The Ambiguous Necessity of Utopia: Post-Colonial Literatures and the Persistence of Hope

TLDR: In this paper, a discussion of the relationship between Utopias and dystopias is presented, and the argument is advanced through the foundational Marxist Utopian theory of Ernst Bloch, who argues that while all achieved utopias are degenerate, without utopian thinking liberation is impossible.

Abstract: This essay hinges on the paradox that becomes increasingly obvious in post-colonial literatures: while all achieved utopias are degenerate, without utopian thinking liberation is impossible. The discussion looks at the ambiguous philosophical relationship that has existed between utopias and dystopias since Thomas More's seminal classic, and the argument is advanced through the foundational Marxist utopian theory of Ernst Bloch. Paradoxically, only the thinnest of lines separates utopia from dystopia and the slippage from one to the other hinges on three kinds of ambiguity-three contradictions which demarcate the very thin line between them. Wherever utopias occur these contradictions emerge, in: the relation between utopia and utopianism; the relation between the future and memory and the relations between the individual and the collective. While these ambiguities are present in all utopian thinking, the particular ways in which post-colonial writers and thinkers negotiate them tell us a lot about their distinct form of cultural and political hope. The nagging question hovering around Thomas More's Utopia is: "What did he mean by it?" CS. Lewis regarded it as an elaborate joke and Stephen Greenblatt pointed out that every rule or amenity for the ideal life in the book turns out to be fatally flawed (1980, 40-1). Did More really mean it to be the picture of an ideal society? Is it a satire or a serious plan for social improvement? The debate over whether Utopia is a playful satire or a serious proposal for an ideal community persists to the present day, and is reflected in the perpetually ambiguous relationship between utopias and dystopias in literature.1 Thomas More unleashed an idea that has remained a critical focus of all visions of a better society. For most contemporary Utopian theory Utopia is no longer a place but the spirit of hope itself, the essence of desire for a better world (see for example, Jameson 1971). There are forms of ambiguity inherent in this Utopian idea that 'keeps alive the possibility of a world qualitatively distinct from this one and takes the form of a stubborn negation of all that is' (Jameson 1971, 110-11). Wherever utopias occur three key contradictions emerge: the relation between utopias and utopianism; the relation between the future and memory; and the relation between the individual and the collective. The dominant Utopian literary form from about the mid-twentieth century has been science fiction. Yet there is a quite distinct literary form that explores these ambiguities in different ways. The particular ways in which post-colonial writers and thinkers negotiate such ambiguities create a distinct form of cultural and political hope. The forms of utopianism emergent in post-colonial writing - a utopianism almost completely devoid of utopias- gesture toward a resolution of Utopian contradictions dialogically. Utopias and Utopianism Primarily, everybody lives in the future, because they strive ... Function and content of hope are experienced continuously, and in times of rising societies they have been continuously activated and extended (Bloch 1986, 4). To emphasise this Bloch explicitly separates utopianism, which he sees as a universal human characteristic, from Utopias, which, as playful abstractions, are pointless and misleading - a parody of hope. Limiting the Utopian to Thomas More's island: ... would be like trying to reduce electricity to the amber from which it gets its Greek name and in which it was first noticed. Indeed, the Utopian coincides so little with the novel of an ideal state that the whole totality of philosophy becomes necessary ... to do justice to the content of that designated by utopia (15). It is more than a little odd that Bloch spends almost no time on utopias themselves, and in fact disparages them in this way, since their one common feature - a characteristic of all modern utopias - is that their inhabitants hold all things in common. …