(ix) Preface to the Second Edition

Het boek werd toevallig afgerond in 1989, tijdens de val van de Berlijnse muur en zo. Fukuyama en anderen hadden het over het einde van de utopie.

"Television and press commentary on the collapse of communist regimes referred repeatedly to the collapse of utopia, with utopia itself equated with Marxism, communism and totalitarianism. Politically, both Marxism and utopia were regarded as ‘over’, and wider political and intellectual discourses followed the same trend. It was not a good moment to bring out a book which is explicitly about the idea of utopia, a large proportion of which is concerned with Marxism and utopia." [mijn nadruk] (ix)

[Het bekende Westerse domme en arrogante triomfalisme inderdaad.]

"Yet in the early twenty-first century, when the depredations of global capitalism and violent conflicts over natural resources are obvious for all to see, neither Marx nor Marxists are read. The failure of Soviet communism is still assumed to be absolute and undifferentiated, despite consequent violent conflicts expressed in ethnic and nationalist terms in, for example, the former Yugoslavia and in Chechnia – and despite the dramatic falls in life expectancy in the former Soviet Union and Hungary. By extension, Marx, bizarrely seen as the architect of twentieth-century communism, remains off limits. And ideologically, the ‘self-evident’ failure of this utopian project is still used to invalidate aspirations for alternative modes of social organisation and ways of being that can be construed as ‘utopian’ in the widest sense. Such alternatives are more necessary than ever in the current geopolitical and environmental context." [mijn nadruk] (ix-x)

"To borrow from René Dumont, what we are faced with is ‘Utopia or Else’. The continued necessity of utopian thinking in a still largely hostile climate might in itself justify the republication of this book. Although it is about the concept of utopia as it was implicitly or explicitly articulated in a series of theoretical discussions, the major theorists discussed – Marx, Engels, Mannheim, Sorel, Bloch, Marcuse, Morris, Thompson – were all of them concerned with the necessity of radical social transformation, and this was the primary motivation for their engagement with utopianism, and for my own interest in the subject." [mijn nadruk] (xi)

"Each new cohort of scholars in the field needs to be reminded of the importance of conceptual clarity, and that ‘utopia’ cannot be simply identified with a certain kind of literary fiction. Moreover, if the conceptual as well as institutional development of the field of utopian studies can be constructed as a narrative of success, it is a limited success. Beyond the field, a great deal of writing about utopia ignores the problem of definition entirely." [mijn nadruk] (xii)

"This is the more true of public political discourse, which remains largely hostile as well as conceptually lax. It was still possible in 2000 for John Carey to edit The Faber Book of Utopias and argue that the key problem of utopia is that it is contrary to human nature, while John Gray’s 2007 Black Mass: Apocalypse, Religion and the Death of Utopia uncritically recycles the equation of utopia and totalitarianism." [mijn nadruk] (xii)

[Ergerlijk, dat soort domheid: niets weten, maar wel van alles beweren. Dat het niet klopt doet er blijkbaar niet meer toe.]

"If I were writing a book on the concept of utopia in 2008, it would have to take into account not only the changed political context and the developments in utopian studies, but the – overlapping – developments in social theory. This would entail addressing the whole body of work by Fredric Jameson, as well as interrogating the relationship between realism and utopia as reflected in the work of John Rawls, Richard Rorty, Anthony Giddens, Jeffrey Alexander, Erik Olin Wright and Roberto Unger. It would mean extending the discussion in Concept of the move from structure to process identifiable both in utopian literary texts and in the theorisation of utopia; engaging with Jürgen Habermas’s claim that the shift to late modernity means that it is no longer possible to specify the content of utopia but only the communicative process by which it may be negotiated, and addressing Harvey’s reservations about open-ended processuality. Some of this I have done in later essays." [mijn nadruk] (xii-xiii)

[Ik vraag me af of die stap van structuur naar proces en of die stelling van Habermas dat we de inhoud van utopia niet tevoren kunnen specificeren niet even eenzijdig zijn als 'blauwdrukutopieën'.]

(1) Introduction

"The view that utopia is not escapist nonsense but a significant part of human culture is a fundamental assumption of the expanding field of utopian studies."(1)

"Yet although utopia attracts increasing attention there is much confusion about exactly what makes something utopian, and disagreement about what utopia is for and why it is important. Are all images of the good life utopian, or only those set in the future and intended to be implemented? Should the pursuit of spiritual perfection be included, or paradises beyond death, or does utopia refer only to transformed versions of the social world in which we live our lives before death? Are there lines to be drawn between utopia and religion, or utopia and ‘real’ politics? And what is utopia for? Does it help to change the world or to stabilise existing societies? Although we may initially think we know what utopia is, when we try to define it, its boundaries blur and it dissolves before our eyes." [mijn nadruk] (2)

"Utopia as colloquially understood contains two meanings: a good, but non-existent and therefore impossible, society."(2)

"Colloquial usage thus tends to dismiss speculation about the good society as intrinsically impractical. This dismissal may be tolerantly good-humoured, seeing utopia as an interesting if esoteric byway of culture and the utopian as a well-meaning dreamer. It may, on the other hand, be extremely hostile, seeing attempts at instituting utopia as highly dangerous and leading to totalitarianism. This anti-utopian position is typified by Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek. The enemies of utopia are dealt with by George Kateb, and are only fleetingly referred to in this book – not because they are unimportant, but because they are tangential to the present purpose, which is to explore the usage by the increasing number of scholars who wish to take utopia seriously." [mijn nadruk] (3)

[Dat boek van Kateb - Utopia and its Enemies - is helaas niet meer verkrijgbaar.]

"Both the colloquial definitions and the anti-utopian position illustrate the fact that the concept itself is an ideological battleground. The elision between perfection and impossibility can serve to invalidate all attempts at change, reinforcing the claim that there is no alternative, and sustaining the status quo. (...) The rejection of other people’s projects as utopian and unrealistic is part of the process of promoting the merits of one’s own plans, and is thus an intrinsic part of the political process." [mijn nadruk] (4)

[Het is de bekende truc van conservatieven, met etiketten gooien die niet kloppen, taal misbruiken.]

"In exploring existing definitions of utopia we can consider three different aspects: content, form and function. Firstly, there is content. There is a common assumption that utopia should be a portrayal of the good society. It is however obvious that this will vary, being a matter not just of personal taste, but of the issues which appear to be important to different social groups, either in the same society or in different historical circumstances. Content is for many people the most interesting aspect of utopia, inviting them to consider whether, in fact, this would be a good society, if it existed. The variation in content, however, makes it particularly difficult to use this as part of the definition of utopia. Definitions in terms of content tend to be evaluative and normative, specifying what the good society would be, rather than reflecting on how it may be differently perceived." [mijn nadruk] (4-5)

[Dit is toch tamelijk vaag. Wat maakt het uit voor een definitie dat mensen er inhoudelijk verschillende ideeën op na houden over wat hun gewenste samenleving is? Zo concreet hoeft een definitie toch niet te zijn? En wat is er mis met een normatieve insteek? Waarom kun je daarbij niet reflecteren op de verschillende percepties die mensen op dat vlak hebben? We gaan toch niet postmodern doen, hoop ik?]

"Secondly, one can attempt to define utopia descriptively, in terms of form.(...) However, as we have already suggested, depictions of the good society do not necessarily take the form of literary fictions – and indeed this form is only available under certain very specific historical conditions" [mijn nadruk] (5)

"Thirdly, one may define utopia in terms of its function. This is less obvious; to focus on the function of utopia is already to move away from colloquial usage, which says nothing about what utopia is for, but implies that it is useless. Even those who define utopia in terms of form and content, however, see it as having some function.(...) Thus utopia is seen as presenting some kind of goal, even if commentators as opposed to the authors of utopias do not see them as necessarily realisable in all their details." [mijn nadruk] (6)

"The bulk of the book explores the consequences of definitions in terms of form and function. Broadly, one may divide approaches to utopian studies into two streams. The liberal-humanist tradition tends to focus on definitions in terms of form. In contrast a largely, but not exclusively, Marxist tradition has defined utopia in terms of its function – either a negative function of preventing social change or a positive function of facilitating it, either directly or through the process of the ‘education of desire’. Contemporary utopian studies draws on both these traditions, and definitions of both kinds may be found, although those in terms of form tend to predominate. Here one may also find attempts to bring together issues of form and function, with an additional function of ‘constructive criticism’ becoming a defining characteristic." [mijn nadruk] (6)

[Tamelijk kunstmatig, die onderscheidingen, vind ik. Erg academisch allemaal. Hierna volgt een overzicht van het boek.]

(11) Chapter 1 - Ideal Commonwealths: The Emerging Tradition

"Six of the eight books which form the basis of this chapter are probably the best-known and most frequently cited commentaries of the period, through which many contemporary scholars must have been intro duced to the field. They are Moritz Kaufmann’s Utopias (1879), Lewis Mumford’s The Story of Utopia [sic!] (1922), Joyce Hertzler’s History of Utopian Thought (1923), Marie Berneri’s Journey Through Utopia (1950), A. L. Morton’s The English Utopia (1952) and Glenn Negley and J. Max Patrick’s The Quest for Utopia (1952). The other two books included (for different reasons) are Henry Morley’s Ideal Commonwealths (1885) and Harry Ross’s Utopias Old and New (1938)."(12)

"With the partial exception of Morton, they share assumptions of evolution and progress and a preoccupation with reason and freedom. They are anti-statist, wary of utopia’s tendency to authoritarianism and wary of prescriptions for radical and precipitous social change. The virtue of utopia is that it holds up an ideal, an ideal which encourages social progress – but that progress is seen as properly a gradual process, which the literal attempt to institute utopia would interrupt." [mijn nadruk] (13)

"A central theme is the variation of the content of these utopias over time. Nevertheless all of them, whether implicitly or explicitly, define utopia primarily in terms of form – for example, the depiction of an ideal commonwealth."(13)

[De definities van de term lopen ook uiteen. Dat onderscheid inhoud - vorm vind ik nog steeds kunstmatig. Die verschillende werken worden achtereenvolgens doorgenomen. ]

Moritz Kaufmann: Utopias

Invloed van Marx en Engels over 'utopisch socialisten'.

"It focuses on those who are now conventionally regarded as utopian socialists; indeed, Kaufmann shows the influence of Engels’s argument both in his choice of subjects and in his claim to trace the evolutionary process of socialism through its imaginative, critical and ultimately scientific stages – hence the inclusion of Marx. For Kaufmann, utopia is virtually synonymous with socialism."(14)

Zijn definitie:

"What is a Utopia? Strictly speaking, it means a ‘nowhere Land’, some happy island far away, where perfect social relations prevail, and human beings, living under an immaculate constitution and a faultless government, enjoy a simple and happy existence, free from the turmoil, the harassing cares, and endless worries of actual life."(15)

[Dat is op p. 1 van zijn boek. Het is weer het beeld van een volmaakte samenleving, die daarom dus niet kan bestaan. ]

"There is an implication here that utopia is impossible, confirmed by his observation (in relation to Cabet) that utopians are apt to present us with images of people minus all the faults of human nature." [mijn nadruk] (15)

[Waarbij hij er vanuitgaat dat zo'n menselijke natuur bestaat.]

"By holding up a higher, if unattainable, ideal, utopia points us in the right direction and contributes to progress ... (...) Utopias can do this despite being intrinsically unrealistic, since essentially fantastic and fictional alternatives can function as critiques of the present."(15-16)

"As long as socialist utopias do no more than contribute to this inexorable progress they are acceptable, but if utopia is taken seriously and acted on – if it becomes the catalyst of social change rather than merely a critique of existing conditions – it is deeply dangerous."(16)

[In feite dus iemand die conservatief is en veranderingen alleen onder stricte regulatie kan toestaan, zoiets. Popper, zeg maar.]

Henry Morley: Ideal Commonwealths

"Morley’s contribution does not use the term utopia in its title. Moreover, it is a collection of texts rather than a commentary, and is therefore not amenable to discussion in terms of our four themes. Nevertheless it is worthy of brief comment for two reasons. Both the title and the selection of texts appear to have influenced later commentators, many of whom refer back to this collection and many of whom define utopia as synonymous with an ideal commonwealth." [mijn nadruk] (17)

Lewis Mumford: The Story of Utopia

[De titel wordt steeds verkeerd weergegeven. Een teken aan de wand. Waarom juist bij Mumford opmerkingen als 'sexist' en 'heterosexist' moeten worden toegevoegd - een boek uit 1922 - snap ik niet. Ze begrijpt zijn humor ook niet. Kortom: ze lijkt een hekel te hebben aan Mumford. Wat ze over hem nu eigenlijk beweert wordt me niet duidelijk.]

Joyce Hertzler: The History of Utopian Thought

"Hertzler does, however, define utopia largely with reference to form and, despite the discussion of biblical and classical utopias, with reference to More, although it is added that utopia should not be conceived too narrowly as a literary field. Utopia is ‘the general term for imaginary ideal socie- ties’, the distinctive feature of More’s work being the depiction of ‘a perfect, and perhaps unrealizable, society, located in some nowhere, purged of the shortcomings, the wastes, and the confusion of our own time and living in perfect adjustment, full of happiness and contentment’." [mijn nadruk] (22)

[Op p. 1 en 2 van haar boek. Zij ziet dus ook utopische trekken in de profeten enz. uit de bijbel, waarbij het 'koninkrijk gods' eerst nog gezien werd als iets wat gerealiseerd zou worden op aarde, terwijl het later pas 'de hemel' wordt, dus een ideale wereld na de dood.]

"Both here and in the reference to More there is a suggestion that there is an intrinsic connection between utopia and reason, and that to some extent at least utopia is defined by its rational content." [mijn nadruk] (22)

[Dat lijkt me een geweldig inzicht.]

"Comments in the text upon particular examples of utopia do little to clarify what is intended here. What makes something utopian seems to be its unattainability." [mijn nadruk] (23)

[Ook hier dus: utopia is een volmaakte wereld en daarom onbereikbaar. ]

"Hertzler plainly believed in the possibility of evolutionary advance in the direction described by Bellamy, and the book ends with a long section extolling the virtues of progress over the pursuit of perfection, while asserting that the merit of utopia is that it holds up a unattainable ideal towards which one may strive, thus acting as a stimulus to progress." [mijn nadruk] (24)

Harry Ross: Utopias Old and New

Over wat Ross wel en niet als utopia ziet.

[Levitas' reacties daarop zijn weer niet erg helder. Ik vind het onderscheid tussen een geschilderde gewenste samenleving en de positieve / negatieve normatieve waardering ervan niet, en het verschil tussen hoe Ross waardeert en hoe Levitas waardeert blijft onduidelijk.]

"Both Brave New World and, later, B. F. Skinner’s Walden Two, were received by some as utopias and by others as anti-utopias. Ross defines utopia in terms of form as ‘the picture of an ideal society in action, whether that society is historical or not’. It is a definition which could include much of utopian socialism (as shown by Kaufmann and Hertzler), but the selection here focuses on literary utopias, plus the small group whose inclusion is becoming an almost unchallenged convention."(25-26)

Marie Berneri: Journey Through Utopia

"Berneri’s book begins with a foreword by George Woodcock, commenting on the intolerant and authoritarian nature of most utopias with the exception of a few such as those by Morris, Denis Diderot and Gabriel de Foigny. The dangers of utopia are argued to be increasingly recognised, with people increasingly writing and reading anti-utopias. The function of Berneri’s book, as of these anti-utopias, is to constitute a warning ‘of the doom that awaits those who are foolish enough to put their trust in an ordered and regimented world’." [mijn nadruk] (27)

[Alsof vrijheid niet leidt tot intolerantie en autoritair gedrag en duizend andere problemen. Alsof een samenleving niet altijd geordend en gereguleerd moet zijn. De vraag is in hoeverre en hoe die orde tot stand komt, niet of er orde moet zijn.]

"Berneri argues that the fashion for utopian schemes is dying out, with the trend of modern literature being increasingly anti-utopian. As utopia becomes realisable, it is no longer something to hope for, but something to fear."(30)

"Berneri argues that this entirely appropriate suspicion of utopias can be attributed to a number of factors, including new totalitarian regimes, a turning away from a belief in progress, an increasing distrust rather than confidence in the beneficence of machinery and a new understanding of the problem of the relationship between the individual and the state. The traditional utopia assumed a coincidence between these interests which is now seen to be problematic, and it is the consequent authoritarianism of the nineteenth-century utopia which Berneri holds chiefly responsible for the rise of anti-utopianism." [mijn nadruk] (30)

Negley and Patrick: The Quest for Utopia

"It, too, is an anthology of selections largely from literary utopias, with some commentary, and contains a more extended consideration of the definition of utopia. It is the only collection not arranged in chronological order"(31)

"The imagination cannot be given complete licence, and sheer fantasy ceases to be utopian. Indeed, ‘it is well that the fictional state of utopia should be an idealized vision of the existing state, for only thus could men gain from the utopian vision a hint of the direc- tion of progress beyond their own present society’. On the other hand the whole point of utopia is its difference from the present, and the absence of the restraint either of existing institutions or existing human character." [mijn nadruk] (33)

A. L. Morton: The English Utopia

"Morton’s judgements are more overtly coloured by his political standpoint here than elsewhere in the book [Morton is een Marxist - GdG]. For our purposes, what is important is that the books in question are deemed to be utopian in form but not function: the essential utopian function is, at this point, to be the catalyst of social change:
the essence of the classical utopias of the past was a belief that by satire, by criticism or by holding up an example to be followed, they could help to change the world. In this they have had a positive part to play, they have stimulated thought, led men to criticise and fight against abuses, taught them that poverty and oppression were not a part of a natural order of things which must be endured.
Both his pessimistic assessment of the anti-utopias and his optimism about the realisation of utopia stand in stark contrast to Berneri’s conclusion, and perhaps both judgements should be qualified by recalling the words of William Morris himself:
men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name."(36)

Themes and issues

"...it is time to draw together their treatment of the four themes identified at the beginning of this chapter. These are the identification of the utopian object, the definition of utopia, the question of a utopian propensity and the function of utopia."(36)

[Is dat nu zo belangrijk? Die boeken zijn oud. Ze had beter haar eigen oordeel kunnen geven los van al dat geanalyseer. Dit soort dingen hebben alles te maken met de waarden en normen van degene die een oordeel geeft. Dus inderdaad, maar inmiddels een open deur:]

"It is notable that not one of these commentators discusses Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, despite the insights that can be gained by comparing this with Looking Backward and News from Nowhere. Women’s utopias are conspicuously absent from the tradition as it emerges in the first half of the twentieth century, although more recent scholarship proves conclusively that this is not because they did not exist." [mijn nadruk] (37)

[Ik zou het geweldig vinden om hierover een boek te lezen. Waarom heeft ze zich niet op dat onderwerp gestort in plaats van op zoiets droogs als definitiekwesties? ]

"Utopian images which exist as the kind of social myths to which Mumford refers (whether supportive of or oppositional to the status quo), precisely because they are nebulous and nowhere written down, are much more difficult to study and claims of objectivity much more difficult to substantiate. (...) The relatively messy and difficult nature of non-textual utopias may explain why few commentators cross our second boundary, between utopia and religion." [mijn nadruk] (38)

[Ze mag Mumford echt niet. Onterecht vind ik. Haar vraag is blijkbaar alleen maar: wat is een utopische tekst?. Tekstanalyses de voorkeur geven omdat ze objectief zijn, hm, typisch voor een academicus. Mumford is geen academicus in de normale betekenis van het woord. Misschien daarom. Maar teksten worden altijd ook geïnterpreteerd. Ik snap het ook niet: wat bedoelt ze met 'non-textual utopias'? met 'utopian images'? Worden niet alle utopia's opgeschreven?]

"Nevertheless, most of the definitions of utopia that we are offered are expressed in terms of form. The dominant description of utopia is an ideal commonwealth, an imaginary ideal society; and one which is more or less complete and couched in fictional terms."(38)

[Waarom is dat vorm en niet inhoud of functie? Ik begrijp nog steeds niet wat ze met die begrippen doet. Volgens mij loopt dat allemaal naadloos in elkaar over. Ze heeft een erg aristoteliaanse benadering: indelingen maken, tabelletjes met dit hoort hier en dat hoort daar.]

"The acceptance that the proper role of utopia is to criticise the present is universal."(39)

(41) Chapter 2 - Castles in the Air: Marx, Engels and Utopian Socialism

"The roots of Marxist objections to utopia can be found in the writings of Marx and Engels; however, their criticisms of utopian socialism have been used illegitimately as justification of a general rejection of descriptions of the future socialist society. The concept of utopia deployed in this rejection, besides being a political weapon in a process of ‘annihilation by labels’,1 conflates two issues: speculation about the future, and the possibility and means of transition to socialism. The real dispute between Marx and Engels and the utopian socialists is not about the merit of goals or of images of the future but about the process of transformation, and particularly about the belief that propaganda alone would result in the realisation of socialism. The general orientation to utopia that has developed not only misrepresents the views of both Marx and Engels, but has had thoroughly deleterious effects on the socialist project in the past hundred years. In this chapter we shall try to unravel the real grounds of the distinction between utopian and scientific socialism and its implications for speculation about the future and for the concept of utopia." [mijn nadruk] (41)

[Goed gezien. Inderdaad de zoveelste slechte lezing van Marx en Engels door mensen die daar al te veel belang bij hebben.]

"‘Utopian socialism’ is a term with a particular historical meaning and refers initially to the ideas of and movements inspired by Saint-Simon and Fourier in France and Robert Owen in England, although the field is subsequently widened. By ‘utopian communism’ Marx and Engels chiefly referred to the followers of Cabet in France and of Wilhelm Weitling in Germany. In one sense the whole of the collaborative project of Marx and Engels can be seen as a critique of utopian socialism, but in order to understand the significance of their specific criticisms we need to look briefly at the ideas of the utopian socialists themselves." [mijn nadruk] (42)

"Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen all drew up schemes for the institution of a society which would overcome the manifest evils of poverty and degradation that characterised early industrial society. All were critical of the extremes of wealth and poverty they saw around them, of the unbridled power of private property and of conventional sexual morality and family relationships. Both the nature of their criticisms and their solutions differed considerably, but all emphasised the importance of cooperation, association and harmony – and all justified their schemes in terms of their basis in a scientific understanding of human nature." [mijn nadruk] (42)

[Daar draait het om. De motivatie is bij iedereen hetzelfde, ook bij Marx en Engels. De meningen lopen uiteen over de preciese oorzaken (de analytische kant van de zaak) en over hoe je veranderingen zou kunnen doorvoeren, gezien de machtspositie van de rijke status quo (de politieke kant van de zaak).]

Saint-Simon

"The Saint-Simonist movement founded on Saint-Simon’s death in 1825 therefore sought to persuade both bourgeoisie and proletariat of the merits of his plans, and because of the central opposition to violence and conflict was essentially socially quiescent. However, by the early thirties its emphasis had shifted from stressing the ‘scientific’ nature of the doctrines and Saint-Simonism declared itself a religion. The doctrine of love which it preached, however, included a liberation of sexual passion and opposition to the bourgeois family. In 1832 the leaders of the movement were brought to trial and jailed and the movement was declared illegal. This did not in itself lead to the movement’s demise and it continued to exist until after 1848, but at no stage had great appeal to the working class and continued to be engaged primarily with moral and religious questions." [mijn nadruk] (43-44)

[De seksuele moraal wordt door de machthebbers weer eens aangegrepen om mensen in de gevangenis te gooien. De kerk zal er wel een rol bij gespeeld hebben.]

Fourier

"Fourier also deduced his scheme for the perfect society from a speculative anthropology claimed as empirical fact. (...) To a much greater extent than Saint-Simon, Fourier railed against the repressive morality of his own society and placed sexual pleasure at the centre of life in his ideal communities ..." [mijn nadruk] (44)

"The Fourierist movement stressed the setting up of small communities which would be self-supporting and primarily agricultural. It had links with the wider cooperative movement in France, just as Owenism influenced the cooperative movement in England, but did not have substantial support among the emergent working class, nor was it ever perceived as sufficiently threatening to be suppressed."(44-45)

[Is het hoe dan ook wel mogelijk om de werkende klasse te overtuigen van dit soort denken?]

Robert Owen

"Owen, like Fourier, saw the path to the salvation of society as the setting up of small self-supporting communities. But although he identified the three main evils of society as religion, private property and marriage, his communities were not designed to be enclaves of sensual or sexual indulgence. They involved community of property, but the elimination of poverty depended upon the elimination of waste and of excessive consumption; there is a puritanical element in Owen’s utopia which is conspicuously lacking in those of his French counterparts."(45)

"Owenite emphasis on the oppressive and damaging effects of the patriarchal family meant it also had considerable support among women; socialism and feminism were integrated in Owenism. However, towards the end of the 1840s, as the experimental communities were repeatedly unsuccessful, the Owenite movement, like Saint-Simonism, increasingly took on the characteristics of an esoteric and millennialist sect." [mijn nadruk] (46)

[Op een bepaalde manier waren ze dus alledrie erg modern omdat ze ook nadachten over relaties, huwelijk, rollenpatronen, seks. Typisch dat Levitas dat in haar samenvattende karakterisering niet noemt. Dat heb je ervan als je in abstracties blijft hangen.]

Marx en Engels

"One of the reasons why Marxism itself can be said to be utopian in exactly the same way as the so-called utopian socialists is that an outline of the principal features of communist society can be pieced together from the writings of Marx and Engels, even though it was never presented by them in a single description. The similarity of this vision, in many respects, with those of the utopian socialists has also been widely observed."(46)

"Whether the sexual division of labour is also to be entirely abolished is less clear. There is certainly support for communal living arrangements as a new productive force, involving the development of new machinery and the abolition of the family, in The German Ideology, which is entirely congruent with Engels’s praise for the saving in labour power implied in Owen’s planned communities. Ollman argues that the communal raising of children is implied by the need that parents be prevented from exercising a destructive influence over their children without forcibly separating them from each other. He does concede, however, that this is never made explicit in Marx’s writing, and that Marx never deals with the limitations child-rearing imposes upon the self-development of adults, in practice usually their mothers, although Ollman asserts that ‘he was surely aware of it’. Although it is clearly intended that the all-round development of the individual in communist society should apply to women as well as to men, the means by which this is to be made possible have to be inferred or invented." [mijn nadruk] (48)

[Dat vind ik nu boeiend. ]

"The more fundamental objection to describing communist society is that the needs, wants and capacities that will develop within it are neither static nor predictable from within the constraints of capitalism. (...) Hence Marx’s reluctance to identify communism as a state rather than a process ..."(50)

"The difference between Marxism and utopian socialism does not, then, rest on the existence or otherwise of an image of the socialist society to be attained, nor even on the content of that image. It rests upon disagreements about the process of transition." [mijn nadruk] (53)

"If Buber’s arguments about the merits of the utopian socialists are open to debate, he quite correctly identifies the issue which separates them from Marx and Engels. For the judgements made by these two about utopian socialism are mixed, and their criticisms are not directed primarily at its speculative character but at the views of social change contained therein and its actual role in political developments. Moreover these judgements change over time, not just with the development of the theoretical perspectives of Marx and Engels but with the place of the ideas and movements in the political scene. More attention was paid to them in the 1840s when the movements were still in a relatively flourishing state and, during this period, Engels’s judgements in particular shift from a very positive appraisal, especially of Owenism, to a much more critical stance. This shift entails a changing political judgement about the possibility or otherwise of a peaceful transition to socialism. In the 1870s, utopian socialism again became a specific target for critical comment, but again it is the idealist approach to social change that is the key issue." [mijn nadruk] (54)

Weergave van Engels positie op dit punt.

"It is, however, the question of the transition which is particularly important here, and it is notable that Engels does not argue that revolution is inevitable or desirable. Rather, various possibilities exist for the peaceful introduction of communism – and if these steps are not taken, revolution will ensue. He suggests that ‘the English will probably begin by setting up a number of colonies and leaving it to every individual whether to join or not; the French on the other hand will be likely to prepare and implement communism on a national basis’. The prerequisites for the peaceful transition to communism – the only way of avoiding its violent and bloody introduction – were state education, reorganisation of the Poor Relief system on lines very similar to Owen’s earliest proposals, and progressive taxation." [mijn nadruk] (56)

"Engels became increasingly critical of the Owenite movement."(57)

"‘The time has gone by’. This lies at the heart of the subsequent critique of utopian socialism developed by Marx and Engels in which the insights of Owen, Fourier and Saint-Simon are praised and defended, while the movements consequent on them are attacked. It explains the ambivalence of this critique, as well as the centrality of the distinction between the movements and their founders. We shall follow the emergence of this critique through the comments of Marx and Engels to its culmination in Engels’s Socialism: Utopian and Scientific." [mijn nadruk] (58)

"It is the way in which the disciples of the utopian socialists oppose working class political action which is at issue, such as the fact that ‘the Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively oppose the Chartists and the Réformistes’. The fundamental error of the utopian socialists which gives rise to this unacceptable political position is the expectation that society can be changed by the appeal to all classes on the basis of reason and justice, and the belief that their blueprints of the good society will be the cause of social transformation. It is this idealist, as opposed to materialist, concept of social change which is the real problem ..." [mijn nadruk] (60)

[Helder. Zou ik ook naïef vinden.]

"Utopian socialism is, in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, praised for its original criticisms of capitalism, patronised for its ineffectual solutions at a time when it was too young to know any better, and castigated for being effectively reactionary when its historical relevance was superseded."(61)

"The power of the utopian socialists as critics of capitalist society was something of which Marx and Engels never lost sight."(61)

"Lenin’s defence of dreaming was less influential than his reproduction of the dominant orientation to utopia as intrinsically unrealistic and in opposition to political analysis and action. (...) And the vacuum created by the Marxist fear of specifying goals continues to afflict the socialist project." [mijn nadruk] (65)

"The reason why the pejorative use of the term utopia is useful politically now, as then, is that it can be used as a weapon in the invalidation of opposing ideologies and policies. The issues raised here touch on a central political and theoretical debate within Marxism and beyond, namely that concerning the role of ideological processes in social change. For this reason, the place of utopia in Marxist thought has remained a controversial issue."(67)

(69) Chapter 3 - Mobilising Myths: Utopia and Social Change in Georges Sorel and Karl Mannheim

"In the previous chapter, we saw how utopia came to be defined by Marxists as reactionary on the grounds that it sought to impose an ideal plan upon reality rather than seeking in that reality the means of social change. This view of utopia was shared by Sorel, but Sorel also argued that ideas, in the form of myths, could potentially perform a mobilising and transformative function. The distinction drawn by Sorel between myth and utopia is interesting in its own right, but doubly so when compared with the analysis offered by Karl Mannheim, probably the most well-known theorist of utopia; for Mannheim’s argument similarly insists on this transformative potential, while attributing it to utopia. Part of the difference between the two is terminological, with Sorel’s use of the term myth having strong similarities with Mannheim’s definition of utopia." [mijn nadruk] (69)

Georges Sorel

"His [Sorel - GdG] best-known work. Reflections on Violence, espouses revolutionary syndicalism; but he subsequently became involved with the right-wing Action Française, adopted a religio-political stance that was both nationalistic and Catholic, and wrote some profoundly anti-semitic articles. This was not a straightforward shift to an essentially fascist position; Sorel ended his life an admirer of both Mussolini and Lenin, seeing bolshevism as a Russian version of syndicalism"(70)

"The distinction between myth and utopia which principally concerns us here was developed in Reflections on Violence and other writings between 1905 and 1909, when the syndicalist movement in France was at its height, and Sorel at his most enthusiastic about it."(71)

"Although there are intimations here of the kind of society which would follow revolutionary transformation, there is little elaboration. Sorel was more reluctant than Marx to comment on the shape of a future socialist society."(73)

"Social mechanisms are themselves historically variable, however, and Marxists who proceed from an ‘abstract principle of the unique proletariat’, rather than grounding their analysis and politics in observation of empirical reality, are castigated by Sorel as utopian." [mijn nadruk] (74)

"Nevertheless, although the future cannot be predicted, and although it is dangerous to think about the future in a utopian way, some vision of the future is necessary because without this we cannot act at all." [mijn nadruk] (75)

"The myth of the general strike is thus virtually unadulterated by utopia. It operates in terms of feeling, intuition and instinct rather than intellect, and promotes action rather than contemplation or reflection. The function of utopia is criticism, but an impotent criticism; the function of myth is transformation and change."(76)

"Myths are necessary because without them, revolts will not provoke revolution. Whether they bear any relation to future history is irrelevant to their power and their value. At the centre of the myth lies the experience of grasping the inner self, of becoming and possessing oneself more intensely than is possible in normal life. Utopias, on the other hand, are cognitive constructs, products of the intellect, of reason. As such they are divorced from the soul of the proletariat, have no real connection with anything, are at best impotent and at worst diversionary and reactionary. Myths emphasise process, utopias portray ends." [mijn nadruk] (78)

[Lijkt me toch niet handig om via mythes revolutie te maken zonder dat er nagedacht is over de doelen ervan. Blijkbaar gaat rationaliteit niet samen met proletariaat? Dat is wat Soral in feite zegt.]

Karl Mannheim

"Mannheim’s work lies firmly in the interpretative tradition of sociology established by Weber, although he was clearly influenced by both Marx and Georg Lukács."(79)

Over Thomas Münzer en het chiliasme / millennialisme

"The chiliastic experience was characteristic of the lowest strata of society, and ‘underlying it is a mental structure peculiar to oppressed peasants, jour- neymen, an incipient Lumpen-proletariat, fanatically emotional preachers, etc.’ If this seems a rather catholic collection of groups to share a specific ‘mental structure’, it is widely accepted that millenarian movements are generally rooted in oppressed strata."(83)

"Mannheim does regard Münzer as a utopian, precisely because his ideas were not only incongruous with reality but produced revolutionary activity and real social change, even if they did not succeed in transforming the world in their own image."(84)

"There are four different objections which can be levelled at the dichotomy between ideology and utopia. Firstly, the categorisation of ideas into those which change and those which support the existing state of affairs is extremely crude. It leaves no space for ideas which may be neutral, or whose relationship to the present is ambiguous or paradoxical." [mijn nadruk] (87)

[Waarom is dat belangrijk dan? Je wil sommige dingen anders of je wil sommige dingen niet anders. Wat is hier neutraal?]

"A similar re-interpretation of Mannheim is offered by Paul Ricoeur in Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Ricoeur argues that both ideology and utopia are centrally concerned with the problems of power and authority and they can be contrasted on three levels. The function of ideology is always legitimation, the best aspect of this being an integrative function, the worst being distortion; the function of utopia is challenge, the best aspect being the exploration of the possible, the worst being unrealisable fancy bordering on madness. If the ‘pathology of ideology is dissimulation ... the pathology of utopia is escape’. In this instance, the connection between ideas and actions has weakened almost to the point of disappearance. Moreover, the perceived function of utopia has been transformed from change to criticism; for Ricoeur, the function of utopia is ‘to expose the credibility gap wherein all systems of authority exceed ... both our confidence in them and our belief in their legitimacy’." [mijn nadruk] (89)

"The complexity of the process with which both Mannheim and Ricoeur are inadequately grappling is presented with customary lucidity in Raymond Williams’s ‘Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory’."(90)

[Ja, en we praten en we praten, over elk woordje, over elk zinnetje, en we schrijven daarover, en een ander buigt zich weer over wat we schrijven, over elk woordje, over elk zinnetje, en intussen blijft de samenleving zo beroerd als hij is. Wat hebben we aan dit soort theoretische analyses?]

"We have already seen that Mannheim was alarmed at the possible disappearance of utopia, since it represented the will to change the world. On the other hand he was deeply ambivalent to the irrational aspects of utopian mentalities." [mijn nadruk] (91)

[Dat is toch niet zo raar? Dat kan toch samengaan? ]

"Neither writer resolves the tension between reason and passion: Sorel cheerfully surrenders reason to passion and ends up legitimising fascism; Mannheim, exiled by fascism, painfully surrenders passion and commitment to reason and ends in confusion."(96)

(97) Chapter 4 - Utopian Hope: Ernst Bloch and Reclaiming the Future

"Assimilation [van Bloch's werk - GdG] is also inhibited by problems of style and substance: his complexity is universally acknowledged, while his claim to reintegrate Marxism and utopia leads to suspicion on the part of both non-Marxists and Marxists. The 1400 pages of his The Principle of Hope, constituting as they do the most sustained and wide-ranging attempt to rehabilitate the concept of utopia within Marxism, cannot properly be ignored in any discussion of utopia: there are implications here both for how we define the utopian object and the boundaries of the field of study, and for how we approach material within that field.
Bloch’s relationship to Marxism is more problematic. Like William Morris, discussed in the next chapter, Bloch stands at the juncture of Marxism and Romanticism. His project can therefore be seen as an attempt to import into Marxism a concept of utopia deriving from a mixture of mysticism and the Romantic tradition and thus as a contamination or dilution of Marxism itself ..." [mijn nadruk] (97)

[Die indruk had ik ook al. Zie de Geist der Utopie.]

"Bloch’s return to the GDR emphasises the fact that since the early twenties he had been a committed communist, believed the Soviet Union to be building the communist utopia to which he aspired and saw an oppor- tunity to participate in the construction of a new and better society; hope was a practical as well as a theoretical matter. When the first two volumes of The Principle of Hope were published in 1955 Bloch was awarded the National Prize. However, in 1956 there was a marked change in the political climate and the theoretical orthodoxy of Bloch and his pupils was called into question; Bloch was compulsorily retired from teaching. The third, most mystical, and from a Marxist point of view, much more questionable, volume of Principle of Hope was published in a small edition in 1959, but was hardly greeted with acclaim."(98)

"At a descriptive level, utopia is defined far more broadly by Bloch than by the commentators we have hitherto considered. He includes day-dreams, myths and fairy-tales as well as travellers’ tales and literary utopias. More surprisingly, such diverse topics as the sea voyages of medieval Irish monks and alchemical attempts to synthesise gold are discussed. The creative arts, particularly literature, architecture and music, are also important vehicles of utopia. Bloch refuses the identification of utopia with a literary genre" [mijn nadruk] (99)

"The wishful images discussed here are seen as a transition to the construction of ‘outlines of a better world’, the substance of part four. Even here the field is broader than that commonly perceived as utopian, although this section does include much of the more traditional material."(100)

"The survey of social utopias includes Plato, Campanella and much of utopian socialism, besides Zionism and the women’s movement, both of which are treated with disdain, as is William Morris. Social utopias are followed by technological, architectural and geographical utopias and by ‘wishful landscapes’ described in literature or portrayed in art." [mijn nadruk] (100)

"All merit inclusion as utopian, because all are examples of wishful thinking."(100)

[In de letterlijke betekenis van die uitdrukking.]

"The designation of utopia as ‘anticipatory consciousness’, which is the subtitle of part two of The Principle of Hope, depends upon Bloch’s central concept, the Not Yet. It has two aspects, the Not-Yet-Conscious and the Not-Yet-Become – its ideological and material, or subjective and objective aspects. The idea of the Not-Yet-Conscious is developed through a critique of Sigmund Freud." [mijn nadruk] (101)

"Utopia, as the expression of the Not-Yet-Conscious, is vindicated in so far as it reaches forward to the real possibility of the Not-Yet-Become; it is thus actively bound up in the process of the world’s becoming, as an anticipation of the future (rather than merely a compensation in the present) and, through its human purpose and action, as a catalyst of the future. Human activity, informed by imagination, has a decisive role to play"(102)

"Bloch’s defence of dreaming does not mean, however, that he provides us with a description of what socialist society will be like, or even that such an image can be pieced together from his writings as it can with Marx and Engels."(110)

"Bloch’s view of the nature of utopia, expressed elsewhere in more Marxist terms as the end of alienation and the realm of freedom, owes much to the definition of communism preferred by the young Marx ..."(111)

"If it is possible to extract these elements of Bloch’s view of the social conditions that make unalienated experience possible, it is also true that they are present at best in a very sketchy form and are almost entirely absent from The Principle of Hope."(113)

"Given the overt biblical reference which Bloch uses in his discussion of Brahms’s Requiem to convey the profundity of the utopian quest and the prefiguring of its goal in artistic achievement, it can be no surprise that he treats religion, and particularly the Judaeo-Christian tradition, with considerably more respect than is general among Marxists. It is the mystical rather than didactic elements of religion which appeal to him and he argues that the biblical tradition is the major source of utopian striving in the Western world."(114)

"Although Bloch’s view of utopia has not to date had much influence on the field of utopian scholarship, his work was extremely influential in two areas. The first of these is what has come to be called Western Marxism, an overly hegemonic term for that strand in Western Marxism which has been concerned with the analysis of culture and the role of ideology in social transformation. Bloch, together with Lukács and Karl Korsch, was one of the key figures in this development and was thus an important influence upon the group of intellectuals (including Fromm, Marcuse, Tillich and Adorno) centred on the Institute of Social Research in the 1930s. In Western Marxism and particularly in the work of the Frankfurt School, there is a tendency to use the term utopia in a positive sense, as a glimpse of a longed-for condition, rather than in the strongly negative sense that has become characteristic of the dominant interpretation of Marxism." [mijn nadruk] (11)

"Faith, however, is the raison d’être of theologians, and it is upon their thinking that Bloch’s analysis of utopia has had the greatest impact. The use of Bloch’s ideas within the Christian-Marxist dialogue shows how the theological interpretation diverged from his intentions, and also highlights problems of Bloch’s own anthropology and cosmology. The two theologians most heavily influenced by Bloch were Paul Tillich and Jürgen Moltmann." [mijn nadruk] (119-120)

"The fact that Bloch’s insistence upon the transformative function of utopia was imported into radical theology only made Marxists more suspicious."(121)

[Terecht, lijkt me. ]

"Even if one accepts the proposition that there are warm and cold streams in Marxism whose integration must be sustained, the absence of attention to economic and social forces suggests that the cold stream has in this case received too little attention. Further, within both Marxist and liberal-humanist traditions in the Anglo-American academic world the predominantly positivist orientation is at odds with the non-verifiable nature of the argument. If Bloch is not hopelessly mystical, he is at least irredeemably evaluative. From the point of view of both these traditions there are major weaknesses in Bloch’s argument: the positing of transcended alienation as a goal disconnected from the process of material production; the emphasis on subjective experience; the failure or refusal to provide clear or verifiable criteria for his distinctions; and a teleology which suggests that history has a goal rather than simply that human beings have purposes. These weaknesses make it difficult to assimilate Bloch’s strengths, which in the end may be more important. Besides the fact that Bloch brings into focus both the question of the function of utopia and the boundaries, if any, of the field of its subject matter, his work transcends the limits of purely intellectual enquiry. He reminds us that utopia involves fundamental questions about the human condition and its future, and he refuses to abandon faith in the possibilities of that future. His legacy is therefore too important to be left solely to theologians." [mijn nadruk] (122)

(123) Chapter 5 - The Education of Desire: The Rediscovery of William Morris

"The relationship between Marxism and utopia also comes under scrutiny in discussions of the work of William Morris, and particularly of the significance of his utopian novel News from Nowhere. The absence of reference to Bloch in recent re-evaluations of Morris is surprising; themes and issues in Bloch’s work can be compared both to Morris’s work itself and to the later debates arising from it. Both Bloch and Morris attempted an integration of Romanticism and Marxism, transforming both in the process: in Bloch’s case, this took place within the field of academic philosophy; for Morris it was the outcome of an aesthetic, moral and economic critique of capitalism, linked in his later life to a practical commitment to communism. The transcendence of alienation and the centrality of art were issues common to both. Subsequent debates share with Bloch a focus on the relationship between reason and passion, or the cold and warm streams, which reappears as the relationship between knowledge and desire; the definition of utopia is once again in terms of a function which is simultaneously educative and transformative. The question of the significance of dreaming occurs in all three contexts." [mijn nadruk] (123)

"News from Nowhere was written in 1890 and has always been by far the most widely known of Morris’s socialist writings."(124)

"The world portrayed in the first and third sections is compatible, at least on a superficial reading, with a view of Morris as woolly, well-meaning and fundamentally impractical; but this is substantially belied by the insistence on the need for revolutionary change and for the building and growth of the new society." [mijn nadruk] (124)

[Ik vraag me af of dat negatief bedoeld wordt? ]

"It was written, in fact, in response to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, published in 1888. This novel, which also enjoyed massive sales, portrays a centralised socialist society emerging without con- flict from monopoly capitalism." [mijn nadruk] (125)

"The comparison between Looking Backward and News from Nowhere is a common one, arising both from the fact that Morris was responding directly to Bellamy’s novel and from the fact that the two books can be seen to embody two models of socialism which have more generally competed with one another. The contrasts between the two books are striking. A less obvious comparison can be made between both these novels and Herland, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1915. Such a comparison emphasises the failure of both Morris and Bellamy to give any serious attention to the questions of the position of women or the care of children. In both male utopias the sexual division of labour persists, and although both claim to give real respect to women, both as mothers and as household managers, both simultaneously make this the main role of women and fail to discuss it at any length: women are, as usual, largely invisible. Herland, in contrast, has motherhood as a central theme. This entirely female society, reproduced by parthenogenesis, can be read as an exploration of the kind of society that might emerge if the needs of children (and their mothers) were genuinely prioritised. Morris’s concern with alienated labour then appears to address only some of the issues about work in capitalist and communist society." [mijn nadruk] (127)

[Voor iemand die zich zo richt op de 'vorm' en 'functie' van utopia's en de 'inhoud' ervan niet zo belangrijk vindt, is dit een heel inhoudelijke vergelijking. Eerlijk gezegd is dat het enige dat mij interesseert: de inhoud van utopia's, vooral de normatieve kant ervan. Bovenstaande vergelijking vind ik daarom belangrijk en - nogmaals - ik zou willen dat ze een boek had geschreven met die insteek. Te deprimerend misschien. Wat nu weer volgt is een eindeloze bespreking van wat andere auteurs over Morris geschreven hebben. Niet erg nuttig.]

"Morris’s goal, like Bloch’s, can therefore be seen as the transcendence of alienation. However, Morris’s approach to the issue is, arguably, more authentically Marxist, concentrating as it does on the transformation of the labour process and the abolition of the market which governs it"(127)

"The sheer lack of understanding by Marxists of the importance of Morris (and indeed of the whole radical Romantic tradition) is emphasised by the lack of impact of this remarkable book."(132)

"But again the preoccupation with change that is characteristic of Marxist analyses presents the same problem. Some dreams may aid the processes of struggle, others may inhibit it. Thus Williams, like Mannheim, argues that images of paradise and tales of the Isles of the Blessed are not utopian, nor is most science fiction, while Cokaygne, which Morton sees as so important, is only latently so. What Williams sees as valuable in Morris’s utopia (and in Rudolf Bahro’s The Alternative in Eastern Europe) is the recognition of the long process of development of new needs, conditions and social relationships." [mijn nadruk] (144)

"Any utopia, including his own, carried with it the danger that it would be taken literally – a danger to both those who would pursue it and those who would reject it as goal. He took issue with Looking Backward not just from distaste for the content, but because it was presented as the true nature and goal of socialism."(146)

(151) Chapter 6 - An American Dream: Herbert Marcuse and the Transformation of the Psyche

"The most widely known attempt to reconcile Marxism and utopia occurs in the work of Herbert Marcuse. As with Bloch and Thompson, the issue of the education of desire is central, but it appears here as a question of the transformation of needs – the replacement of false needs by true needs, whose satisfaction demands the transcendence of alienated labour. For Marcuse this involves an embracing and celebration of the possibilities of technology, rather than its rejection in favour of craft production. Technology makes possible the abolition of scarcity and consequently renders utopia no longer an impossible dream but a possible future; it is the key to concrete utopia. The distinction between true and false needs is as problematic as that between concrete and abstract utopia and again requires recourse to a model of human nature – a model which Marcuse draws from Freud and spells out explicitly. Marcuse’s use of the term utopia is more elusive and less consistent than Bloch’s; but the general goal remains the same, the pursuit of a society in which unalienated experience will be possible." [mijn nadruk] (151)

"In America, the Frankfurt School was dependent upon support from American institutions and, according to Douglas Kellner, this led to a collective decision to use code words for Marxist concepts and to tone down overtly political language. (...) This may account in part for the fact that Marcuse makes very little reference to Marx in many of his writings and derives much of his argument from Freud."(152)

[Niet te geloven, zelfcensuur moet in de VS ontzettend vaak voorgekomen zijn. En zo is het waarschijnlijk nog.]

"Marcuse’s understanding of critical theory was that it aimed not only to comprehend existing conditions, but to do this through concepts which simultaneously embodied criticism of those conditions and their transcendence in the construction of an alternative."(152)

"He insists, however, that critical theory intends material transformation rather than merely theoretical analysis. The goal is human happiness, only possible if radical change occurs, and the purpose of analysis is the direction and facilitation of this change ..." [mijn nadruk] (153)

[Dat lijkt me de goede insteek.]

"Marcuse, like Bloch, relies on a concept of essential human nature, both to argue that the world should be otherwise and to locate the forces capable of transforming it.(...) Marcuse both interprets Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts as providing a basis for the view that there are elements in human nature driving towards liberation, and finds foundation for a similar argument in Freud’s theories." [mijn nadruk] (154)

[Wel jammer dat hij Freud als leidraad neemt. Vaag geklets leidt tot meer vaag geklets.]

"It is perhaps significant that Marcuse (like both Bloch and Morris) uses the generic male throughout his writing. For despite the centrality of the transformation of labour in Marcuse’s image of the good society, and despite his avowed ‘feminism’, there is virtually no mention of domestic labour or child-care.(...) Indeed, Marcuse views women as relatively free from what Kellner describes as ‘repression in the work sphere, brutality in the military sphere, and competition in the social-public sphere’, and hence as a repository for the ‘creative receptivity’ which characterises Eros and will characterise the new sensibility and new reality principle. Although this accords to women a special role in the process of transformation, as in more recent arguments about the women’s movement as a key part of the ‘new social forces’, it is both less accurate and less flattering than it looks. We can hardly avoid the inference that Marcuse not only grossly underestimates women’s participation in (low) paid labour, but regards domestic labour and child-care as activities which are intrinsically satisfying and where the goals and means are not externally prescribed – a supposition at odds with the experience of most women." [mijn nadruk] (162)

[Helemaal waar. Ik vind het nog steeds jammer dat Levitas geen boek is gaan schrijven over dat thema.]

"However, despite his assertion of the unpredictability of what people might want in a liberated future, Marcuse addressed much more attention to the issue of the transformation of needs than did Marx. For Marcuse, new needs are not just a potential product of revolutionary change but a condition and an integral part of that process. Marcuse’s emphasis on the new reality principle and the new complex of needs that it embodies is analogous to Bloch’s docta spes and Thompson’s ‘education of desire’; so that whereas Marx and Engels were wary of images of potential futures as possibly counterrevolutionary, Marcuse has no such fears. Images and experiences which anticipate the future state, or indeed merely serve to negate the present, are essential to the possibility of transformation. The future is a realm of possibility – possible liberation, but also possible barbarism with or without nuclear destruction." [mijn nadruk] (164)

"Marcuse is aware that the distinction between true and false needs is problematic. People may experience real satisfaction in the gratification of false needs. Indeed, for Marcuse one of the stabilising characteristics of capi- talism is its ability to satisfy the false needs which it creates, although he greatly overestimated the extent to which capitalism does come up with the goods for the mass of the population." [mijn nadruk] (164)

"In spite of the fact that people may derive pleasure from the satisfaction of really experienced but nonetheless false needs, the process perpetuates a system which impedes real individual fulfilment. Happiness cannot therefore be used as a criterion of whether the needs being satisfied are true or false; Marcuse argues both that ‘happiness is an objective condition which demands more than subjective feelings’, and that what passes for happiness is for the most part ‘euphoria in unhappiness’.
In one sense, it is easy enough to define false needs. They are ‘those which are superimposed upon the individual by particular social interests in his repression: the needs which perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery and injustice’. Identifying them is more complex, because they are internalised and experienced as real needs. Marcuse is adamant that they remain false: ‘No matter how much such needs may have become the individual’s own, reproduced and fortified by the conditions of his existence; no matter how much he identifies with them and finds himself in their satisfaction, they continue to be what they were from the beginning – products of a society whose dominant interest demands repression’. The distinction is historical rather than absolute, just as any complex of needs is itself historical rather than absolute, but it is nonetheless objective. Yet the problem remains: ‘What tribunal can possibly claim the authority of decision?’. In the last analysis, says Marcuse, the decision must be taken by the individuals themselves: indeed, since the definition of false needs lies in their external prescription, this must be so. But only in the last analysis, for how can the choices made in conditions of unfreedom be regarded as free? The eradication of false needs can therefore only come about through praxis, in the process of social transformation " [mijn nadruk] (165)

"Marcuse’s distinction between true and false needs has been called into question by William Leiss in a general critique of distinctions between different types of needs and wants. Leiss argues that human needs are always and necessarily culturally mediated; capitalism is not alone in the social construction of needs and satisfactions." [mijn nadruk] (166)

"Leiss identifies two crucial difficulties with this sort of theory. The first is the attempt to deduce ‘an objective standard for judging the relative authenticity of felt needs’ from human nature, when that nature can only be observed as expressed in the oppressive conditions of the present; Marcuse has recourse to Freud to provide a model of human nature, but it remains contentious."(167)

"Five different meanings of the term utopia can be found in Marcuse’s work."(173)

[Vast, en die gaat Levitas allemaal bespreken en afzetten tegen wat andere auteurs als opvatting hadden. Academisch misschien prima, praktisch totaal onbelangrijk. Geeuw ...]

"Like most Marxists, Marcuse’s orientation to the concept of utopia is to consider it in terms of its relation to the process of social change, since what runs consistently through all his work is a critique of the human con- sequences of capitalist society and the need for radical transformation. His emphasis therefore is on the function of utopia."(177)

[Goed, weten we dat ook weer. ]

"The prime consideration then is the function of utopia. Yet in posing the question of what is really utopian, both in the sense of whether it really poses a challenge to the existing order and in the sense of whether or not it is really impossible, Marcuse must have recourse, as we all must, to content." [mijn nadruk] (178)

[Ja, dus waarom is die inhoud zo weinig aanwezig?]

(179) Chapter 7 - A Hundred Flowers: Contemporary Utopian Studies

"Although utopian studies has undergone a dramatic growth in the last three decades, it remains a relatively new field of academic study. Moreover, it is interdisciplinary in character, drawing on literature (in many languages), history, philosophy, architecture, sociology, politics and religion. In consequence there is a great diversity of both subject-matter and approach. Such a situation may be viewed as one of creative disorder or of debilitating confusion." [mijn nadruk] (179)

[Je zou het ook kunnen zien als afleidend van dat waar het om gaat: de huidige samenleving bekritiseren en een utopie realiseren. Wat hebben we eigenlijk aan al die academici die niet meer doen dan elkaars teksten becommentariëren? Het voorstellen van een definitie leidt ook alleen maar tot eindeloos gemekker en andere voorgestelde definities, en de chaos blijft, men wordt het nooit eens.]

"Although the book [Manuels’ Utopian Thought in the Western World - GdG] is a mine of information, especially on material to which the authors are sympathetic (which does not include Marx or Morris), there are a number of problems in its approach. The book is marred by an underlying psychoanalytic approach derived from Jung, so that there are repeated references to the collective unconscious." [mijn nadruk] (182)

"A more serious problem in the present context is the failure of the authors to define what they mean by utopia. Without such a definition, what is included, and what is given the most attention, can only be a matter of habit, tradition or personal preference."(183)

Zo'n encyclopedische aanpak wordt vaak vermeden.

"Such compendia may be roughly divided into four groups, although there is some overlap between the categories. First, there are studies of the communitarian tradition, which may set geographical or historical boundaries upon their subject-matter and may approach it either descriptively or analytically. Secondly, there are studies of literary utopias, grouped on the basis of country of origin, or date, or some other theme. Thus there are studies of women’s utopias, ‘critical’ utopias, the relationship between utopia and dystopia. In all these cases the inclusion or exclusion of material is decided primarily on the basis of form and content. Thirdly, writers may select an area of political thought such as utopian socialism, early modern utopianism or post-industrialism. Again, the selection of utopian material tends to be conventional, even where the analysis is incisive or where, as in the case of J. C. Davis, there is an explicit attempt to define utopia in a new way. Fourthly, writers may set out to explore the utopian possibilities in contemporary culture (or deplore their absence), either directly or through the critical analysis of other commentators. Elements of this approach of course enter into the other three categories; but it is only with this question that the issue of the function of utopia is foregrounded to the point where it becomes part of the defining characteristic of utopia." [mijn nadruk] (185)

"One of the most interesting attempts at a definition in terms of form occurs in Davis’s Utopia and the Ideal Society, in which he attempts both a classification of ideal societies and a simultaneous definition of utopia as a category within this."(185)

"Davis locates four types of ideal society besides that which he designates as utopia, the fifth and most important type. The first of these is Cockaygne.(...) The result is plainly a male utopia in which women are constantly sexually available; Davis rightly, though unwittingly, observes that Cockaygne is characterised by the ‘fullest ... satisfaction of men’s appetites’, and while Adam’s labour is abolished, Eve’s is unmentioned. Davis’s category of Cockaygne builds on a particular feature of this tradition, namely its provision of unlimited satisfactions." [mijn nadruk] (185-186)

"Davis’s second category of ideal society is Arcadia. Here too we see natural abundance and a temperate climate, but the abundance is a moderate one. Wants do not outstrip satisfactions, not because satisfactions are limit- less, but because wants are reduced to a ‘natural’ level. Arcadia implicitly involves a distinction between true and false needs and abolishes the scarcity gap by limiting true needs to believably available satisfactions." [mijn nadruk] (186)

"Early modern Europeans invented two further forms of ideal society, the perfect moral commonwealth and the millennium."(186)

"None of these constitutes utopia proper. For Davis, none of these approaches is acceptable, since all are unrealistic. ‘The utopian is more “realistic” or tough-minded in that he accepts the basic problem as it is: limited satisfactions exposed to unlimited wants’, and thus seeks to design a set of political and social institutions to contain the conflicts of interest and potential social disorder which may result from the collective problem."(187)

"The central core of Kumar’s book [Krishan Kumar, Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times - GdG] is a compellingly argued thesis about the relationship between utopian and dystopian writing in the first half of the twentieth century; these forms are not fundamentally opposed but mutually dependent. Dystopia (or anti-utopia) represents the fear of what the future may hold if we do not act to avert catastrophe, whereas utopia encapsulates the hope of what might be. This relationship is explored with great erudition through the work of Edward Bellamy, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and B. F. Skinner. Kumar notes that there is a perennial problem of distinguishing between utopia and dystopia, illustrated by the reception by some of Huxley’s Brave New World as utopian and Skinner’s Walden Two as dystopian, in both cases in opposition to the author’s intention. At the beginning of the book, Kumar discusses the definition of utopia and the history of utopia up to the end of the nineteenth century; at the end he addresses the period from 1950–87, and the ‘decline’ in both utopian and dystopian genres." [mijn nadruk] (189-190)

"Although utopias are primarily interesting for their social and political content rather than their narrative qualities, they differ from model constitutions. Utopia is essentially a novel which shows a society in operation. Form in the sense of literary form, however, is less important than content; since ‘the didactic purpose overwhelms any literary aspiration’ (which is a polite way of saying that many utopian novels are both badly constructed and badly written!), ‘the literary form of utopia is not an important concern of this study, nor perhaps should it be in any serious treatment of utopia’." [mijn nadruk] (191)

[Waarom zou een utopische roman die inhoudelijk invloed wil hebben niet tegelijkertijd ook goed geschreven kunnen zijn / worden? Het een sluit het ander niet uit. Sterker nog: een goed geschreven roman bereikt de lezer misschien wel eerder en heeft daardoor meer invloed.]

"Like Davis, Kumar regards utopia as a modern phenomenon. Classical traditions of the golden age and arcadia, ideal cities, Cokaygne, Christian images of paradise and hopes of the millennium are all excluded from utopia ‘proper’ and are regarded as prefigurations of it."(191)

"Kumar’s pessimism about the role of utopia in the modern world rests not just on the nature of the contemporary utopian novel (to which we will return), but on a broader consideration of utopian possibilities in contemporary culture. This inevitably shifts the focus from the form to the function of utopia. Among his arguments is the claim that socialism might have functioned as a utopia but fails to do so (...) socialism is doomed as utopia because of the experience of Stalinism, the nature of actually existing socialism and the ‘increasing evidence of cynicism and disbelief in Marxism among the intelligentsia of Eastern Europe’." [mijn nadruk] (193)

[Maar dat zou toch net zo goed kunnen leiden tot andere, betere maatschappelijke utopia's?]

"A similar argument, and a similar pessimism about the prognosis for utopia, can be found in Bauman’s Socialism: The Active Utopia, published twelve years before Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times."(193)

"What is needed then is a new utopia to take the place of social ism, which is directed at both capitalist and socialist realities. Bauman is pessimistic about such a development, fearing that utopia-producers have run out of ideas, and also arguing that the ascendancy over common sense which has been gained by the combined forces of capitalist and socialist bourgeois culture means that, even given the ideas, utopia faces unprecedentedly difficult obstacles." [mijn nadruk] (194-195)

[Het zou geprobeerd kunnen worden ... ]

"There are many observations which can be made on Bauman’s thesis. The first is that it is not so much the reality of actually existing socialism which undermines the prospects for the socialist utopia in the West, but the ideological representation of it; most people’s images are derived from media representation, not reality. That reality is in any case now in such a state of flux that it is unclear whether the eventual outcome will serve to further discredit socialism (as Western governments clearly hope), or whether it will reinforce socialism’s utopian potential. Secondly, the argument that capitalist society has been so transformed as to reduce the relevance of socialism sounds less convincing in 1989 after ten years of Thatcherism than it did in 1976 when we could still perceive ourselves as being in an era of consensus politics, even if the consensus was always more limited than is sometimes claimed. Thirdly, the extent to which socialism used to attract mass support can be seriously overstated. Fourthly, the prospects for a utopian counter-culture do not look totally bleak. What Bauman sought was a utopia which would challenge both capitalism and actually existing socialism and which would have the potential to mobilise popular support. It is interesting to observe that socialist utopias continue to emerge from both actually existing socialism and from capitalism, alongside feminist and green visions of a better future. One can also identify a convergence of themes which might be seen as heralding the new counter-culture which Bauman hopes for. It is characterised by an emphasis on self-management, unalienated labour, ecological responsibility, distributive justice, sexual equality. Nevertheless, Bauman, like Kumar, fears that contemporary utopias do not have the power to enter popular consciousness and mobilise people politically." [mijn nadruk] (195)

"A less pessimistic assessment of the current supply of utopias and their potential to change the world can be found in Tom Moylan’s Demand the Impossible. Moylan concentrates on utopian novels by four authors: Joanna Russ, Ursula Le Guin, Marge Piercy and Samuel Delaney."(197)

"The critical utopia brings into question both whether and how the good society may emerge, as well as the possibility of any society achieving perfection."(198)

[Dat lijkt me een goede insteek.]

"Moylan’s central thesis is that these changes in the utopian form are crucial to the survival of the utopian function. The ambiguity of the critical utopia renders it both more exploratory and less open to charges of totalitarianism. Not only does the focus on action make it less static and less boring than the traditional form, but it is less easily negated by dystopia and less easily co-opted to the service of the status quo." [mijn nadruk] (198)

[Prachtig.]

"The issue of how dissatisfaction and even articulate criticism are converted into oppositional and transformative action is, as Bauman recognises, far from simple. However, Moylan assumes a connection, since many of the writers of critical utopias are actively involved in politics, mainly in those movements which would be identified as part of the ‘new social forces’, and particularly the women’s movement."(199-200)

"However, if the function of utopia is to bring about change, then the question of practical possibility and the problem of transition are real ones. Goodwin’s argument about the value of utopias applies here too, and is illustrated by Frankel’s The Post-Industrial Utopians, a critique of the work of Rudolf Bahro, André Gorz, Alvin Toffler and Barry Jones."(204)

"We have a range of definitions, related to a range of different questions, all of which are problematic as general definitions of utopia. In the following chapter, we shall consider whether there is any way forward out of this confusion."(205)

[Is dat nodig dan?]

(207) Chapter 8 - Future Perfect: Retheorising Utopia

"The definitions of utopia discussed in this book, and those current in contemporary utopian studies, refer to form, function or content, or some combination of these; thus they may have descriptive, analytic and norma- tive elements.(...) In this final chapter it will be argued that narrow definitions in terms of content or form or function are all undesirable; that any definition must be able to incorporate a wide range of forms, functions and contents; and that therefore a broad definition is essential. This will necessarily leave the boundaries of utopia vague but while this may be problematic, it is greatly less so than the problems which arise from more restrictive definitions." [mijn nadruk] (207)

[Maar waarom dan dit boek? Want in de praktijk is die definitie al zo vaag en dat is blijkbaar geen probleem maar een goed ding ... ]

"Such a definition cannot be cast in terms of content, form or function, because all of these vary considerably. Changes in content are taken for granted, although there is still a temptation to introduce normative elements into definitions of utopia." [mijn nadruk] (208)

[Wat wil je: utopisch denken is immers in essentie normatief: je hebt het over een betere samenleving bijvoorbeeld. Dus waarom weer die postmoderne angst voor 'normatieve elementen'? ]

"We need, then, a definition which will enable us to include utopias taking different forms and performing different functions, and to continue asking different questions about them. The problem still remains, however: what is the thing we call utopia? How far can we identify its boundaries? First, though, we must address the question of why utopias arise."(209)

[Pff, please ... Geef nu eens gewoon een antwoord.]

"The essence of utopia seems to be desire – the desire for a different, better way of being. The fact that this is so widespread yet so various in form and content has led several writers to suggest that there exists a utopian propensity in human beings.(...) It is implicit that the scarcity gap, the gap between needs and satisfactions, is given."(209)

"However, utopia is a social construct which arises not from a ‘natural’ impulse subject to social mediation, but as a socially constructed response to an equally socially constructed gap between the needs and wants generated by a particular society and the satisfactions available to and distributed by it. All aspects of the scarcity gap are social constructs, including the propensity to imagine it away by some means or other." [mijn nadruk] (210)

[Dat vind ik ook. We hebben geen essentialisme nodig.]

"Leiss’s point is that the distinction between nature and culture is inappropriate; culture is not something which is added on to human nature, but something which is intrinsically embedded in it. The same point is implicit in Raymond Williams’s observation that ‘We cannot abstract desire. It is always desire for something specific, in specifically impelling circumstances’. The point is also integral to Leiss’s rejection of the distinction between true and false needs: all needs, once concretely expressed, are in a sense artificial in that they are socially constructed, but they remain real needs."(211)

[Heel goed. Desondanks lijkt het me niet onwenselijk om te zoeken naar bepaalde universele aspecten in utopia's. Normatief betekent immers niet meteen relatief, kwestie van smaak, etc.]

"Intuitively, most people are unwilling to include in the category of utopia prognoses or plans as morally offensive as Nazism, although we would no doubt draw the line in different places. There is a normative element in many definitions which excludes evil utopias and regards them as a contradiction in terms. Conversely, such a normative element implies that some utopias are objectively better than others. While such judgements are politically and morally necessary, they are not properly part of a definition of utopia as an analytic category and indeed produce misleading conclusions. The difficulty lies in trying to represent evaluative judgements as objective ones: is the good society more than a matter of personal preference?" [mijn nadruk] (212)

[Dat bedoel ik. En, ja, mij lijkt dat er in een gegeven situatie normatief en praktisch betere en slechtere utopia's verzonnen kunnen worden. Heel die discussie raakt weer aan de normatieve: absolutisme - relativisme - een andere denkwijze.]

"The problem is similar to that identified by Leiss in relation to human needs: we can define them in the abstract, perhaps, but they can only be experienced and evaluated in terms of their concrete manifestations; and the shift of level from abstract to concrete alters the nature of the problem."(213)

[Dat geldt ook voor de definitie van utopia. Met andere woorden: het idee sociale constructie is belangrijk maar heeft ook een discutabele kant als het leidt tot een ondoordacht relativisme zoals denken in termen van 'de menselijke natuur' een discutabele kant heeft omdat het leidt tot een ondoordacht absolutisme.]

"But it is notable that most utopians do, in fact, make implicit or explicit claims about human nature; it is difficult to see how a utopia could be constructed otherwise."(213)

[Maar dat is dus niet nodig om naar meer universele kenmerken te zoeken.]

"Desire in the guise of sexual desire is the irrepressible reality which challenges the totalitarian state in all three of the great dystopias, We, Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, as well as the outcome of Marcuse’s Eros. For the utopian, this challenge can only be met by the assertion that the needs constructed in a particular society are indeed the true needs which correspond to ‘real’ human nature."(213)

"Most utopias are portrayed as universal utopias. This portrayal entails that they necessarily make claims about human nature as a means of legitimising the particular social arrangements prescribed. Indeed, without the criterion of human needs and human nature we have no objective measure for distinguishing the good society from the bad, except the degree of fit between needs and satisfactions; and this does not distinguish happiness in unfreedom, the happiness of the cheerful robot, from ‘real’ happiness. The appeal to needs is made, in fact, to provide precisely such a (pseudo-) objective criterion, rather than make explicit the values involved in particular constructions of individuals and societies, and present this as what it is – a matter of moral choice. Contemporary literary utopias are, as has been observed by Moylan and by Abensour, more inclined to make the evaluative element in utopia central and explicit; the effect of this is to render such utopias ambiguous. The utopian claim to universality, however, cannot be accepted; and this makes any definition of utopia in terms of content problematic." [mijn nadruk] (214)

"The rise of the New Right throughout the industrialised West can itself be seen as embodying a utopian project, in which utopia still functions as a catalyst of change."(215)

[Dat hangt er dus helemaal van af. Te simpel aan de kant geschoven. En wat betreft het laatste citaat: niet iedere groep die een verandering wil bewerkstelligen is uit op een utopia. Verandering willen vanuit conservatisme is niet hetzelfde als verandering willen vanuit een utopisch ideaal.]

"It is arguable that such right-wing utopias are not properly to be considered utopias; Ricoeur might argue that they are not oppositional since they do not seek to implement change, whereas Mannheim would see them as sustaining the status quo and thus as ideologies. Quite apart from theoretical objections to these grounds for exclusion, it is empirically incorrect to see such utopias as not seeking or effecting change: they do, even if it is in the direction of increasing the power of already powerful groups and further subordinating the powerless." [mijn nadruk] (215)

[Ik ben het op dit punt met Mannheim eens. Het is ideologie, het wil de status quo in stand houden. Het is geen utopie. Wie wordt er beter van? is de vraag. En wat is hier 'beter'? En het antwoord daarop moet normatief tussen dogma en drijfzand liggen.]

"Secondly, having already rejected content as a criterion for declaring something utopian or otherwise on the grounds that it is unnecessarily evaluative, we can only say that this is someone else’s utopia."(216)

[Daarom is dat geen goede insteek. Het gaat uiteindelijk om de inhoud ervan.]

"The neo-conservative utopia is different. It emphasises not the individual and freedom but nation, authority, tradition and loyalty. Again, the neo-conservative utopia has characteristics very like those identified by Mannheim. In particular, he argued that while both liberal and social- ist utopias were future-oriented the conservative utopia is oriented to the past. Institutions and practices are value-laden in so far as they represent the past as immanent in the present; their merit is in their persistence." [mijn nadruk] (217)

"The utopian character of the conservative stress on tradition has been elucidated with great elegance by Patrick Wright in On Living in an Old Country (...) Utopia refers not simply to a past state, but to the past as immanent in the present. Conservatism is future-oriented only in the sense of preservation and restoration: its purpose is ‘to maintain existing inequalities and restore lost ones’, and its means ‘to command and coerce those who would otherwise reform or destroy’. Again, as with the neo-liberal utopia, some may find this offensive but there is no doubt that there is an image of a desired society here, one where there is unquestioned loyalty to the state (and where trade union activity is seen as a form of subversion), where there is hierarchy, deference, order, centralised power – and, incidentally, where the patriarchal family is the fundamental unit of society and where sexuality outside of this has been eliminated or at least effectively suppressed. It supports the idea of a strong state, particularly in terms of defence and policing, and the issues of national security and the prevention of subversion are paramount." [mijn nadruk] (217-218)

[Zo zie je weer dat het vermijden van normatieve criteria leidt tot een idee van een utopie dat helemaal geen utopie is omdat er niets van een verbetering wordt nagestreefd in mens en samenleving. Ik ben het eens met Peter Wright. Het is het willen versterken van oude waarden en normen die alleen maar in het voordeel van bepaalde groepen werken en in het nadeel van andere. Utopie wordt hier bij Levitas een leeg alles omvattend begrip: als je maar verandering wilt, als je maar droomt van een andere wereld ook al is die niet mogelijk of realiseerbaar, heb je een utopie. Dan wordt utopie een grijs iets, een lege huls. Letterlijk. En dat alleen maar omdat de inhoud er buiten gehouden wordt en er een puur formeel idee van wat een utopie is wordt gehanteerd. Niet goed.]

"If we are seeking a broad definition which permits the consideration of different forms and functions for utopia and which is non-evaluative as to content, the idea of the ‘possible world’ would seem to be the best option on offer so far. Even this, however, may be too limiting."(219)

"In situations where there is no hope of changing the social and material circumstances, the function of utopia is purely compensatory. It may take the form of a myth of a golden age or an other-worldly or remote this-worldly paradise. Such myths are common and occur in many cultures, but they are not universal, and thus not evidence of a ‘natural’ utopian impulse. They also have common themes – of good weather, abundant food and water, magical springs or fruits with healing properties or which give everlasting life. It is not necessary to refer to some misty notion of a collective unconscious to explain these similarities; the concerns of survival, as well as the issues of ageing, pain and death are material circumstances which confront most human societies, albeit always in socially mediated forms. The problem of death is the least soluble of these, which is why both Bloch and Adorno refer to it as the ultimate problem for utopia. The location of these happy lands is always remote – on distant islands, on high mountains, under the hills – in order to explain why everyone is not there, or inaccessibility is achieved by locating them beyond death or in the past." [mijn nadruk] (222)

[Dat zijn droomwerelden, geen utopia's.]

"The merits of a broad analytic definition of utopia should by now be clear. In avoiding the normative element in definitions in terms of content, it enables us to see that utopia is not necessarily oppositional."(228)