Michelle Parslow
University of Exeter
mlp203@exeter.ac.uk
Posthuman Biorage: Articulating Bodies in real, virtual and fictive utopian spaces
Utopian and science fiction boasts a long history in the exploration of the mind/body dialectic. This engagement has become only more vital as technologies involving the pursuit of the utopian body have evolved. Since the 1970s especially, the increased availability of cosmetic surgery and sex-reassignment surgery has enabled the production of one's ideal physical body. If transformative surgery gave us the ability to reconstruct the material life of the body beyond the human – or posthuman; virtual life granted us opportunities for segregating our sense of selves from our bodies – for being transhuman. The latter is perhaps best observed when we consider the phenomenal impact of the online utopian community, especially in the form of Internet chat rooms and virtual world websites, such as the recently-reviewed 'Second Life' project. To a certain extent, these utopian spaces facilitate a self-defining disengagement from our organic, material bodies. This may be one reason why what it means to be human within a utopian space seems to have been largely expressed as either an entirely material or an entirely subjective praxis. Reading both fictional, real-life and virtual life 'utopian' spaces within Pat Cadigan's Dervish is Digital (2000) and the American-based virtual world website 'Second Life,' I interrogate the dualistic nature of conceptualising (post)humanity within utopia. Synthesising Judith Butler's concept of 'illegible rage' and recent readings of Foucauldian 'biopower,' I argue that the body in utopian space is neither an exclusively 'material' – nor exclusively 'virtual' – concept. Instead, it is one which is situated within a praxis which I term 'biorage.'
Keywords: biorage, trans, cyberfeminism

Banu Pekol
Istanbul Technical University, Institute of Science and Technology, PhD Candidate in Architectural History
bpekol@gmail.com
A Strategy of Denial or a Vehicle for Rebirth: The Architecture of the Turkish Revolution
There exist two opinions on the role of architecture, or rather, the means for which it was employed during the early years of the Turkish Republic. The concept of rural development is seen and interpreted through these two viewpoints to support the two distinct arguments. One claim is that the dignitaries of the Early Republic of Turkey wanted never to cross paths with the villagers -who formed the majority of the public- but on the other hand over-glorified them in their campaigns. They denied to admit the villagers into their mindframe, and to rid themselves of shame, designed ideal villages for them, which they never implemented. The other viewpoint believes that those in charge during this period candidly worked for ideals which foreign experts labelled as 'dreams' and that these were comprehensive projects aiming at fulfilling agricultural, economic, social, cultural and environmental needs. These projects, headed by Ataturk, were all part of a grand scheme for the good of the public, awakening from under the oppression of the Ottoman Empire. The 'Ideal Republic Village', a pilot project designed in 1932 for the First Industrial Plan, forms the focal point of the paper. It is considered a utopian vision by many, but for different reasons. This project will be presented in the light of other architectural undertakings of the age which employed similar 'utopian' ideals. Examples to be mentioned will include the Village-City, the most comprehensive rural development project and government buildings intended to shape the decisions of those who worked within them.
Keywords: ideal cities, Turkish Republic, utopia and architecture

Marilyn Pemberton
University of Warwick
m.a.pemberton@warwick.ac.uk
Glimpses of Utopia in Victorian Fairylands
The second half of the nineteenth century was the 'Golden Age' of children's literature and the fairy tale had become 'acceptable' reading. Both utopian literature and fairy tales critique contemporary society and the concerns prevalent during this period were as diverse as the effects of mass-production and materialism on society, the existence of a life after death, the role of women and the institution of marriage. In this paper I will argue that such writers as George MacDonald, Mary de Morgan, Mary Louisa Molesworth, Oscar Wilde and others chose specifically to write in the fairy tale genre so as to take full advantage of its inherent utopian function, in order to address these concerns and to reveal glimpses of their own yearnings for an improved society. I will show also that there is a distinct similarity in literary conventions between utopian texts and the 'magical' Victorian fairy tales, emphasising further their common purpose. In the 'magical' fairy tale a visitor from the 'real' world enters fairyland through an enchanted boundary, the rules of this land are different and must be learned, usually with the help of a guide, and when the visitor returns home having learned an invaluable lesson he will, like his utopian counterpart, consequently be an improved and improving person. In this paper, having explained further the utopian function of the Victorian fairy tale, I will explore one of the fairy tales by Mary de Morgan, who was a friend of William Morris and was greatly influenced by his utopianism.
Keywords: Victorian, Fairy tales

Saskia Poldervaart
University of Amsterdam
s.w.poldervaart@uva.nl
How utopianism disappeared from Dutch socialist feminism (1970-1989)
Social movements always have used three different strategies: the utopian Do-it-Yourself, the revolutionary and the negotiating strategy. In my paper I will analyse these different strategies and shortly show how the 'Dolle Mina's' struggled with a choice between the utopian and the revolutionary strategy. Most attention will be given to the three socialist feminist journals (Newsletter of the Feminist Socialist Platform; Katijf and Socialist Feminist Texts). I will analyse the discussions in these journals and elaborate how the attitude of 'we feminists want to show that life can be different' slowly shifted into a strive for power and individual career making by accepting the emancipation policy of the government. More and more attention has been given to professionalizing, usefulness of rights and getting subsidies. Socialist feminists who pleaded to use the (utopian) strategy of self organisation and autonomy (with their ideas of rejecting hierarchy, giving alternatives for daily life, making your own politics and language), as well as the negotiating strategy at the same time, have not realized that doing both with the same group is almost impossible. For the negotiating strategy means that you have to adjust your language, to appoint representatives and to accept that the government decides with whom you have to work together. My paper will show which arguments these feminists have used to change the 'personal is political' strategy into one directed to the government and how by this the utopian momentum disappeared from the movement.
Keywords: strategies, politics of utopia, feminism

Lyman Tower Sargent
University of Missouri-St. Louis
University of Oxford
lyman.sargent@umsl.edu
Utopia and/in Everyday Life: Reflections on the Relationship Between Utopianism and Communitarianism
In this paper I look at utopianism as the transformation of the everyday, a way of looking at the topic that sees change in the everyday as potentially the area of most importance. And what better place to look at such a topic than intentional communities, in which sharing the changes with others may make the transformation easier. I am most concerned with the utopias of the communities, what they hope/d to achieve rather than what they achieved. But what has been actually achieved will also play a role. The Shakers, Oneida, Kerista, Centrepoint and others changed sexual behavior radically. Many communities changed how people ate, and the vegetarian communities changed what people ate. Many communities changed how work was organized, and particularly broke down gender distinctions in how work was allocated. Others worked with some success at breaking down the distinction between mental and physical labor (See Kesten for a study of everyday life in nineteenth century U.S. communities). All this is familiar to any student of intentional communities, but I shall argue that its implications for the connection between utopianism and communitarianism have been ignored. In this paper, I try to draw out those implications and argue that the intentional community movement should be seen as truly revolutionary.

Dr. Peter Scheers
University of Leuven, Belgium
peter.scheers@hiw.kuleuven.be
Possibilism and the complexity of perfection
My paper will discuss the central role of a complex perfective philosophy of appraisal in the construction of an adequate possibilism (including, perhaps, utopianism as the most eminent form of possibilism). My analysis in part refers back to an earlier inquiry of mine (Towards a Complex Perfectionism, Peeters Publishers, 2005), but now with a special focus on the issue of possibilism. Lack of concern for a.) the existing plurality of, and tensions between, valuable and culturally influential standards of perfection (such as purity, completeness, richness, depth, efficiency, scope, appropriateness, etc.) and/or b.) the plurality of gradational levels (in the context of an always relative fulfilment of perfective standards) and/or c.) the ways in which our reflective and emotional consideration of future possibilities is itself to be appreciated in terms of better and worse, is bound to lead to the articulation of inadequate and even dangerous versions of possibilism such as technological and economic progressivism (which today have even brought us to a time of radical catastrophism). A renewed utopian consciousness should include the ideal of a refined and complex appraisive self, who would hopefully find his or her place in the world of politics and business.

Lars Schmeink, M.A.
University of Hamburg
lars@wortraub.com
Fears of Globalization – Anti-Corporate Visions in Recent Utopian Texts
Ever since Thomas More published his 'Utopia', literature has been a mirror of society's vision of a possible future. The presentation of 'no place' has since been a reflection of contemporary dreams, wishes and desires but also of fears and nightmares. It is the vision of how we would like the future to be, but also the critique of how it should better not become. In recent visual and literary production the future possible world has become the image of an inhumane and technologized existence in which corporate enterprises have taken over and established a life of their own. We are not afraid of totalitarian governments anymore but rather fear being ground in the machinery of corporate profit making. Lives are but a mere commodity to be used in the fabrication of ever more productive corporations. Films like 'Resident Evil', 'Renaissance: Paris 2054' or 'The Island' as well as books like Margaret Atwood's 'Oryx & Crake', Max Barry's 'Jennifer Government', William Gibson's 'Pattern Recognition' show the deep seated fear that uncontrolled scientific progress and economical avarice will leave human society victimized by its own creations. The paper shows how recent utopian texts (from novels to films and computer games) have replaced the totalitarian nation state with the globalized corporation as the root of a dystopian vision.
Keywords: Anti-Corporate Sentiment, Dystopia, Globalization

Ulrich Muller-Scholl
University of Addis Ababa
Um-s@gmx.net
Globalization as a Chance for 'Concrete Utopias'
Once u-topias, as ideas of a better world, were characterized by the fact that they had 'no place'. Later on, they were replaced by representations of progress as a 'philosophico-historical' idea. Taking most different shapes but following its own fixed laws, it was e.g. conceived in the 19th century as a cyclic movement that would end in a full circle on a new level: e.g. as 'consciousness of freedom' (Hegel) or 'realm of freedom' (Marx). Only in the 20th century this imagination was replaced by a linear idea of progress - as a never ending process.
Such progress by most German philosophers was considered as a curse (Heidegger and his school). But at the same time 'Utopia' was rediscovered as 'concrete utopia' - progress had to be critically accompanied by ideas for a qualitative catharsis (cf. Allianztechnik, Ernst Bloch): This shift was the precursor of a turning point we are still witnessing.

At the end of the 1960th a new attitude towards progress led to the claim of 'sustainable development', a concept that evaluates the consequences of progress in advance and thus stresses the need for an idea of a desired future. This turn to such anticipation of the future was ironically pushed by globalization. As paradigms of progress from the developed world, when adopted by other cultures, often produce shortcomings and deception, encompassing concepts including cultural, environmental, ethnical aspects etc. are needed. 'Concrete utopia' might be one of the forms to realize such thinking.
Keywords: Progress, Globalization, Concrete Utopia

Ayse Senturer
Istanbul Technical University
Senturer@itu.edu
FINDING THE LOST (ARCHITECTU-REAL) UTOPIAS: New Proposals for City Life
Could reality, especially the (dark) reality of city life, bring the lost architectural utopias back together with the individual lost in time, space and life? This paper will deal with this question. Within this mind-set, it will underline the importance of concentrating on complexities, dark-sides, in-visible parts of city life, which rise generally at the borderlines of the city. However, it will especially underline the importance of receiving and processing that kind of knowledge of the (dark) city life, which is very much related as to how we perceive and conceive the world in today's changing conditions, especially at the edge, in borderline situations. Those facts, at the same time, represent the dynamics of today's life and they are related to transitive and intransitive qualities of cities, which we can be summarized them as presentation, movement/flow, communication, transportation, and sharing/exchange capacities of the city; briefly as the passage and interaction capacities in between space-time-life through architecture! Afterward, 'critical-cultural and cinematographic 'city' conceptions' will be introduced as a very essential and creative architectural design approach (tools and techniques) to acquire, to simulate, and to process that kind of knowledge, which brings the possibility of converting the existing relationships into new forms of space-time-life interactions, and will in turn open up new possibilities for the city life. This approach is also introduced as a passage from reality to imaginary, fantasia or utopia, which will come back to the reality and hopefully help to transform a desperate individual into a more capable one. Finally, the design practices of that approach realized at the Architectural Design Studious at ITU in Istanbul and RMIT in Melbourne by the author and her students will be brought in as 'new proposals for city life' including remarks that the Design Studio is the real practicing area of utopian ideas.

Akin Sevinç
akinsevinc@hotmail.com
Signals from Different Worlds: Sources of Inspiration for Utopian Architecture
'Another world is possible': A signal from the 20th century
The quintessence of a utopia is to present a new and ideal social model. Doing this means designing new and ideal living spaces at the same time. Therefore, utopias may be treated as sketches for architectural projects. In a professional sense, the appearance of imaginary architectural projects (those designed by architects or city planners) coincides with the early 20th century. Manifested through these projects and now almost 100 years old, utopian architecture's main aim is to design new and ideal living spaces. During this process, a new and ideal social model is also designed. Such architectural projects may thus be seen as sketches for utopias. This study aims to investigate the sources of inspiration for utopian architecture by reviewing imaginary projects. Some of the signals that express these projects have been eloquently articulated by their designers: Circus, labyrinth, game, genetic code, space trip, war fatigue, anarchy, spider, parasite, tree, Rosa Luxemburg, hovercraft, transatlantic, helicopter, oil refinery, etc. Other signals are less explicit: DNA spiral, human body, insect, internet heart, funfair, etc. Through such imaginary projects did utopian architecture assume the small but important place it occupies in the history of architecture. Its heyday in the 1960s was a time rightly encompassed by the slogan 'Another world is possible'. It underwent change, and meanwhile changed the utopian tradition, of which it is a part. The creative spirit that gave birth to 'other' imaginary worlds – and drew its power from the very fact that they were not real – has lived on. It became a source of inspiration for projects 'like no other', and this trend seems likely to continue into the future.
Keywords: Utopian architecture, source of inspiration, imaginary projects

Dr. Peter Seyferth
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
peter.seyferth@gsi.uni-muenchen.de
From The Dispossessed to Always Coming Home: making utopia really anarchistic
Ursula K. Le Guin's first utopia, 'The Dispossessed' (1974), is widely recognised as one of the most convincing critical or open-ended utopias. But Le Guin has written more that is relevant for the utopian discourse, especially an essay that criticises historical utopias in general and proposes standards for a new kind of utopia: A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be (1982); and she wrote a second, also anarchist utopia: 'Always Coming Home' (1985). In my paper, I will depict her criticism on utopias and compare the two utopias within this context. In her essay Le Guin addresses several problems of previous utopias (including 'The Dispossessed') and looks for solutions in Taoism and anthropological theories (especially from Claude Lévi-Strauss and Victor Turner), which leads her to propose new standards concerning content and literary form of utopia. Against the future-orientation of present societies and utopias she promotes a separation of technological progress from society, allowing society an organism-like stability that is neither dogmatic nor static. She pleads for 'a society predominantly concerned with preserving its existence; a society with a modest standard of living, conservative of natural resources, with a low constant fertility rate and a political life based upon consent; a society that has made a successful adaptation to its environment and has learned to live without destroying itself or the people next door.' Additionally to this content, a new kind of utopia needs a literary form that encourages the reader's imagination to take part in the construction of utopia—this makes utopia really open-ended and anarchistic on a higher level. I will show in detail that her second utopia meets these standards whereas 'The Dispossessed' fails, making 'Always Coming Home' Le Guin's most hopeful, anarchist, and relevant book that deserves further attention.
Keywords: Le Guin, anarchism, literary utopias

Jorge Bastos da Silva
Universidade do Porto, Portugal
jmsilva@letras.up.pt
Political Conservatism and Pastoral Utopianism: The Case of Viscount Bolingbroke
Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was a member of the last Tory cabinet under Queen Anne and in that capacity one of the English negotiators of the Peace of Utrecht of 1713. After the Hanoverian Succession, however, fearing imprisonment and possibly murder, he fled to France. When he returned to England in 1723 he became a prominent figure in the so-called 'Patriot' opposition to Walpole. Having been deprived of the right to sit in the House of Lords, Bolingbroke devoted himself not so much to active party or power politics as to a refashioning of conservative ideology which is simultaneously regressive and forward-looking. This he did along three main lines, which I will venture to call the theoretical, the poetic and the dramatic. (1) He formulated a moral ideal of government, linking the Augustan imperative of politeness with the core republican values of public spirit in a benevolent conception of rule. (2) Through a subtle engagement with Virgil's Georgics and The Aeneid, he envisioned both peace and georgic plenty and a golden age of empire for Great Britain with implicit historical sanction given by the Roman precedent. (3) In accordance with his paternalistic ideal of social relations, he posed as a gentleman-farmer surrounded by a select homosocial circle of friends, assuming a stance which was supposedly reminiscent of the gentry of bygone days. He consequently presented Dawley Farm as a sort of heterotopia, as it were outside the world of corruption.
Keywords: Pastoral, Patriotism, Republicanism

Alexandra Sippel
University of Paris-Sorbonne.
Alexandra.sippel@wanadoo.fr
Artists and artistic atmosphere in modern British Utopias
Utopian writers of the 18th and early 19th centuries were very much influenced by the humanist trend that was the hallmark of More's original text. Later texts were still strongly marked by Ancient philosophers and beauty is therefore central in all eutopias. Beauty, according to platonist ideas, was the outer sign of goodness and truth – which means that a happy society was to be beautifully organised. My paper will have to do with the artistic atmosphere that surrounds utopias. I will focus on several texts to show what side utopists took in the famous quarrel of the Ancient and the Modern – Antiquity often remained the arch-artistic model, especially in the ideal cooperative community of Loch Lomond in Morgan's Revolt of the Bees, but also in Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall. The second question I shall raise is that of the place of artists. Though beauty is everywhere in eutopias (and is sometimes deceitful in dystopias), artists are strangely excluded, or are not recognised as useful members of the city. Artistic talent seems to be universally distributed among utopians, and this shall lead me to investigate the regard cast on artists in the novels I mentioned and others in order to better understand why they were not as glorified in ideal societies as they were in Europe at the same period. This question seems particuliarly relevant with regard to English utopias, at a time when Joshua Reynolds and the Royal Academy gained fame and consecrated British art.
Keywords: Aesthetics, Influence of Antiquity, Artists' social standard

Dan Smith
University of the Arts London
wunderkammer@btinternet.com
The House of Dreams: Program and Impulse within the work of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov
This paper will address the presence of both forms of utopian project and impulse within the work of artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, focusing on their installation The House of Dreams (2005). At its spatial centre is a radial arrangement of oversize pedestals, complete with steps, at the top of which is situated a divan to rest or sleep upon. Inside each large pedestal is a small chamber, again furnished for institutionalised rest. The adjoining rooms have become hallucinatory adaptations of a hospital ward. The form is derived from a scheme within the history of Soviet utopias devised by architect Konstantin Melnikov. After identifying the problem of fatigue as a hindrance to the growth and development of the Stalinist collective, he proposed a Laboratory of Sleep (1929), which would allow up to 4,000 workers to rest in order to restore them to their full productive potential. The plan of a central rotunda flanked by two wings is mirrored in the creation of the Kabakovs' installation, as is its promise of a restorative slumber. However, in its reconstruction, the Laboratory is detached from its pragmatic attempts to improve efficiency and functional productivity, as well as the operation of totalitarianism. What is on offer here, perhaps, is a chance to dream. Yet the dream in itself is not the object of interest here. It is that this is a state from which one will awaken that is more significant.
Keywords: Contemporary Art Soviet Union Material Culture

Phil Smith
University of Plymouth and Dartington College of Arts
perform.smith@ukgateway.net
Dispersing the boundaries of utopia – a mobile paper
I would like to propose a mobile paper – in which the 20 minute journey around sites immediately adjacent to the conference would be integral. It will argue the continuing efficacy of the idea of utopia by re-thinking it away from a bounded 'ideal' geography and towards a practical mobility informed by a theory of space as trajectories and the tactics of Guy Debord. Where utopian thinking has implied a violent 'leap' from ideal to material, the paper proposes to take seriously utopia's placelessness and the crucial function of its image: the representation of what does not exist ('no-place'). Rather than Baudrillard's simulacrum, it will emphasise the conservative tendency of this image to remain an image; its recalcitrance in a spectacular economy of images become efficacious and resistant. The paper suggests adopting the International Lettristes' tactic of ambulatory research - the dérive – as a model of a sociable, mobile utopia, with its aspiration to 'no-place', set in motion with, but displaced from the economy of images and refusing an exchange with them. Rather than a making of value, the dérive is a making of situations utilising void (Careri) or superfluous (Neilsen) places and a revival of previous utopian projects – like Wells' World Brain – but as the trajectories of cells rather than the impositions of technocrats or central committees.
Keywords: mobile resistant cells

John Style
Universitat Rovira I Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
john.style@urv.cat
The band which grooves, the team which scores: seeking apt metaphors for a utopian consciousness.
In this paper, I will consider the idea of utopian consciousness – whether there is such a thing, and how it could best be described. Is it individual or collective? Metaphors of collective cooperative practices, such as sports teams, or improvising jazz bands, as proposed by Ruth Levitas, have been suggested as the most apt description of a utopian consciousness. Indeed, some theorists, such as Davis, have claimed that the utopian project must be expressed collectively to be genuinely utopian. Basing myself on the work of the contemporary 'anti-guru' Tony Parsons, my contention is that a veritable utopian consciousness only comes into being at a point when a sense of both the individual and the collective disappear. Desire - which engenders any utopian project - is a projection of the Self, into the space of the Other. I will suggest that all discussion of utopian borders, political or social projections into the future, are mere metaphors for the illusory Self trying to convince itself and others of its own existence in space and time. Utopian projects and probably even utopian studies have a vested interest in remaining unachieved and unachievable, as a means by which the Self maintains the illusion of its own existence.
Keywords: utopia, consciousness, metaphor

Trude Diesen Sundberg
University of Oslo
Trude_diesen@yahoo.co.uk
The Challenges for a global Utopia: A review of the World Social Forum's first years
In opposition to the politics of emergencies dominating our world today, seen for example by the constant focus on threats, the World Social Forum (WSF) and the new social movements launched their first forum in 2001 claiming 'Another World is Possible'. This paper will focus on this yearly forum, which may be seen as an attempt to move away from traditional political thinking. The first meeting was organised in Porto Alegre in Brazil, with a wide variety of organisations and individuals' participating, in what was established as an alternative to the World Economic Forum's yearly meetings in Davos. The forum seeks to transgress from the traditional state based way of thinking through slogans like 'think global act local', and a network based organisational system. This paper aims to review the existence and development of possible utopias and/or utopianism within the WSF by analysing final papers and decisions, news coverage and articles written by participants. If there was, and still is a utopian impulse; has the diversity of the movements come through in the ideas, and has it caused any problems? Which challenges, if any, have possible utopias met? These are just some of the questions I seek to answer through the paper by using both the traditional concept of Utopia, and newer theories influenced by feminism and the green movement using a wider definition.
Keywords: Challenges, World Social Forum, globalisation

Kathryn Tomasek
Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts, USA
ktomasek@wheatonma.edu
Transatlantic Travel in U.S. Fourierism
Historians have long recognized the significance of the grand tour undertaken by New Yorker Albert Brisbane in the 1820s and 1830s for the development of a U.S. movement based on the thought of Charles Fourier. A later European tour by Marcus and Rebecca Spring, New York Fourierists who were patrons of the North American Phalanx and the Raritan Bay Union, suggests the ongoing significance of transatlantic travel and consequent networks of friendship, especially for women. Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller travelled with Marcus and Rebecca Spring in the 1840s, and the Springs were important contacts for Swedish feminist Fredrika Bremer when she visited the United States in the 1850s, making the North American Phalanx one of her numerous stops on her own tour.

Using Fuller's reports in the New York Tribune and Bremer's Homes of the New World, this paper explores parallels between Brisbane's European idylls and the European and American tours of Fuller and Bremer. The paper illustrates the transatlantic reach of the networks that were central to the experiences of Fourierist women in the United States in the 1840s and 1850s.

Darren Webb
University of Sheffield
d.webb@sheffield.ac.uk
Anti-Utopian Hope
Hope is a key theme within utopian studies. This paper is drawn from a wider research project which explores the different modes in which human hope can be experienced and the ways in which these articulate with the utopian impulse. Whilst hope can be experienced in critical and transformative modes, which both feed off and inspire utopian discourse and praxis, there are also non-utopian and anti-utopian modes of hoping. The paper focuses on the latter, primarily because the notion that hope can possesses an anti-utopian functionality is generally overlooked, or is at least downplayed, within utopian studies. Looking in particular at the work of Gabriel Marcel, the paper explores human hope as an experience which transcends desire and the imagination and rejects all modes of utopia as a species of presumptuous impatience.
Keywords: Hope, Patience, Marcel

Toby Widdicombe
UAA, Anchorage, AK 99508, USA
afrtw@uaa.alaska.edu
Wordsworth, the River Duddon sonnets, and the Idea of Community
Wordsworth's peripheral role in Coleridge's and Southey's utopian proposals (such as Pantisocracy) is well known. What has been much less examined in the utopian vein is how the River Duddon sonnet collection* (published in April 1820)—accompanied as it was by a memorial essay to the 'Wonderful Walker' and a revised version of the Guide to the District of the Lakes—constitutes the description of a viable community. More generally such apparent viability is buttressed by Wordsworth's status as the head of the 'Lakers' (or the school of Lake poets) and of Rydal Mount as the focal point for a set of views that puts forward a utopian definition of hope, ideology, and the betterment of society.
* The full title of the sonnet collection—The River Duddon, A Series of Sonnets: Vaudracour and Julia: and Other Poems. To Which Is Annexed a Topographical Description of the Country of the Lakes, in the North of England.
Keywords: Wordsworth, Lake poets, River Duddon sonnets

Anna Vaninskaya
Kings College, University of Cambridge
av323@cam.ac.uk
The Coast of Utopia: Stoppard, Herzen, and The Strange Death of the Liberal Intelligentsia
Tom Stoppard's three-part play The Coast of Utopia (2002) is one of the most interesting and high-profile dramatic treatments of utopianism in recent years, yet it can hardly be characterised as a positive one. Its hero, the Russian socialist exile Alexander Herzen, has long figured in liberal discourse as a critic of utopias and historical teleologies, and Stoppard merely follows in the footsteps of Isaiah Berlin in creating a character defined by his rejection of all forms of political utopianism. How historically accurate is this portrait? The first part of my paper will argue that Stoppard's selective use of sources purposefully underplays the constructive and utopian aspects of Herzen's thought, particularly his preoccupation with village communes – an interest which links him with later anarchist and libertarian socialist writers like Kropotkin and William Morris. But how can one account for this one-sided representation? I will examine the nature of Stoppardian drama -- especially in contrast with the output of more politically-committed contemporaries like David Hare -- and place his work in the broader context of British theatre history. Ultimately, I argue, The Coast of Utopia may serve as an illustration of the plight of the post-Cold War liberal intelligentsia: too disillusioned (or too post-modern) to offer solutions but still unable to put the ghosts of its socialist past to rest.
Keywords: Tom Stoppard, Alexander Herzen, Intelligentsia

Fátima Vieira
Universidade do Porto
Vieira.mfatima@gmail.com
'Proles and animals are free': spaces of control in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
Spatiality Studies are founded on the idea set forth by Michel Foucault in the 1970's that the understanding of our world cannot be constructed from an exclusively historicist point of view. Defining our epoch as the epoch of space, Foucault set the ground for a cultural approach (developed at the time by Henri Lefebvre and, more recently, by Edward Soja, Kathleen Kirby e Doreen Massey) that suggests that the diachronic perspective of the historian should be complemented by a synchronic perspective, shaped by the conceptual tools defined by Post-modern Geography. Critics such as Fredric Jameson, David Harvey and Louis Marin have evinced the way Utopian Studies can benefit from a spatial analysis. Based on their theories, I will put forward the idea that a thorough study of George Orwell's dystopia, Nineteen Eighty-Four, must include the analysis of its temporal meaning (i.e., the idea of a miserable future and the resulting valorisation of the present), but also of its spatial dimension.
Keywords: Spatiality Studies, Literature, Dystopia

Dr. Robin Wilson
The Bartlett School of Architecture, U.C.L.
robin@interval.fsnet.co.uk
Now, this square is beautiful: the utopic document of Lacaton & Vassal
This paper will introduce my research into the role of hidden or repressed utopian expression in the architectural media. I will argue that which Fredric Jameson terms the 'utopian impulse' of cultural production has an important and often unconscious influence within architectural journals, in their manner of textual and photographic portrayal of buildings. I will clarify how Jameson and Louis Marin understand utopian expression to have the capacity to produce a critique of the ideology of which it is a part, and then will explain how I understand this critical capacity might surface in architectural journals to produce a critique of the architectural profession and its methods of media dissemination.

I will discuss as a case study an article that appeared in a recent edition of the Spanish architectural journal 2G, a monograph on the French architects Lacaton & Vassal. Written by the architects themselves (although not accredited), the article recounts the architects' response to a brief from the Bordeaux city council to 'embellish' a residential square near the St. Jean station. They decided to do nothing, for the square 'was already beautiful'. The design report thus becomes a eulogistic portrait of the square, proclaiming its 'existing conditions of life'. I will reveal how the rhetorical style of the article in its description of the square shares certain traits with utopian works as analysed by Marin, particularly in its use of person and tense. I will then explain how the article introduces a covert critique of architectural journalism's obsession with design objects.
Keywords: utopic critique, architectural media

Juan Miguel Zarandona
Universidad de Valladolid
zarandon@lia.uva.es
The linguistics and terminology of an early 20th-century religious Dystopia, The Lord of the World (1907), by R.H. Benson, and of its translations into Spanish, El amo del mundo (1909) and Señor del mundo (2006).
Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914), who was first ordained in the Church of England but later converted to Catholicism in the wake of such leading figures as Cardinal John Newman, also produced a huge amount of fiction literature, which, nowadays, is not as well known as it deserves. Especially remarkable were his apocalyptic anti-Utopian novel, 'The Lord of the World' (1907), and his alternative Utopian proposal, 'The Dawn of All', published a few years later, in 1911. Both works are not only passionately propagandistic in favour of his newly-found Catholic beliefs, but two surprising forerunners of the main 20th century Dystopian anti-Utopian works to come, as those by Huxley or Orwell. In other words, Benson emphasized and foresaw the prospect of a global human society without God, and by doing so produced some leading key works in the contemporary history of Utopian fiction. Besides, 'The Lord of the World' was translated into Spanish only two years later than the date of it original publication in English, i.e. in 1909. Father Juan Mateos was responsible for this early, only and forgotten Spanish rendering of the novel, which he entitled: 'El amo del mundo'. There is no doubt that this Spanish priest was highly seduced by its strong religious contents, by its enthusiastic and energetic approach to these subject matters, and for the novelty of the genre for Catholic apologetic purposes. Something very similar happened with its new translation of 2006. Consequently, this paper of mine, on the one hand, will take advantage of the fact that we are celebrating the first centennial of its first publication in 1907, and of its translation into Spanish in 1909, in order to vindicate this writer and his peculiar Dystopian, futuristic visions. On the other hand, it will also focus its attention in how this pioneer Dystopian and science-fiction novel treats linguistics and terminology issues, which always play an important role in this kind of literature. And also, it will focus on how the translators imported such typical jargon and phrases in a language with a very short tradition in these genres that were to become so popular a few years later.
Keywords: Dystopian, religion, end of the world, apocalyptic

Federico Zuolo
University of Pavia, Italy
federicozuolo@yahoo.it
Towards a Formal Definition of Utopia
In this paper I try to find out a non-commonsensical definition of utopia through its formal features. I begin with the case of Plato: the Laws, generally known as the 'realist' turn after the Republic, is nevertheless a utopian theory. If in the Laws we find both a 'realistic' and a 'utopian' theory, then the concept of utopia needs a better definition. This paper has two parts. In the first one, I criticize both commonsensical and Mannheim's conceptions of utopia. The former conception of utopia, based on the idea of unfeasibility, results too dependent on controversial factual assumptions; while the latter is not able to make clear the difference between utopia and mere normative theory. In the second part of the paper, I characterize my conception pointing at seven formal features that a theory should possess for being considered utopian. Some of these features distinguish utopian theory from ideal theory. While ideal theory provides only the normative principles, utopian theory imagines the ideal state, as if it were realized, in its concrete details. Moreover, an ideal society is independent of history, while a utopian society wants to cancel the temporal dimension. The features I outline in the list are not new in the studies on utopia, nevertheless I try to define utopia only by its formal features, without its content or scope, succeeding in this way to distinguish utopia from a simple normative theory. Finally, my aim is to show that this distinction has both a historiographical and a theoretical interest.
Keywords: Definition of Utopia, Ideal, Mannheim