born in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, a highly industrialized center for textiles and bronze manufacturing (Morgan Bellamy 5), he was subjected to the power of machine over man. While living in this hub of entrepreneurial energy, a period of emerging dehumanization, Bellamy's poor health allowed him extended hours to develop his own predictions. Several of his future foci reflected his insatiable appetite for high adventure and military exploit even though he viewed the brutality of the Civil War with dismay (Bellamy 'Autobiographical Fragment'). It is evident that his militaristic daydreaming fueled his fascination for war heroes such as young Napoleon. It is ironic that he yearned for the glory of Napoleon while being rejected at West Point because he was suffering from tuberculosis. Even though it was recorded that his rejection to West Point was 'because of physical inadequacy' (Morgan Bellamy 41), Bellamy's notebooks and other writing indicate that there was no inadequacy related to his imagination.
Works Cited:
Bellamy, Edward. 'Autobiographical Fragment, Unpublished Papers of Edward
Bellamy.' Houghton Library, Harvard University
Morgan, Arthur E. Edward Bellamy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1944
Keywords: Bellamy, notebooks, speculations

Steven Miles
University of Liverpool
smiles@liv.ac.uk
Commodified utopias: modernism, architecture and the illusion of freedom
Arguing that the notion of utopia has been reconfigured in the context of consumption this paper is concerned with the urban manifestation of architectural utopias. The paper debates the role of modernism as a means by which architects and urban professionals came to prioritise a utopian impulse and the subsequent decline of this impulse in favour of the imperatives of the free market. While modernist architects self-consciously styled themselves as an elite, their utopianism was underpinned by a commitment to a more egalitarian, less class-ridden society. As detached and elitist as it often was, modernism was characterised by a strong notion of the social, with a clear conception of 'citizens' as opposed to the 'consumer'. This is in stark contrast to the position in which contemporary architects and associated professionals currently find themselves: a world in which star architects produce aestheticized iconic buildings divorced from the realities of the social. The commodified landscape promotes a new kind of utopian existence which lauds the freedoms of the individual consumer through the market thereby constituting the reinvention of a kind of 'individualized utopia'. In this context it is suggested that sociological dimensions of place making have been closed off at both an academic and a professional level and that this balance needs to be redressed if the future of our cities are to be assured.
Keywords: architecture, consumption, modernism

Timothy Miller
University of Kansas, USA
tkansas@ku.edu
Open and Free: How the Utopian Vision of Open Land Has Played Out in North American Intentional Communities
One of the many visions of intentional community has been one that, paradoxically, seeks absolute freedom for individuals within a setting that by its nature implies some discipline. In North America, one recurrent theme has been that of open land, of a community open to all. Dozens of communities have been based on that principle, with varying results. This paper will track the trajectories of several open-land communities, examining their goals and the ways in which they have pursued those goals. It will look at the philosophies of those who have proclaimed the principle of open land. And it will examine the outcomes of the open-land principle as it has been put into practice. Some open-land communities have quickly collapsed; some have survived for a longer time but have eventually closed; some have survived in radically transformed fashion; and a few have managed to survive for decades largely as their founders intended. Among the case studies to be examined here are the Christian Commonwealth Colony, Morning Star Ranch, Tolstoy Farm, and Earth People's Park. They demonstrate the diverse ways that open land works out in practice. Finally, the final outcomes of the communities will be examined, and an analysis provided of why a community closed quickly, was transformed, or survived over a long period of time.
Keywords: open, land, communities

Andrew Milner
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Andrew.Milner@arts.monash.edu.au
Archaeologies of Science Fiction: Jameson's Utopia and Orwell's Dystopia
This paper begins with the proposition that Fredric Jameson's Archaeologies of the Future (2005) is the most important theoretical contribution to utopian and science fiction studies since Darko Suvin's Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979). It argues that Jameson's derivation of 'anti-anti-Utopianism' from Sartrean anti-anti-communism will provide 'the party of Utopia' with as good a slogan as it is likely to find in the foreseeable future. It takes issue with Jameson over two key issues: his overwhelming concentration on American science fiction, which seems strangely parochial in such a distinguished comparatist; and his understanding of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as an 'anti-Utopia' rather than a dystopia. The paper argues that, for Nineteen Eighty-Four, as for any other science fiction novel, the key question is that identified by Jameson, not 'did it get the future right?', but rather 'did it sufficiently shock its own present as to force meditation on the impossible?'. It concludes that Jameson fails to understand how this process works for dystopia as well as eutopia, for barbarism as well as socialism.
Keywords: Dystopia, Science Fiction, Politics

Dunja M. Mohr
University of Erfurt
dunja.mohr@uni-erfurt.de
In Search of Utopia: The Transgressive Utopian Dystopia
With utopia's heyday of the second half of the 19th century long gone and with only a momentary flare up as feminist utopia in the 1970s, utopian literature seems to remain in limbo. Indeed, many critics have agreed upon a diminished belief in a potentially better world if not upon the disappearance of utopian literature and the impossibility of utopian thought altogether (cf. Russell Jacoby: The End of Utopia 1999). Yet utopia is very much alive: it has reappeared in the disguise of novels, initially set as dystopias, predominantly in the contemporary feminist dystopias of the past twenty to thirty years.

Critics have noticed a shift from the 'classical utopia/dystopia' towards what Tom Moylan has termed the 'critical utopia/dystopia.' However, this paper argues that a new subgenre has emerged: that of feminist 'transgressive utopian dystopias'. By presenting utopia and dystopia as interactive hemispheres rather than distinct poles, these 'transgressive utopian dystopias' contest the standard reading of utopia and dystopia as two discrete literary subgenres and expose the artificiality of such rigid classifications. Rather, they present utopian strategies as integral part of the dystopian narrative.

While the described dystopian societies are riven by manifold dualisms, the suggested utopian impulses aim at their transgression. These utopian strategies can be single glimpses of hope, as Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (2003) illustrates, or contain the very downfall or subversion of dystopia and the actual process of building utopia, as in Suzy McKee Charnas's Holdfast tetralogy (1974-1999).
Keywords: hybridisation, transgression, theory

Pedro Moreira
Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, Portugal
pdmart@hotmail.com
Overthrowing vengeance: the role of visual elements in 'V For Vendetta'
The emergence of the critical dystopia genre in the 1980s allowed space for both a critique and the possibility of change to appear combined. As such, a body of literature capable of informing and catalyzing readers into action was produced. One example can be found in the graphic narrative 'V for Vendetta' by Alan Moore. In this paper, the focus is on identifying a 'subnarrative' level, composed of visual elements, and its relation to the main narrative line. This relation is based on the production of an ideological background that confers a wider significance to the actions of the protagonist. Spatial aspects of the work are then discussed and visual elements analysed as products/producers of a particular space within a heterotopic process. Ultimately, this process results in an overthrow of the simpler motif of vendetta in favor a more complex narrative of a society's struggle against an oppressive regime, thus reaching a far more profound resonance and utopic function.
Keywords: literature, heterotopias, critical dystopia

Peter Mortensen
Aarhus University, Denmark
Engpm:hum.au,dk
'Men and Beasts and Fruit of the Soil': Hamsun's Utopian Agrarianism
My presentation focuses on the agrarian movement in early-twentieth-century society, literature and arts, with special reference to the Norwegian Knut Hamsun's Nobel Prize-winning novel Growth of the Soil (Markens Grøde, 1917). Published to near-universal acclaim, Hamsun's 'agricultural book' drew on his own experiences as a farmer and sprang from his conviction that only a return to soil-based autarchy could facilitate a much-needed social, moral and spiritual regeneration. Growth of the Soil has been hailed as Hamsun's greatest triumph and execrated as an embarrassing stain on his career. Hamsun's vocal support for Hitler and his fiction's popularity in Weimar and Nazi Germany sensitized ideology critics to 'reactionary' strains within the novel, while more recent revisionists have sought to reclaim the novel for a prescient 'ecological' worldview. In my presentation, rather than offering a strong attack or defence I seek to highlight the complexities and ambiguities of Hamsun's agrarian programme in its historical context. More particularly, I seek to connect my reading of the novel's utopianism to recent scholarship about the rural settlement movements that flourished in Europe and North America around 1900. Such back-to-the-land projects typically did not project a unified stance towards industrial civilization's discontents, nor did they simply seek to 'reject' or 'escape' modernity as such. The period's diverse agrarian utopianisms continue to fascinate precisely because they cut across ideological lines, often striving towards forms of 'alternative modernity'. A similar 'non-synchronous' contradictoriness, I argue, characterizes Hamsun's agrarian utopia, where 'pro-modern' and 'anti-modern' elements coexist in bewildering – but productive – tension.

Thomas Morrissey
Plattsburgh State University College, Plattsburgh, NY USA 12901
morristj@plattsburgh.edu
'Feast and Famine: Nourishing the Utopian Impulse in M. T. Anderson's 'Feed'
This paper will examine M. T. Anderson's 'Feed', the award-winning dystopian novel for young adults. 'Feed' is a satire that selectively chooses the worst elements of its readership's world in order to offer a social critique and a call to action. Unlike dystopias for adults, those written for young adult (YA) audiences almost always have a silver lining, a way out of whatever crises have been presented. Anderson's own commentaries on the novel show clearly that his intention was to write such a story.

The problem with 'Feed' is that its critique is so bleak but so believable that there is little apparent room for the hope the author wishes to inspire. This is not a failure of the novel but, rather, a horrifying reality of our new century. The book brilliantly assesses the individual and global impact of a consumer culture. Implants give teenagers instant access to ceaseless advertising, leaving little room for personal reflection. Their polluted world is dying. The hero, Titus, does experience the awakening that is so often afforded young adult dystopian protagonists, but the raw material with which Anderson is working—the world as it actually is--are not encouraging. The essay will explore Anderson's novel, demonstrating how it re-visits Edenic and utopian themes and how it tests the boundaries of the YA dystopian form as set out by theorists and as enacted by other writers. Furthermore, it will consider the degree to which the novel empowers its YA readers to effect social change.
Keywords: YA, dystopian, Eden

Henry Near
Kibbutz Beit Ha'emek
hnear@b-emek.org.il
Still in Search of Gemeinschaft
In previously published articles I have discussed the nature of the`communal experience' (Gemeinschaft) and its place in the philosophical outlook of various communal societies : using the kibbutz as a central model, I have compared it to the Christian monastery, and claimed that, though the structure of these two forms of communal life is very similar, the place of community in their thought system is very different: whereas in the kibbutz it is paramount, in the monastery it is rarely considered to be an essential component of the monastic ideal.
In this paper I intend to continue my comparative quest, and discuss the place of Gemeinschaft in a number of intentional societies, among them the Hutterites of North America, and in a variety of religious and political movements. I shall also ask whether it is legitimate to view it as a primary source of ethical values, and consider the way it has affected the historical development of utopian movements.

Dr. Stankomir Nicieja
University of Opole, Poland
stann@uni.opole.pl
Infertile ideas: the politics of human reproduction in late 20th century feminist utopias
The urge to manage or intervene into a seemingly disorderly business of human reproduction accompanies the creators of utopias from the very beginning of the genre. In my paper I am going to look at the politics of human reproduction in utopian narratives as an important, but often neglected aspect of those works. My analysis starts with the review of how the problems of fertility and reproduction were dealt with in the emblematic utopian narratives, including Plato's 'Republic', Thomas More's 'Utopia' and Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World'. In the main part of my paper, I concentrate on the more contemporary examples of utopian narratives where the problem of fertility and reproduction becomes even more prominent. I take a closer look at three intriguing utopian novels which include Margaret Atwood's 'Handmaid's Tale' (1985), P. D. James' The Children of Men' (1992) and Maggie Gee's 'Ice Age' (1998). They all amply illustrate the manner in which human reproduction is differently employed as a key thematic element in the utopian fiction.
Keywords: human reproduction, literature and utopia, feminism

Daniel Ogden
Uppsala University
Daniel.Ogden@engelska.uu.se
More, Thoreau, ecology
Sir Thomas More's Utopia (1516) and Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1856) as Possible Green Utopias
The paper argues that More and Thoreau, writing 340 years apart, were both concerned with resisting what they saw as the twin economic evils of imperial expansion abroad and local exploitation at home. Both create alternative utopian spaces situated between these twin forms of economic exploitation that allow each author to explore alternative social and economic practices that will counteract these twin forms of economic exploitation. In doing so, both writers focus on and explore humankind's relationship with Nature. Both writers are concerned with creating a non-invasive relationship with Nature. One example of this in More's Utopia is his desire to avoid a one-sided development of the town at the expense of the countryside. Another is his concern to ease the strain of economic activity on the local environment by limiting the size of household units. Two examples of Thoreau's environmental concerns in Walden are the cabin he builds and the bean field he cultivates; both of which can be seen as examples of non-invasive human activities. Both writers advocate self-sufficiency, a subsistence economy and living in harmony with Nature. Both see egoism and selfishness as preventing such a lifestyle. Both in effect argue that ecological concerns should take priority over economic ones. In this respect, although neither writer uses the vocabulary of modern ecology, both can be seen, in their respective historical periods, as contributing to an ongoing struggle to create a greener way of life.