Utopia: Definitions and Shifts in Meaning
Explicitly utopian texts like Thomas More’s original Utopia only scratch the surface of this world of ideas and practices, which include imagining perfected societies or golden ages (or the dystopic results of such visions and attempts); creating alternative and experimental “intentional communities”; building political, social, cultural, and religious movements; but also the huge variety of everyday practices that challenge the conditions of the present with what a philosopher of utopia has famously called the “utopian impulse”—including in popular culture, literature, art, architecture, music, advertising, consumption, and more. Utopia is global also in involving the movement of people, ideas, and goods across many boundaries; envisioning a transformed “new world”; challenging (or idealizing) global systems such as colonialism; and offering local alternatives to globalizing structures and relationships.
-from the Global Utopias website
Utopia Definitions
From online Oxford English Dictionary:
1.
- With capital initial. An imaginary island in Sir Thomas More's Utopia (1516), presented by the narrator as having a perfect social, legal, and political system.
- With capital initial. Any imaginary or mythical place (without implication of perfection), imagined as existing in some remote location on earth.
2.
a. An imagined or hypothetical place, system, or state of existence in which everything is perfect, esp. in respect of social structure, laws, and politics.
b. A real place which is perceived or imagined as perfect.
3. A written work (now esp. a fictional narrative) about an ideal society, place, or state of existence.
4. A plan for or vision of an ideal society, place, or state of existence, esp. one that is impossible to realize; a fantasy, a dream.
Further Definitions and Conceptions of Utopia
“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.”
--Oscar Wilde, “Soul of Man under Socialism,” 1891
Utopia “ventures beyond” the “darkness” of the present, discovering not the “impossible” but the “not-yet.”
--Ernst Bloch, Principle of Hope
“Ramarajya, the Kingdom of God, the sovereignty of the people based on pure moral authority.” “Whether Rama of my imagination ever lived or not on this earth, the ancient ideal of Ramarajya is undoubtedly one of true democracy.”
--Mahatma Ghandi
Utopia is “the determined negation of that which merely is,” pointing “to what should be.”
--Theodor Adorno
Utopia is “not a floor-plan” of the future, but a “source of disruption” of the present.
--Fredric Jameson, Archeologies of the Future
“Utopia is most authentic when we cannot imagine it,” for we are “imprisoned in a non-utopian present.”
--Jameson
Utopia is a “desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present,” “to feel that this world is not enough,” to “disrupt the tyranny of the now,” to feel “an openness” to possibilities that are still hard to imagine.
--José Muñoz, Cruising Utopia
Utopia challenges “straight time”: history as linear, with “no future but the here and now of our everyday life.”
--Muñoz
Helpful Reference Sources
- New Dictionary of the History of Ideas byCall Number: 903 ONLINEISBN: 0684313774Publication Date: 2005Online version of the 6 volume original.
Searching for Utopia by ISBN: 0500251746Publication Date: 2011"Explores the quest for a utopian society throughout history, including examinations of the catalysts that have served as inspiration, and how the search for a utopia by developed countries has hurt third-world countries" (from WorldCat).
Utopia - Dystopia by ISBN: 0691146985Publication Date: 2010-09-12"The concepts of utopia and dystopia have received much historical attention. Utopias have traditionally signified the ideal future: large-scale social, political, ethical, and religious spaces that have yet to be realized. Utopia/Dystopia offers a fresh approach to these ideas. Rather than locate utopias in grandiose programs of future totality, the book treats these concepts as historically grounded categories and examines how individuals and groups throughout time have interpreted utopian visions in their daily present, with an eye toward the future" (from WorldCat).
Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction by ISBN: 0199573409Publication Date: 2010-10-21"One of the leading scholars in the field of utopian studies examines utopianism and its history" (publisher description).Utopian Thought in the Western World by
ISBN: 0674931866Publication Date: 1982-09-15"This masterly study has a grand sweep. It ranges over centuries, with a long look backward over several millennia. Yet the history it unfolds is primarily the story of individuals: thinkers and dreamers who envisaged an ideal social order and described it persuasively, leaving a mark on their own and later times. The roster of utopians includes men of all stripes in different countries and eras--figures as disparate as More and Fourier, the Marquis de Sade and Edward Bellamy, Rousseau and Marx. Fascinating character studies of the major figures are among the delights of the book. Utopian writings run the gamut from fictional narratives to theoretical treatises, from political manifestos to constitutions for a new society. The Manuels have structured five centuries of utopian invention by identifying successive constellations, groups of thinkers joined by common social and moral concerns. Within this framework they analyze individual writings, in the context of the author's life and of the socio-economic, religious, and political exigencies of his time. Concentrating on innovative works, they highlight disjuncture's as well as continuities in utopian thought from the Renaissance through the twentieth century. Witty and erudite, challenging in its interpretations and provocative in the questions it poses, the Manuels' anatomy of utopia is an adventure in ideas" (from WorldCat).
The Utopia Reader by ISBN: 0814715710Publication Date: 1999"Utopian literature has given voice to the hopes and fears of the human race from its earliest days to the present. This book encompasses the spectrum and history of utopian writing - from Old Testament and Plato's Republic, to Sir Thomas More's Utopia and George Orwell's twentieth century dystopia, Nineteen Eighty-Four, through to the present day" (from WorldCat record).
