Abstract
This opening chapter illustrates that the term ‘utopia’ is often used in relationship to the United States, despite there being little consensus on what precisely makes the Unites States utopian. I here highlight the most important premise for the upcoming discussion: that ‘utopia’ in the context of the United States refers to utopian practice, that is, to putting utopian visions into reality. Viewing utopian practice, in particular utopian communities, as part of the United States is somewhat paradoxical, since utopian communities originate in dissent with the status quo and therefore stand in an ambivalent relationship to their environment. Fiction about utopian practice casts a spotlight on whether the authors think that a good place can be created in the United States, and by what means. Instead of theorizing about agency and change from the perspective of a system that is up and running, these narratives specifically represent an uncertain moment of utopian production in which the members of the communities and their utopian visions encounter their historical context. In this friction, the texts relate the road to utopia on a practical level, as well as commenting on the mechanisms of the utopian imagination.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Golden’ in the title of Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) is probably used figuratively to mean ‘valuable’ or ‘delightful.’ It may also be one of More’s jests; the utopians themselves do not value gold at all, so Vere Aureus may mean that the book is truly worthless, or that those who appreciate it are fools.
- 2.
While the origins of the dystopian genre are intimately connected to utopian literature, dystopian literature draws on a different set of literary conventions (see Baccolini and Moylan 2013).
- 3.
The term utopian communities was especially prevalent in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which is the historical time span explored in this book. The idea that these communities are somehow utopian marks the overlap of communal studies and utopian studies to this day (e.g., Claeys 2011, 2017; Madden and Finch 2006; Miller 1998; Sargent 2010). It goes without saying that situating the upcoming analysis within the field of utopian studies is only one of multiple approaches possible. Instead of utopian community, terms such as cult, drop-out, secessionist, communal, grass-roots, counterculture, dissent, and so on could be used to describe subsets of the communities depicted in the narratives, and each of these descriptions brings with it a different set of contexts and theories. On that note, utopia is a problematic choice, the implications of the term being distinctly Eurocentric, nationalist, and imperial. However, recent archipelagic and postcolonial enquiries into utopianism enable me to take, and further develop, a critical approach regarding the grand narratives that underlie utopianism.
- 4.
This is a very condensed definition which includes the main points that accomplished scholars of utopian communities have drawn up: Timothy Miller, for example, outlines his field of study by the following criteria: “A sense of common purpose and of separation from the dominant society. … Some form and level of self-denial, of voluntary suppression of individual choice for the good of the group. … Geographic proximity. … Personal interaction. … Economic sharing. … Real existence … Critical mass … Generally, it seems reasonable to think that an intentional community should include at least five individuals, some of whom must be unrelated by biology or exclusive intimate relationship” (1998, xx–xxii). Chapter 2 provides a more extensive discussion regarding the definition of the subject at hand.
- 5.
While working on this project, I learned of long-standing traditions of utopian practice in, for example, England, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, and Wales. I am sure that most nations have seen their fair share of utopian communities.
- 6.
For those in search of more suggestions, especially of less well-known works, I recommend Lyman Tower Sargent’s Utopian Literature in English: An Annotated Bibliography from 1516 to the Present (2016 and ongoing), as well as the lists compiled by Nan Bowman Albinski (1988), Carol Farley Kessler (1985, 1989, 1995), and Darby Lewes (1989).
- 7.
Throughout this book, I am capitalizing Black, Indigenous, Native, and the like as well as White, when referring to the respective ethnic/racial groups. Writing the former set with an upper case is, for one, honoring the wish of various BIPoC activists and in accordance with a set of contemporary style manuals. Capitalizing White has nothing to do with me honoring Whiteness but is informed by arguments from those who have critically investigated White privilege: a lower case would obscure that Whiteness is very much an identitary category—one that thrives on invisibility, presenting itself and its habitus as ‘natural’ and as the ‘norm.’ Kwame Anthony Appiah (2020) makes this point more eloquently than I ever could, so I would refer interested readers to his article.
- 8.
With the term long nineteenth century I am referring to the time period that starts approximately with the writing of the Constitution of the United States and ends with its entry in the First World War. Obviously, I am evoking Eric Hobsbawm’s terminology for the long nineteenth century in Europe, starting with the French Revolution and ending with the outbreak of the First World War, with the modification that the foundation of the United States is the relevant date within a US American context.
- 9.
I am here employing Jean-Francois Lyotard’s terminology. In The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979), Lyotard made the seminal argument that in postmodernity, because everything is perceived as a narrative, grand narratives have lost their power: “Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives” (xxiv). However, especially postcolonial scholars, such as Edward W. Said, have pointed out that grand narratives remain potently active (1996, 18); further, even the recent evocation of a ‘post-factual age’ does not seem to detract from the power of grand narratives as they manifest in nationalism, racism, class, gender binary, and so on: quite to the contrary. While the analyses provided below focus on the nineteenth century, I understand the general framework to be applicable beyond the end of modernity, following Michel Foucault’s suspicions that comparable orders of discourses via such narratives can be found in every society (1970, 56) and that articulating anything outside of them is at best an illusion (1970, 57). Their examination is nonetheless the intellectual’s duty (Said 1996).
- 10.
Of course, in light of various historical and contemporary examples of systemic discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality this claim of ‘diversity’ has been and is in dire need of reexamination.
- 11.
For an explanation as to why I am capitalizing White, see footnote 7.
- 12.
Fredric Jameson employs the term utopian psychology to denote the approach he takes in Archaeologies of the Future (2005), which underlies my approach to these novels. The next chapter provides a more detailed discussion of utopian psychology.
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Adamik, V. (2020). ‘The Optimal State of a Republic’: Introduction. In: In Search of the Utopian States of America. Palgrave Studies in Utopianism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60279-6_1
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