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= Utopia_ =
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Introduction
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A utopia ( ) typically describes an imagined community or society that
possesses highly desirable or near-perfect qualities for its members.
It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book 'Utopia', which
describes a fictional island society in the New World.
Hypothetical utopias and actually-existing utopian intentional
communities focus on, among other things, equality in the areas of
economics, government and justice, with the method and structure of
proposed implementation varying according to ideology. Lyman Tower
Sargent argues that the nature of a utopia is inherently contradictory
because societies are not homogeneous. Their members have desires that
conflict and therefore cannot simultaneously be satisfied. To quote:
The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia. Utopian and dystopian fiction
has become a popular literary category. Despite being common parlance
for something imaginary, utopianism inspired and was inspired by some
reality-based fields and concepts such as architecture, file sharing,
social networks, universal basic income, communes, open borders and
even pirate bases.
Etymology and history
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The word 'utopia' was coined in 1516 from Ancient Greek by the
Englishman Sir Thomas More for his Latin text 'Utopia'. It literally
translates as "no place", coming from the ("not") and τόπος
("place"), and meant any non-existent society, when 'described in
considerable detail'. However, in standard usage, the word's meaning
has shifted and now usually describes a non-existent society that is
intended to be viewed 'as considerably better' than contemporary
society.
In his original work, More carefully pointed out the similarity of the
word to 'eutopia', meaning "good place", from ("good" or "well") and
τόπος ("place"), which ostensibly would be the more appropriate term
for the concept in modern English. The pronunciations of 'eutopia' and
'utopia' in English are identical, which may have given rise to the
change in meaning. 'Dystopia', a term meaning "bad place" coined in
1868, draws on this latter meaning. The opposite of a utopia,
'dystopia' is a concept which surpassed 'utopia' in popularity in the
fictional literature from the 1950s onwards, chiefly because of the
impact of George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'.
In 1876, writer Charles Renouvier published a novel called 'Uchronia'
(French 'Uchronie'). The neologism, using 'chronos' instead of
'topos', has since been used to refer to non-existent idealized times
in fiction, such as Philip Roth's 'The Plot Against America' (2004)','
and Philip K. Dick's 'The Man in the High Castle' (1962)'.'
According to the 'Philosophical Dictionary', proto-utopian ideas begin
as early as the period of ancient Greece and Rome, medieval heretics,
peasant revolts and establish themselves in the period of the early
capitalism, reformation and Renaissance (Hus, Müntzer, More,
Campanella), democratic revolutions (Meslier, Morelly, Mably,
Winstanley, later Babeufists, Blanquists,) and in a period of
turbulent development of capitalism that highlighted antagonisms of
capitalist society (Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, Cabet, Lamennais,
Proudhon and their followers).
Definitions and interpretations
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Famous quotes from writers and characters about utopia:
* "There is nothing like a dream to create the future. Utopia to-day,
flesh and blood tomorrow." --Victor Hugo
* "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even
glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is
always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and,
seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of
Utopias." --Oscar Wilde
* "Utopias are often only premature truths." --Alphonse de Lamartine
* "None of the abstract concepts comes closer to fulfilled utopia than
that of eternal peace." --Theodor W. Adorno
* "I think that there is always a part of utopia in any romantic
relationship." --Pedro Almodovar
* "In ourselves alone the absolute light keeps shining, a sigillum
falsi et sui, mortis et vitae aeternae [false signal and signal of
eternal life and death itself], and the fantastic move to it begins:
to the external interpretation of the daydream, the cosmic
manipulation of a concept that is utopian in principle." --Ernst Bloch
* "When I die, I want to die in a Utopia that I have helped to build."
--Henry Kuttner
* "A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously
doubt that if these [United] States should either be wholly disunited,
or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which
they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with
each other." --Alexander Hamilton, 'Federalist' No. 6.
*"We are all utopians, so soon as we wish for something different." -
Henri Lefebvre
*"Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions,
every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been
labeled Utopian." -Emma Goldman
Utopian socialist Étienne Cabet in his utopian book 'The Voyage to
Icaria' cited the definition from the contemporary 'Dictionary of
ethical and political sciences':
Marx and Engels used the word "utopia" to denote unscientific social
theories.
Philosopher Slavoj Žižek told about utopia:
Philosopher Milan Šimečka said:
Philosopher Richard Stahel said:
Varieties
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Chronologically, the first recorded Utopian proposal is Plato's
'Republic'. Part conversation, part fictional depiction and part
policy proposal, the 'Republic' sets out a system that would
categorize citizens into a rigid class structure of "golden",
"silver", "bronze" and "iron" socioeconomic classes. The golden
citizens are trained in a rigorous 50-year-long educational program to
be benign oligarchs, the "philosopher-kings". Plato stressed this
structure many times in statements, and in the 'Republic' and other
published works. The wisdom of these rulers will supposedly eliminate
poverty and deprivation through fairly distributed resources, though
the details on how to do this are unclear. The educational program for
the rulers is the central notion of the proposal. It has few laws, no
lawyers and rarely sends its citizens to war but hires mercenaries
from among its war-prone neighbors. These mercenaries were
deliberately sent into dangerous situations in the hope that the more
warlike populations of all surrounding countries will be weeded out,
leaving peaceful peoples to remain.
During the 16th century, Thomas More's book 'Utopia' proposed an ideal
society of the same name. Utopian socialists and other readers accept
this imaginary society as the realistic blueprint for a working
nation, while others have postulated that Thomas More intended nothing
of the sort. Some say More's 'Utopia' functions only on the level of a
satire, a work intended to reveal more about the England of his time
than about an idealistic society. This interpretation is bolstered by
the title of the book and nation and its apparent confusion between
the Greek for "no place" and "good place": "utopia" is a compound of
the syllable ou-, meaning "no" and topos, meaning place. But the
homophonic prefix eu-, meaning "good", also resonates in the word,
with the implication that the perfectly "good place" is really "no
place".
Mythical and religious utopias
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In many cultures, societies, and religions, there is some myth or
memory of a distant past when humankind lived in a primitive and
simple state but at the same time one of perfect happiness and
fulfillment. In those days, the various myths tell us, there was an
instinctive harmony between humanity and nature. People's needs were
few and their desires limited. Both were easily satisfied by the
abundance provided by nature. Accordingly, there were no motives
whatsoever for war or oppression. Nor was there any need for hard and
painful work. Humans were simple and pious and felt themselves close
to their God or gods. According to one anthropological theory,
hunter-gatherers were the original affluent society.
These mythical or religious archetypes are inscribed in many cultures
and resurge with special vitality when people are in difficult and
critical times. However, in utopias, the projection of the myth does
not take place towards the remote past but either towards the future
or towards distant and fictional places, imagining that at some time
in the future, at some point in space, or beyond death, there must
exist the possibility of living happily.
In the United States and Europe, during the Second Great Awakening
(ca. 1790-1840) and thereafter, many radical religious groups formed
utopian societies in which faith could govern all aspects of members'
lives. These utopian societies included the Shakers, who originated in
England in the 18th century and arrived in America in 1774. A number
of religious utopian societies from Europe came to the United States
in the 18th and 19th centuries, including the Society of the Woman in
the Wilderness (led by Johannes Kelpius (1667-1708), the Ephrata
Cloister (established in 1732) and the Harmony Society, among others.
The Harmony Society was a Christian theosophy and pietist group
founded in Iptingen, Germany, in 1785. Due to religious persecution by
the Lutheran Church and the government in Württemberg, the society
moved to the United States on October 7, 1803, settling in
Pennsylvania. On February 15, 1805, about 400 followers formally
organized the Harmony Society, placing all their goods in common. The
group lasted until 1905, making it one of the longest-running
financially successful communes in American history.
The Oneida Community, founded by John Humphrey Noyes in Oneida, New
York, was a utopian religious commune that lasted from 1848 to 1881.
Although this utopian experiment has become better known today for its
manufacture of Oneida silverware, it was one of the longest-running
communes in American history. The Amana Colonies were communal
settlements in Iowa, started by radical German pietists, which lasted
from 1855 to 1932. The Amana Corporation, manufacturer of
refrigerators and household appliances, was originally started by the
group. Other examples are Fountain Grove (founded in 1875), Riker's
Holy City and other Californian utopian colonies between 1855 and 1955
(Hine), as well as Sointula in British Columbia, Canada. The Amish and
Hutterites can also be considered an attempt towards religious utopia.
A wide variety of intentional communities with some type of
faith-based ideas have also started across the world.
Anthropologist Richard Sosis examined 200 communes in the 19th-century
United States, both religious and secular (mostly utopian socialist).
39 percent of the religious communes were still functioning 20 years
after their founding while only 6 percent of the secular communes
were. The number of costly sacrifices that a religious commune
demanded from its members had a linear effect on its longevity, while
in secular communes demands for costly sacrifices did not correlate
with longevity and the majority of the secular communes failed within
8 years. Sosis cites anthropologist Roy Rappaport in arguing that
rituals and laws are more effective when sacralized. Social
psychologist Jonathan Haidt cites Sosis's research in his 2012 book
'The Righteous Mind' as the best evidence that religion is an adaptive
solution to the free-rider problem by enabling cooperation without
kinship. Evolutionary medicine researcher Randolph M. Nesse and
theoretical biologist Mary Jane West-Eberhard have argued instead that
because humans with altruistic tendencies are preferred as social
partners they receive fitness advantages by social selection, with
Nesse arguing further that social selection enabled humans as a
species to become extraordinarily cooperative and capable of creating
culture.
Golden Age
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The Greek poet Hesiod, around the 8th century BC, in his compilation
of the mythological tradition (the poem 'Works and Days'), explained
that, prior to the present era, there were four other progressively
less perfect ones, the oldest of which was the Golden Age.
Scheria
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Perhaps the oldest Utopia of which we know, as pointed out many years
ago by Moses Finley, is Homer's Scheria, island of the Phaeacians. A
mythical place, often equated with classical Corcyra, (modern
Corfu/Kerkyra), where Odysseus was washed ashore after 10 years of
storm-tossed wandering and escorted to the King's palace by his
daughter Nausicaa. With stout walls, a stone temple and good harbours,
it is perhaps the 'ideal' Greek colony, a model for those founded from
the middle of the 8th Century onward. A land of plenty, home to expert
mariners (with the self-navigating ships), and skilled craftswomen who
live in peace under their king's rule and fear no strangers.
Plutarch, the Greek historian and biographer of the 1st century, dealt
with the blissful and mythic past of humanity.
Arcadia
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From Sir Philip Sidney's prose romance 'The Old Arcadia' (1580),
originally a region in the Peloponnesus, Arcadia became a synonym for
any rural area that serves as a pastoral setting, a 'locus amoenus'
("delightful place").
The Biblical Garden of Eden
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According to the exegesis that the biblical theologian Herbert Haag
proposes in the book 'Is original sin in Scripture?', published soon
after the Second Vatican Council, Genesis 2:25 would indicate that
Adam and Eve were created from the beginning naked of the divine
grace, an originary grace that, then, they would never have had and
even less would have lost due to the subsequent events narrated. On
the other hand, while supporting a continuity in the Bible about the
absence of preternatural gifts () with regard to the ophitic event,
Haag never makes any reference to the discontinuity of the loss of
access to the tree of life.
The Land of Cockaigne
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The Land of Cockaigne (also Cockaygne, Cokaygne), was an imaginary
land of idleness and luxury, famous in medieval stories and the
subject of several poems, one of which, an early translation of a
13th-century French work, is given in George Ellis' 'Specimens of
Early English Poets'. In this, "the houses were made of barley sugar
and cakes, the streets were paved with pastry and the shops supplied
goods for nothing." London has been so called (see Cockney) but
Boileau applies the same to Paris. Schlaraffenland is an analogous
German tradition. All these myths also express some hope that the
idyllic state of affairs they describe is not irretrievably and
irrevocably lost to mankind, that it can be regained in some way or
other.
One way might be a quest for an "earthly paradise" - a place like
Shangri-La, hidden in the Tibetan mountains and described by James
Hilton in his utopian novel 'Lost Horizon' (1933). Christopher
Columbus followed directly in this tradition in his belief that he had
found the Garden of Eden when, towards the end of the 15th century, he
first encountered the New World and its indigenous inhabitants.
The Peach Blossom Spring
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The 'Peach Blossom Spring' (), a prose piece written by the Chinese
poet Tao Yuanming in 421 CE, describes a utopian place. The narrative
goes that a fisherman from Wuling sailed upstream a river and came
across a beautiful blossoming peach grove and lush green fields
covered with blossom petals. Entranced by the beauty, he continued
upstream and stumbled onto a small grotto when he reached the end of
the river. Though narrow at first, he was able to squeeze through the
passage and discovered an ethereal utopia, where the people led an
ideal existence in harmony with nature. He saw a vast expanse of
fertile lands, clear ponds, mulberry trees, bamboo groves and the like
with a community of people of all ages and houses in neat rows. The
people explained that their ancestors escaped to this place during the
civil unrest of the Qin dynasty and they themselves had not left since
or had contact with anyone from the outside. They had not even heard
of the later dynasties of bygone times or the then-current Jin
dynasty. In the story, the community was secluded and unaffected by
the troubles of the outside world.
The sense of timelessness was predominant in the story as a perfect
utopian community remains unchanged, that is, it had no decline nor
the need to improve. Eventually, the Chinese term 'Peach Blossom
Spring' came to be synonymous for the concept of utopia.
Datong
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Datong() is a traditional Chinese Utopia. The main description of it
is found in the Chinese Classic of Rites, in the chapter called "Li
Yun"(). Later, Datong and its ideal of 'The World Belongs to
Everyone/The World is Held in Common' Tianxia weigong() influenced
modern Chinese reformers and revolutionaries, such as Kang Youwei.
Ketumati
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It is said, once Maitreya is reborn into the future kingdom of
Ketumati, a utopian age will commence. The city is described in
Buddhism as a domain filled with palaces made of gems and surrounded
by Kalpavriksha trees producing goods. During its years, none of the
inhabitants of Jambudvipa will need to take part in cultivation and
hunger will no longer exist.
Modern utopias
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In the 21st century, discussions around utopia for some authors
include post-scarcity economics, late capitalism, and universal basic
income; for example, the "human capitalism" utopia envisioned in
'Utopia for Realists' (Rutger Bregman 2016) includes a universal basic
income and a 15-hour workweek, along with open borders.
Scandinavian nations, which as of 2019 ranked at the top of the World
Happiness Report, are sometimes cited as modern utopias. But British
author Michael Booth called that a myth and wrote the 2014 book The
Almost Nearly Perfect People about life in the Nordic countries.
Social and economic utopias
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Particularly in the early 19th century, several utopian ideas arose,
often in response to the belief that social disruption was created and
caused by the development of commercialism and capitalism and
"revulsion against urban industrialism." These ideas are often
grouped in a greater "utopian socialist" movement, due to their shared
characteristics. A once common characteristic is an egalitarian
distribution of goods, frequently with the total abolition of money.
Citizens only do work which they enjoy and which is for the common
good, leaving them with ample time for the cultivation of the arts and
sciences.
One classic example of such a utopia appears in Edward Bellamy's 1888
novel 'Looking Backward'. William Morris depicts another socialist
utopia in his 1890 novel 'News from Nowhere', written partially in
response to the top-down (bureaucratic) nature of Bellamy's utopia,
which Morris criticized. However, as the socialist movement developed,
it moved away from utopianism; Marx in particular became a harsh
critic of earlier socialism which he negatively characterized as
"utopian". (For more information, see the History of Socialism
article.) In a materialist utopian society, the economy is perfect;
there is no inflation and only perfect social and financial equality
exists.
Edward Gibbon Wakefield's utopian theorizing on systematic colonial
settlement policy in the early-19th century also centred on economic
considerations, but with a view to preserving class distinctions;
Wakefield influenced several colonies founded in New Zealand and
Australia in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s.
In 1905, H. G. Wells published 'A Modern Utopia', which was widely
read and admired and provoked much discussion.
Part of Eric Frank Russell's book 'The Great Explosion' (1963) details
an economic and social utopia. This book was the first to mention the
idea of Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS).
The utopias created by Soviet authors, especially during the
Khrushchev Thaw era, were simultaneously social and technological,
depicting a communist society of the future underpinned by the
advanced technology and featuring both a new person and new
socio-economical institutions. Ivan Efremov's 'Andromeda' was the key
text of this genre in which the boundaries of humanity are
transcended. Later works by Strugatsky Brothers including 'Noon: 22nd
Century', are more ambivalent and their utopian future is a
distillation of whatever is best in today's humanity. Soviet utopian
works were influenced by the utopian socialism and the concept of
noosphere.
Science and technology
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Though Francis Bacon's 'New Atlantis' is imbued with a scientific
spirit, scientific and technological utopias tend to be based in the
future, when it is believed that advanced science and technology will
allow utopian living standards; for example, the absence of death and
suffering; changes in human nature and the human condition. Technology
has affected the way humans have lived to such an extent that normal
functions, like sleep, eating or even reproduction, have been replaced
by artificial means. Other examples include a society where humans
have struck a balance with technology and it is merely used to enhance
the human living condition (e.g. 'Star Trek'). In place of the static
perfection of a utopia, libertarian transhumanists envision an
"extropia", an open, evolving society allowing individuals and
voluntary groupings to form the institutions and social forms they
prefer.
Mariah Utsawa presented a theoretical basis for technological
utopianism and set out to develop a variety of technologies ranging
from maps to designs for cars and houses which might lead to the
development of such a utopia. In his book 'Deep Utopia: Life and
Meaning in a Solved World', philosopher Nick Bostrom explores what to
do in a "solved world", assuming that human civilization safely builds
machine superintelligence and manages to solve its political,
coordination and fairness problems. He outlines some technologies
considered physically possible at technological maturity, such as
cognitive enhancement, reversal of aging, self-replicating
spacecrafts, arbitrary sensory inputs (taste, sound...), or the
precise control of motivation, mood, well-being and personality.
One notable example of a technological and libertarian socialist
utopia is Scottish author Iain Banks' Culture.
Opposing this optimistic perspective are scenarios where advanced
science and technology will, through deliberate misuse or accident,
cause environmental damage or even humanity's extinction. Critics,
such as Jacques Ellul and Timothy Mitchell advocate precautions
against the premature embrace of new technologies. Both raise
questions about changing responsibility and freedom brought by
division of labour. Authors such as John Zerzan and Derrick Jensen
consider that modern technology is progressively depriving humans of
their autonomy and advocate the collapse of the industrial
civilization, in favor of small-scale organization, as a necessary
path to avoid the threat of technology on human freedom and
sustainability.
There are many examples of techno-dystopias portrayed in mainstream
culture, such as the classics 'Brave New World' and 'Nineteen
Eighty-Four,' often published as "1984", which have explored some of
these topics.
Ecological
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Ecological utopian society describes new ways in which society should
relate to nature. 'Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William
Weston' from 1975 by Ernest Callenbach was one of the first
influential ecological utopian novels. Richard Grove's book 'Green
Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins
of Environmentalism 1600-1860' from 1995 suggested the roots of
ecological utopian thinking. Grove's book sees early environmentalism
as a result of the impact of utopian tropical islands on European
data-driven scientists. The works on ecological eutopia perceive a
widening gap between the modern Western way of living that destroys
nature and a more traditional way of living before industrialization.
Ecological utopias may advocate a society that is more sustainable.
According to the Dutch philosopher Marius de Geus, ecological utopias
could be inspirational sources for movements involving green politics.
Feminism
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Utopias have been used to explore the ramifications of genders being
either a societal construct or a biologically "hard-wired" imperative
or some mix of the two. Socialist and economic utopias have tended to
take the "woman question" seriously and often to offer some form of
equality between the sexes as part and parcel of their vision, whether
this be by addressing misogyny, reorganizing society along separatist
lines, creating a certain kind of androgynous equality that ignores
gender or in some other manner. For example, Edward Bellamy's 'Looking
Backward' (1887) responded, progressively for his day, to the
contemporary women's suffrage and women's rights movements. Bellamy
supported these movements by incorporating the equality of women and
men into his utopian world's structure, albeit by consigning women to
a separate sphere of light industrial activity (due to women's lesser
physical strength) and making various exceptions for them in order to
make room for (and to praise) motherhood. One of the earlier feminist
utopias that imagines complete separatism is Charlotte Perkins
Gilman's 'Herland' (1915).
In science fiction and technological speculation, gender can be
challenged on the biological as well as the social level. Marge
Piercy's 'Woman on the Edge of Time' portrays equality between the
genders and complete equality in sexuality (regardless of the gender
of the lovers). Birth-giving, often felt as the divider that cannot be
avoided in discussions of women's rights and roles, has been shifted
onto elaborate biological machinery that functions to offer an
enriched embryonic experience. When a child is born, it spends most of
its time in the children's ward with peers. Three "mothers" per child
are the norm and they are chosen in a gender neutral way (men as well
as women may become "mothers") on the basis of their experience and
ability. Technological advances also make possible the freeing of
women from childbearing in Shulamith Firestone's 'The Dialectic of
Sex'. The fictional aliens in Mary Gentle's 'Golden Witchbreed' start
out as gender-neutral children and do not develop into men and women
until puberty and gender has no bearing on social roles. In contrast,
Doris Lessing's 'The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five'
(1980) suggests that men's and women's values are inherent to the
sexes and cannot be changed, making a compromise between them
essential. In 'My Own Utopia' (1961) by Elizabeth Mann Borghese,
gender exists but is dependent upon age rather than sex - genderless
children mature into women, some of whom eventually become men.
"William Marston's Wonder Woman comics of the 1940s featured Paradise
Island, also known as Themyscira, a matriarchal all-female community
of peace, loving submission, bondage and giant space kangaroos."
Utopian single-gender worlds or single-sex societies have long been
one of the primary ways to explore implications of gender and
gender-differences. In speculative fiction, female-only worlds have
been imagined to come about by the action of disease that wipes out
men, along with the development of technological or mystical method
that allow female parthenogenic reproduction. Charlotte Perkins
Gilman's 1915 novel approaches this type of separate society. Many
feminist utopias pondering separatism were written in the 1970s, as a
response to the Lesbian separatist movement; examples include Joanna
Russ's 'The Female Man' and Suzy McKee Charnas's 'Walk to the End of
the World' and 'Motherlines'. Utopias imagined by male authors have
often included equality between sexes, rather than separation,
although as noted Bellamy's strategy includes a certain amount of
"separate but equal". The use of female-only worlds allows the
exploration of female independence and freedom from patriarchy. The
societies may be lesbian, such as 'Daughters of a Coral Dawn' by
Katherine V. Forrest or not, and may not be sexual at all - a famous
early sexless example being 'Herland' (1915) by Charlotte Perkins
Gilman. Charlene Ball writes in 'Women's Studies Encyclopedia' that
use of speculative fiction to explore gender roles in future societies
has been more common in the United States compared to Europe and
elsewhere, although such efforts as Gerd Brantenberg's 'Egalia's
Daughters' and Christa Wolf's portrayal of the land of Colchis in her
'Medea: Voices 'are certainly as influential and famous as any of the
American feminist utopias.
Intentional communities and experimental living
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The English political philosopher James Harrington (1611-1677), author
of the utopian work 'The Commonwealth of Oceana', published in 1656,
inspired English country-party republicanism (1680s to 1740s) and
became influential in the design of three American colonies. His
theories ultimately contributed to the idealistic principles of the
American Founders. The colonies of Carolina (founded in 1670),
Pennsylvania (founded in 1681), and Georgia (founded in 1733) were the
only three English colonies in America that were planned as utopian
societies with an integrated physical, economic and social design. At
the heart of the plan for Georgia was a concept of "agrarian equality"
in which land was allocated equally and additional land acquisition
through purchase or inheritance was prohibited; the plan was an early
step toward the yeoman republic later envisioned by Thomas Jefferson.
The communes of the 1960s in the United States often represented an
attempt to greatly improve the way humans live together in
communities. The back-to-the-land movements and hippies inspired many
to try to live in peace and harmony on farms or in remote areas and to
set up new types of governance. Communes like Kaliflower, which
existed between 1967 and 1973, attempted to live outside of society's
norms and to create their own ideal communalist society.
People all over the world organized and built intentional communities
with the hope of developing a better way of living together. Many of
these intentional communities are relatively small, with populations
close to 100. While many of these small communities failed, some are
still in existence. The religion-based Twelve Tribes, which started in
the United States in 1972, grew into many groups around the world.
Similarly, the commune Brook Farm was established in 1841, founded by
Charles Fourier's visions of Utopia. Its residents attempted to
recreate Fourier's idea of the Phalanx, a central building in a
society. However, this commune did not sustain itself and ended after
only six years of operation. Its residents wanted to keep it going but
could not primarily due to financial difficulties. The community's
goal aligned with utopian ideals of leading a more wholesome and
simpler life and avoiding the atmosphere of social pressure in the
surrounding society at the time. Despite ambition and hopes, it is
difficult for communes to stay in operation.
Walter Elias Disney's original EPCOT (concept) (Experimental Prototype
Community of Tomorrow), Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti, Everyday Utopias by
Davina Cooper, and Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Neom are
examples of Utopian city design.
Critical Utopia
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Critical utopia is a theory conceptualised by literary theorist Tom
Moylan. In contrast with utopianism, critical utopia rejects utopia.
The idea is highly self-referential and uses the idea of utopia to
advance society while critiquing it simultaneously. A problem with
utopianism is identified: it has limitations since the imagined utopia
is significantly distant from current society. Utopia also fails to
acknowledge the differences between people that result in differences
in experience. Moylan explains that "[critical utopias] ultimately
refer to something other than a predictable alternative paradigm, for
at their core they identify self-critical utopian discourse itself as
a process that can tear apart the dominant ideological web. Here,
then, critical utopian discourse becomes a seditious expression of
social change and popular sovereignty carried on in a permanently open
process of envisioning what is not yet."
Cultural legacy
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By one count, more than 400 utopian works in the English language were
published prior to the year 1900, and over a thousand during the 20th
century.
Several plays and films also present utopian visions. The 1937 film
'Lost Horizon', the 1954 nudist film 'Garden of Eden', and the 1984
film 'The Other Side of the Horizon' portray utopian communities.
'They Came to a City', a 1944 British science fiction film, was
adapted from the 1943 play of the same title written by J. B.
Priestley. It portrays the arrival of nine Britons in a mysterious
city that to some is a utopia; to others not so much. The 2024 Francis
Ford Coppolla film 'Megalopolis' considers the obstacles faced by an
architect who wants to found a utopian community in an alternate
future U.S.A. under a corrupt emperor.
See also
======================================================================
*List of utopian literature
*New world order (Baháʼí)
*Nutopia
*Utopia (disambiguation)
*'Utopia for Realists'
*Utopian and dystopian fiction
*List of intentional communities
*Zootopia
Notes
======================================================================
; Bundled references
References
======================================================================
*
[
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo130984902.html
Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement]
(2022) by Victoria Wolcott
* 'Utopia: Music album' (2023), by Travis Scott.
* 'Utopia: The History of an Idea' (2020), by Gregory Claeys. London:
Thames & Hudson.
*'Two Kinds of Utopia', (1912) by Vladimir Lenin.
*'Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science' (1870?) by
Friedrich Engels.
*'Ideology and Utopia: an Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge'
(1936), by Karl Mannheim, translated by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils.
New York, Harcourt, Brace. See original, 'Ideologie Und Utopie', Bonn:
Cohen.
* 'History and Utopia' (1960), by Emil Cioran.
*'Utopian Thought in the Western World' (1979), by Frank E. Manuel
& Fritzie Manuel. Oxford: Blackwell.
*'California's Utopian Colonies' (1983), by Robert V. Hine. University
of California Press.
*'The Principle of Hope' (1986), by Ernst Bloch. See original,
1937-41, 'Das Prinzip Hoffnung'
*'Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination'
(1986) by Tom Moylan. London: Methuen, 1986.
*'Utopia and Anti-utopia in Modern Times' (1987), by Krishnan Kumar.
Oxford: Blackwell.
*'The Concept of Utopia' (1990), by Ruth Levitas. London: Allan.
*'Utopianism' (1991), by Krishnan Kumar. Milton Keynes: Open
University Press.
*'La storia delle utopie' (1996), by Massimo Baldini. Roma: Armando.
*'The Utopia Reader' (1999), edited by Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower
Sargent. New York: New York University Press.
*'Spirit of Utopia' (2000), by Ernst Bloch. See original, 'Geist Der
Utopie', 1923.
*'Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other
Science Fictions' (2005) by Fredric Jameson. London: Verso.
*'Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction' (2010), by Lyman Tower
Sargent. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
*'Defined by a Hollow: Essays on Utopia, Science Fiction and Political
Epistemology' (2010) by Darko Suvin. Frankfurt am Main, Oxford and
Bern: Peter Lang.
*'[
https://www.amazon.com/Existential-Utopia-Perspectives-Utopian-Thought/dp/1441169210
Existential Utopia: New Perspectives on Utopian Thought]' (2011),
edited by Patricia Vieira and Michael Marder. London & New York:
Continuum.
*"Galt's Gulch: Ayn Rand's Utopian Delusion" (2012), by Alan Clardy.
'Utopian Studies' 23, 238-262.
*'The Nationality of Utopia: H. G. Wells, England, and the World
State' (2020), by Maxim Shadurski. New York and London: Routledge.
*'[
http://hdl.handle.net/11331/1995 Utopia as a World Model: The
Boundaries and Borderlands of a Literary Phenomenon]' (2016), by Maxim
Shadurski. Siedlce: IKR[i]BL. .
*'An Ecotopian Lexicon' (2019), edited by Matthew Schneider-Mayerson
and Brent Ryan Bellamy. University of Minnesota Press. .
External links
======================================================================
*
* [
http://www.bartleby.com/65/ut/Utopia.html Utopia - The Columbia
Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001]
* [
http://www.ic.org Intentional Communities Directory]
* [
http://www.utopias.info History of 15 Finnish] utopian settlements
in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe.
* [
http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/utopia/utopia.html
Utopias] - a learning resource from the British Library
*
[
https://web.archive.org/web/20090205225945/http://scatolini.net/G.2009.art.01_SCATOLINI_EhudBenZVI_Utopia-and-Dystopia-in-Prophetic-Literature.pdf
Review of Ehud Ben ZVI, Ed. (2006). Utopia and Dystopia in Prophetic
Literature. Helsinki: The Finnish Exegetical Society.] A collection of
articles on the issue of utopia and dystopia.
* [
https://archive.org/details/storyutopias00mumfgoog The story of
Utopias] Mumford, Lewis
*[
http://utopian-studies.org./] North America
*[
http://www.utopianstudieseurope.org/] Europe
*[
http://www.psupress.org/journals/jnls_utopian_studies.html 'Utopian
Studies'] academic journal
*
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