INtroduction: Unsettling Hope
and Re-articulating Utopia
Karl Hardy
Thomas More published Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo
rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia in 1516. With that fictional work, More
created the word “utopia” as a pun taken from a combination of Greek words.1 More’s
literary Utopia is widely recognized as the genesis of a distinct literary tradition, and
has inspired scholars to engage in a relatively small but growing body of utopian
studies academic literature.
Translated as “the good/no place” or “the good place that is no place,” the very
concept of utopia evoked ambiguity from the start. According to Lyman Tower
Sargent, expressions of utopianism ought to be recognized in three distinct forms or
“faces”: utopian literature, the communitarian tradition, and utopian social theory.2 It
follows that both informal and academic notions of utopia have evolved divergently to
alternately signify ideas of hope, idealism, perfection, totalitarianism, impossibility,
frivolity, and so forth.3 For his part, Sargent has defined utopia rather broadly as
“social dreaming,” while Ruth Levitas has proposed “expressions of desire for a better
way of being.” These definitions are predicated upon a notion of dynamism across
1 Manuel and Manuel write, “[More] combined the Greek ou, used to express a general
negative and transliterated into the Latin u, with the Greek topos, place or region, to build
Utopia. In the playful printed matter prefixed to the body of the book the poet laureate of
the island, in a brief self-congratulatory poem written in the Utopian tongue, claimed that
his country deserved to be called “Eutopia” with an eu, which in Greek connoted a broad
spectrum of positive attributes from good through ideal, prosperous, and perfect.” From
Frank E. and Fritzie P. Manuel. Utopian Thought in the Western World. (Cambridge: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 1979),1.
2 Lyman Tower Sargent.”The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited.” Utopian Studies 5:1
(1994): 1-36.
3 Sargent, Ruth Levitas, and Lucy Sargisson (among others) point to Karl Popper’s The Open
Society and its Enemies (1962) as having substantially contributed to the linking of utopianism
with totalitarianism, especially within scholarly discourse.
36
Introduction Karl Hardy
the faces of utopianism in keeping with the context of their emergence. For example,
the literary utopian tradition has undergone and continues to undergo substantial
evolution, including a contemporary turn towards dystopia, reflecting a bleak contemporary outlook on both the present and prospects for the future. Ultimately, the
project of (re)conceptualizing utopia in its various manifestations has itself been a
significant focus of utopian studies, and also merits the attention of literary scholars
and creative writers.4
A case in point, Krishan Kumar has argued for a differentiation between “utopia
proper, the modern utopia that was invented in Europe in the sixteenth century,”
and those social dreamings or expressions of desire for a better way of being which
emerge from outside of the West.5 The use of the category “West” is itself problematic, suggesting homogeneity where there is certainly variety, but for our purposes
it is intended to distinguish between those expressions of utopianism which may be
recognized as from within a modern Euro-American lineage, and those from without.
Of course, how utopia is conceived has significant bearing upon ongoing debates
regarding questions of postcolonial and “non-Western” utopias.6 Indeed, some utopian
scholars point to somewhat broadly conceived categories of antecedents to More’s
invention of utopia. Among them are the Golden Age, the Land of Cockaigne, the
Ideal City, and the Millennium. For some, these may be observed as proto-utopias and
can be found, in one instantiation or another, throughout human cultures. However,
Jacqueline Dutton has questioned whether utopia ought to be such an elastic and universalizing category, writing, “the concept of utopia may no longer be broad enough
4 See for example, Ruth Levitas’ The Concept of Utopia, Tom Moylan’s Demand the Impossible,
and Sargent’s “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited,” in which he writes, “…
utopian scholarship is in the state of most sciences in the Nineteenth Century when
better description was the basis of building toward more effective understandings of the
phenomena being studied. Equally important is that utopias, written in different times and
places, need to be understood both in their historical and linguistic context for what they
communicate to a contemporary reader.”
5 Krishan Kumar. Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times. (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1987),
32.
6 See Ralph Pordzik. The Quest for the Postcolonial Utopia: A Comparative Introduction to the
Utopian Novel in the New English Literatures. (Peter Lang Publishing, 2001).
37
Introduction Karl Hardy
to encompass the full scope of social dreamings. ‘Intercultural imaginaries of the
ideal’ may be a more appropriate and neutral term. . . . ”7
These are important considerations for the utopianisms of today. That is, attempts
at social dreaming to envision a better way of being must be critically evaluated; one
person’s utopia is too often another’s dystopia, whether it is a literary construction,
an intentional community, or otherwise. Thus, for utopia to contribute to the project
of making a better world, it must, as Levitas argues, remain enduringly dialogical,
provisional, and reflexive.8
In Levitas’ schema, utopia is understood as a method that serves two primary
functions. In the first, we come to denaturalize the status quo through a “cognitive
estrangement,” a notion with roots in the scholarship of Darko Suvin. This estrangement allows for a critical perspective on “what is.” However, for Levitas, it is in a
secondary function, the “what ought be” proposition and its subjection to judgment,
where we find the potential for a utopian method’s radical accountability. The
simultaneous critiques of “what is” and the utopian proposal of “what ought be” result
in a subsequent modification of the articulation of utopia. This is evocative of Ernst
Bloch’s conception of “docta spes” or educated hope, animating an anticipatory as
opposed to compensatory hope that strives towards a utopian horizon.9 This horizon
is approached, but continually redefined, and never arrived at. This dialogic of a
critically self-reflexive and processual utopian method can be traced throughout the
utopian literary tradition.
For example, the writings (and communitarian experiments) of Fourier, Owen,
Proudhon, and Saint-Simon emerged alongside Marx and Engels, whose polemics used “utopianism” as a pejorative term, characterizing it as detracting from the
seriousness of their revolutionary project. Furthermore, Edward Bellamy’s Looking
Backward was one of America’s most popular 19th century novels and provoked
7 Jacqueline Dutton. “’Non-western’ utopian traditions” in The Cambridge Companion to
Utopian Literature. (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 224.
8 Ruth Levitas. ‘The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society: Utopia as Method’, in Rafaella
Bacconlini & Tom Moylan (Eds.), Utopia, Method, Vision: The Use Value of Social Dreaming,
(Peter Lang, 2007), 47-68.
9 See Ernst Bloch. The Principle of Hope, 3 vols.: 1938–1947. (trans.: MIT Press, 1986).
38
Introduction Karl Hardy
Williams Morris’ well-respected News from Nowhere, both of which were clearly inspired
by Marxian society theory and socialist movements. These classic utopian works of
Bellamy and Morris inspired others to experiment and innovate not only with the literary
form, but also in organizing for a socialist future.
After the turn of the century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1915 feminist classic,
Herland, might be seen as having paved the way for the development of what Tom Moylan
has termed “critical utopias”—imperfect, incomplete, and non-totalizing propositions
exemplified, according to Moylan, in the works of Samuel Delany (Trouble on Triton),
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Dispossessed), Marge Piercy (Woman on the Edge of Time), and
Joanna Russ (The Female Man).10 These works explore considerations of gender, race, and
sexuality, among numerous other themes, reflecting the emergent concerns of the New
Left social movements.
More recently, we may observe a severe dystopian turn arguably provoked by Reaganism
and Margaret Thatcher’s infamous declaration that “there is no alternative.” The notion of a
closure, which might be associated with Fukuyama’s “end of history,” combined with seemingly
unending threats of war, environmental devastation, economic instability, and cultural disruptions have conspired to inspire the many literary dystopias of the past thirty-plus years.11 Of
course, dystopian representations are not limited to literature; unfortunately they have become
so prevalent as to effectively form their own sub-genre in film and television.
Still, while the criticality of dystopia has certainly provided much-needed warnings about
the trajectories we are on, Kim Stanley Robinson has argued,
[A]nyone can do a dystopia these days just by making a collage of newspaper
headlines, but utopias are hard, and important, because we need to imagine
what it might be like if we did things well enough to say to our kids, we did
our best, this is about as good as it was when it was handed to us, take care of
it and do better. [S]ome kind of narrative vision of what we’re trying for as a
civilization.12
10 See Tom Moylan. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination. New
York: Methuen, 1986.
11 Popular literary dystopias range from Octavia Butler’s critically-acclaimed The Parable of
the Sower and its sequel, The Parable of the Talents, to Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy to
the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.
12 Terry Bisson. “Galileo’s Dream: A Q & A with Kim Stanley Robinson.” Shareable. April
11, 2009. http://www.shareable.net/blog/galileos-dream
39
Introduction Karl Hardy
Creating contemporary utopian narratives appears as a particularly difficult yet
vitally necessary endeavor. That is, hopeful proposals are direly needed to inspire the
means of transcending a seemingly hopeless present. Yet, to return to Levitas’ notion
of an enduringly critically self-reflexive, dialogical, and provisional utopianism, the
ways in which previous utopias have naturalized dystopian realities for marginalized
groups must be addressed. For instance, the socialist utopias of Bellamy and Morris
naturalized, to varying degrees, hetero-patriarchy and racism, in their respective
failures to articulate critiques of those forms of oppression.
Today, the focus on the threats associated with climate change and global economic stagnation, as well as both ongoing and potential outbreaks of violence, has
the potential to obscure the particularities of social inequalities and their respective
intersections with ecological crisis. The experiences of Indigenous and other landbased peoples are especially vulnerable in this regard. In fact, one might argue that
the critical utopias referenced above by Delany, Le Guin, Piercy, and Russ contribute,
in varying degrees, to the naturalization of settler colonialism. As such, the growing
body of Indigenous critical theory and allied critiques of settler colonialism ought to
be of specific concern. Lorenzo Veracini defines settler colonialism thusly:
[W]hereas settler colonialism constitutes a circumstances where the colonising effort is exercised from within the bounds of a settler colonising political entity, colonialism is driven by an expanding metropole that remains
permanently distinct from it . . . as settlers, by definition, stay, in specific
contradistinction, colonial sojourners—administrators, missionaries, military personnel, entrepreneurs, and adventurers—return.13
This throws open the question of how the utopian traditions of settler
societies—including but not limited to the United States and Canada—themselves
ought to be understood as part of the project of naturalizing settler colonialism. That
is, the utopianism of settler societies must be accountable to anti-colonial critiques.
To fail to do so is to undermine the relevance of utopia as a contributor to the project
of making a better world or, at the least, it constrains the social dreaming of a better
way of being to an exclusive category.
13 Lorenzo Veracini. Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. (New York, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2010), 10.
40
Introduction Karl Hardy
This is not to say, however, that the concerns of Indigenous peoples or of settler
colonialism are to be the only focus of re-conceptualizing utopia—far from it. But
such issues cannot be ignored anymore than those of, for example, gender, race, or
sexuality in envisioning “what ought be.” Furthermore, there is a direct and unambiguous link between Kumar’s conceptualization of the modern utopian tradition and
settler colonialism.
More’s Utopia was clearly influenced by the contemporaneous published accounts
of Amerigo Vespucci’s explorations of the so-called “New World.”14 Moreover, the
novel’s narrator, Hythloday, recounts that the island “no place”—Utopia—was originally called “Abraxa” and was not an island at all. But after the King Utopus successfully invaded Abraxa and he “…brought its rude, uncouth inhabitants to… a high level
of culture and humanity,” Utopus ordered his own soldiers, alongside the conquered
natives, to separate the territory from the mainland by digging a channel 15 miles
wide to allow the sea to encircle the newly formed island.15 Hythloday also explains
the ideological basis for the Utopians’ colonial adventures:
[T]hey enroll citizens out of every city and plant a colony under their own
laws . . . wherever the natives have plenty of unoccupied and uncultivated
land. Those natives who want to live with the Utopians are adopted by
them. When such a merger occurs the two peoples gradually and easily
blend together, sharing the same way of life and customs, much to the advantage of both. For by their policies the Utopians make the land yield an
abundance for all, though previously it had seemed too poor and barren
even to support the natives. But those who refuse to live under their laws
they drive out of the land they claim for themselves and against those who
resist them, they wage war. They think it is perfectly justifiable to make
war on people who leave their land idle and waste yet forbid the use and
possession of it to others who by the law of nature, ought to be supported
from it.16
Antonis Balasopoulous has noted the trajectories of such utopian expansionism
and, referencing the work of Jeffrey Knapp, pointed to More’s Utopia as “perhaps
14 Thomas More. Utopia eds. George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 10.
15 More, Utopia, 42.
16 Ibid., 54.
41
Introduction Karl Hardy
the first Tudor attempt to elaborate a theory of colonization.”17 For Utopia plainly
articulates the colonial doctrines of terra nullius (“no man’s land), vacuum domicilium
(“unoccupied home”), and inane ac vacuum (“idle and waste”) which were used by
European powers to establish legalistic grounds, via the “law of nature” for expropriating the supposedly uninhabited land.
It follows then that More’s Utopia—the namesake of the utopian literary tradition and utopian studies—was realized via settler colonialism. In fact, nearly all of
the various expressions or “faces” of utopianism—from intentional communities to
radicalized politics—which emerge from such settler societies ought to be recognized
as being predicated upon and, therefore, implicated in the ongoing naturalization of
settler colonization. This resonates with Scott Morgensen’s contention that
“[s]ettler colonialism has conditioned not only Indigenous peoples and their lands
and the settler societies that occupy them, but all political, economic, and cultural
processes that those societies touch.”18
Clearly, recognition of settler colonialism’s contribution to and naturalization
within much of the modern utopian tradition is fundamental to engagement in an
ongoing project of ‘unsettling.’ Furthermore, the editors of the journal settler colonial
studies opine in their definition of “settler colonialism” that “[t]here is no such thing
as neo-settler colonialism or post-settler colonialism because settler colonialism is
a resilient formation that rarely ends.”19 Thus, it is apparent that use of the term
“post-colonial” is problematic for the utopianism of settler societies or the Indigenous
peoples who continue to experience settler colonial realities. This is to say that, in
such circumstances, there is a need for a differentiated form of utopianism: “[s]ettler
colonisation requires an imagination that is alternative from traditional accounts of
decolonizing passages.”20
17 Antonis Balasopoulous. “Unworldly Worldliness: America and the Trajectories of
Utopian Expansionism” Utopian Studies 15.2 (Spring 2004): 3-35.
18 Scott Lauria Morgensen. “The Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism: Right Here, Right
Now.”settler colonial studies 1.1 (2011): 53.
19 Edward Cavanagh and Lorenzo Veracini. “Definition.” settler colonial studies blog. 2010.
http://settlercolonialstudies.org/about-this-blog/
20 Veracini, Settler Colonialism, 114.
42
Introduction Karl Hardy
Here we might look to what Andrea Smith calls a strategy or politics of “rearticulation.”21 For Smith, this involves rejecting a “politics of inclusion that seeks to
include a marginalized voice within a pre-established politics or discourse” in favor
of a processual re-centering.22 In the same way a centering of and accountability to
feminist analyses ought to compel critical re-evaluations of Edward Bellamy’s Looking
Backward, the utopian dimensions of New Left social movements, or the very concept
and character of “utopia” itself, Smith’s recentering would involve a moment whereby
critical discourses of Indigenous peoples including, but not limited to, those which
address settler colonialism, are positioned at the “center” of utopian discourses. In
doing so, utopian discourses would be subject to an estrangement that could and
should allow for reflexive accountability. Just as Smith emphasizes, “we [must] constantly re-center the discussion to see if this illuminates our understanding . . . so that
we can build a more liberating framework, not just for the communities we center in
the analysis but for all peoples.”23
The supplement to this issue of Puerto del Sol seeks to offer a contribution to the rearticulation of a liberating framework—whether referred to as utopian, “intercultural
imaginaries of the ideal” or something altogether new.
I wish to gratefully acknowledge the generous contributions of Jacqueline
Dutton, Daniel Heath Justice, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Lorenzo Veracini to the
“roundtable” discussion.
Special thanks are due to Carmen Giménez-Smith and Lily Hoang for providing
the opportunity to participate in this issue of Puerto Del Sol.
21 Andrea Smith. Native Americans and the Christian Right. (Durham, Duke University Press:
2008), xvi.
22 Ibid., xiii.
23 Ibid., xiv. It is beyond the scope of this essay, but an addendum to Smith’s statement
might include reference to ecological concerns as well.
43