(13) Introduction

"The word ‘utopia’ was coined by Thomas More (1478–1535) as the name of the imaginary country he described in his short 1516 book (...) now known as Utopia. The word is based on the Greek topos meaning place or where, and ‘u’ from the prefix ‘ou’ meaning no or not. But in ‘Six Lines on the Island of Utopia’, More gives the reader a poem that calls Utopia ‘Eutopia’ (Happy Land, or good place). As a result, the word ‘utopia’, which simply means no place or nowhere, has come to refer to a non-existent good place." [mijn nadruk] (15)

"While the word ‘utopia’ was coined by More, the idea already had a long and complex history. Utopias have been discovered that were written well before More invented the word, and new words have been added to describe different types of utopias, such as ‘dystopia’ meaning bad place, which, as far as we know, was first used in 1747 by Henry Lewis Younge (b. 1694) in his Utopia: or, Apollo’s Golden Days and has become standard usage. And to call something ‘utopian’ has, from very early on, been a way of dismissing it as unrealistic." [mijn nadruk] (18)

[Hetgeen een toekomstdroom beschrijft karakteriseren als onrealistisch - als niet reëel - is eigenlijk nogal dom, nietwaar. Mensen bedoelen dan eigenlijk te zeggen dat het een slechte toekomstdroom is, schat ik. 'Onrealiseerbaar' zou een beter woord zijn en zeggen dat een toekomstdroom niet gerealiseerd kan worden / onmogelijk realiteit kan worden. De vraag is alleen hoe kun je dat tevoren aantonen?]

"All utopias ask questions. They ask whether or not the way we live could be improved and answer that it could. Most utopias compare life in the present and life in the utopia and point out what is wrong with the way we now live, thus suggesting what needs to be done to improve things." [mijn nadruk] (19)

[Precies. Ik vind de onderscheidingen - "literary utopia, utopian practice, and utopian social theory"(20) die de auteur daarna gaat bespreken niet erg zinvol. Ik ben ook niet geïnteresseerd in religieuze utopieën die spelen na de dood.]

"The utopian views humanity and its future with either hope or alarm. If viewed with hope, the result is usually a utopia. If viewed with alarm, the result is usually a dystopia. But basically, utopianism is a philosophy of hope, and it is characterized by the transformation of generalized hope into a description of a non-existent society. Of course, hope can often be nothing more than a rather naive wish-fulfilment, such as in some fairy tales (albeit most fairy tales turn into dystopias if carefully analysed). On the other hand, hope is essential to any attempt to change society for the better. But this raises the possibility of someone attempting to impose their idea of what constitutes a desirable future on others who reject it. Utopians are always faced with this dilemma when they attempt to move their dream to reality – is their dream compatible with the imposition of their dream; can freedom be achieved through unfreedom, or equality through inequality? (...) In the 20th century, negative evaluations were strong as a result of attempts to impose a specific version of the good life, particularly Communism in the Soviet Union, China, and elsewhere, but also including National Socialism in Germany and the Taliban version of Islamism in Afghanistan. Others have seen utopianism positively as the primary means of countering such attempts.
While aiming at a comprehensive and balanced presentation, I make an argument here. In its broadest outline, that argument is that utopianism is essential for the improvement of the human condition, and in this sense opponents of utopianism are both wrong and potentially dangerous. But I also argue that if used wrongly, and it has been, utopianism is itself dangerous, and in this sense supporters of utopianism are both wrong and potentially dangerous. Therefore, the conclusion both explores and attempts to rectify the contradictory nature of utopianism." [mijn nadruk] (25-26)

[Het valt me altijd weer op dat in het kader van het opleggen van een ideaal en het afnemen van (een deel van de) individuele vrijheid alleen de verhalen over nationaal-socialisme en communisme en zo genoemd worden. Nooit wordt ook gezegd wordt dat het kapitalisme als utopie aan miljarden mensen opgelegd wordt, ten koste van (de vrijheid en het geluk van) de mens en van het milieu, terwijl dat al meer dan 200 jaar gaande is. ]

(26) Chapter 1 - Good places and bad places

Allereerst de utopische verhalen vóór More.

"The most influential of these early myths are creation myths like the golden age and earthly paradise and myths of the afterlife like the Islands of the Blest, where heroes go after death, and Hades. Such myths from ancient Greece and Rome, Sumer, and early Judaism were central to the development of Western utopianism, and similar myths, such as the Chinese ‘Peach Blossom Spring’, are found in most early civilizations. The classic Western statement of the golden age is that of the Greek poet Hesiod (late 8th century BCE) ..." [mijn nadruk] (31)

"But the version of the golden age that passed down into the Middle Ages was that of the Roman author Ovid (43 BCE to 17/18 CE). While Hesiod stressed abundance shared equally, a joyful life, and an easy death, Ovid, responding to current issues, added freedom from law courts, a local community, and no war ..."(32)

"The Roman festival of Saturn, known as the Saturnalia, was an actual festival in which the golden age was to return briefly, where masters waited on servants and the rich fed the poor and, in some versions, forgave debts. For all, there was gluttony and a degree of sexual freedom." [mijn nadruk] (34)

"In the Middle Ages, descendants of Saturnalia, such as Carnival, when the poor ruled for a time, and the Feast of Fools, in which the Church hierarchy was briefly reversed and which was particularly popular in France, caused serious problems. From time to time, Carnival got out of hand, at least from the point of view of those in power, because the powerless thought that the reversal should last longer than a few days. And the Feast of Fools was vigorously suppressed by the Church. Carnival still exists in some places such as New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro, but it is no longer considered a threat." [mijn nadruk] (34)

Daarnaast verhalen over Cockagne.

"The Roman writer Virgil (70–19 BCE) made significant changes to the myths. First, and most importantly, in his famous Fourth Eclogue, also known as the messianic Eclogue, he moved the past golden age to the future. Second, the better world became based on human activity rather than simply being a gift from the gods: people work, primarily in agriculture, and this continues as the myth of the happy peasant or farmer, a more realistic – if still idealized – vision. This myth has never died and exists today as a substantial part of modern utopianism." [mijn nadruk] (35)

Lycurgus over Sparta. Plato's De Staat

"However, any society created by humans can only be a poor reflection of the ideal, and it must fail. Plato explores the process of failure at considerable length; in doing so, he develops a theory of corruption and applies it to both individuals and societies. The important thing here is not the theory but the underlying point that there cannot be a perfect society or human being on this earth. The best we can achieve is an approximation, which will inevitably collapse." [mijn nadruk] (38)

"The first great anti-utopian, the Greek writer of comedies Aristophanes (448–380 BCE), wrote at the same time and discussed many of the same themes as the utopian writers. From the utopian perspective, the most important of his plays was Ecclesiazusae, or Women in Parliament, in which a group of women succeeded in taking over the legislative assembly and enacting a form of communism. Their legislation failed not because it was bad but because the human race was not capable of the required altruism. This is a standard reason given for rejecting utopias." [mijn nadruk] (39)

Vervolgens hetzelfde ná More.

"This is not the place for a history of utopian literature, but it is necessary to say something about it and how it was used. Post-More utopias have often been characterized as focusing on the city. The historian and architectural critic Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) in particular argued that the city and the utopia were closely linked ... "(42)

"Contrary to much commentary, which tends to see utopia up to the middle of the 20th century as representing some form of common ownership, utopias have been written from every conceivable position. There are socialist, capitalist, monarchical, democratic, anarchist, ecological, feminist, patriarchal, egalitarian, hierarchical, racist, left-wing, right-wing, reformist, free love, nuclear family, extended family, gay, lesbian, and many more utopias, and all these types were published between 1516 and the middle of the 20th century, before diversity really took hold. And, because there is a strong anti-utopian tradition, the number could be doubled by simply putting ‘anti-’ in front of any of these words, and after the early 20th century there have been dystopias written reflecting all these positions." [mijn nadruk] (44)

"For the utopian, human intelligence and ingenuity know no bounds; for the dystopian, human greed and stupidity know no bounds. And both appear to be right."(45)

[O, is dat zo? Alsof er niets in te brengen is tegen dat negatieve mensbeeld ... Mensen zijn weer 'van nature' zo blijkbaar.]

More's Utopia is een soort van model voor al die andere verhalen. Bijvoorbeeld die van Butler, Swift, Defoe.

"The great utopians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the American Edward Bellamy (1850–98) and the English writers William Morris (1834–96) and H. G. Wells (1866–1946)."(51)

"Wells is best described as a pessimistic utopian, a man who believed that it was possible to radically improve human life but doubted that the willpower to do so would be found. He never gave up hope, but he never stopped doubting either."(52)

[Herkenbaar ... ]

"And with World Wars I and II, the flu epidemic, the Depression, the Korean War, the war in Vietnam, and other events of the 20th century, dystopias became the dominant form of utopian literature. While the word ‘dystopia’ was first used in the middle of the 18th century (...) it did not become common until well into the 20th century."(54)

"The same period that produced many anti-German and anti-Soviet dystopias also saw the publication of three outstanding works: the Russian Evgeny Zamiatin’s (1884–1937) We (written in Russian in 1920, but first published in English in 1924), and the English writers Aldous Huxley’s (1894–1963) Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s (born Eric Blair, 1903–50) Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949; Orwell insisted that the title be spelled out). While all three target the misuse of power, each is a many-faceted, complex work with multiple concerns, and they all attack capitalism as much as they attack communism. All three depict partially failed attempts to control the power of sexual desire. We licenses sexual behaviour in a way that is meant to meet individual needs; Brave New World insists on promiscuity; and Nineteen Eighty-Four severely restricts sex. And all three imply that this may be an area that even a totalitarian regime would not be able to control." [mijn nadruk] (56)

"Huxley’s projection or extrapolation into the future of trends he saw around him became the norm for dystopias. While dystopias tend to differ from utopias in not being described by an outside visitor but from within, they are clearly connected to the present in which they are written. In that connection, they provide an explicitly positive message to go with the negative one. They say, as H. G. Wells constantly said, that this is what will happen if we fail to act, but if we do act, this future can still be avoided. Most writers of dystopias left it at that, as a warning, but Wells put much effort into spelling out just what he thought needed to be done and how to do it." [mijn nadruk] (57)

"While utopias were published throughout the period that the dystopia dominated, they went unnoticed until the upsurge in utopianism in the so-called ‘Sixties’ (the actual dates varied from country to country). Much of the utopian impulse in this period led to the streets, to, for example, the 1968 uprising in Czechoslovakia, the 1968 rebellion in Paris with its explicitly utopian message ‘Le réalisme qui demande l’impossible’ (‘Be realistic, demand the impossible’), and the civil rights movement in the United States. In addition, many intentional communities, then universally known as communes, were founded, many of which still exist over 40 years later. And utopian literature flourished, but it was a literature with a difference, a chastened literature that knew that achieving a better society would not be easy. Its societies were populated with men and women with real human strengths and weaknesses, and even the much better societies still have problems, even serious ones. Ursula K. Le Guin’s (b. 1929) The Dispossessed (1974) had the subtitle An Ambiguous Utopia, and that subtitle fits many of the other works published at the time. The literary scholar Tom Moylan (b. 1943) called these works ‘critical utopias’, the political theorist Lucy Sargisson (b. 1964), focusing on feminist utopianism, called them ‘transgressive utopias’, and I have called some of them ‘flawed utopias’ to illustrate the way in which some authors, like Ursula K. Le Guin in her ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’ (1973), present what appears to be a utopia but may in fact be a dystopia.
The feminist utopia was the most important of the streams coming out of Sixties utopianism and produced most of the novels of the period that are still read.(...) And feminist utopianism was a significant part of the feminist movement. The best-known feminist utopias were Russ’s The Female Man (1975), Marge Piercy’s (b. 1936) Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), and a number of short stories by Alice Bradley Sheldon (1915–87), writing as James Tiptree, Jr, such as ‘Houston Houston, Do You Read?’ (1976)." [mijn nadruk] (60)

"Aspects of the utopianism of the Sixties were part of long-term changes in Western societies, but there was a backlash against these changes, and, while utopias continued to be published, utopian literature mostly returned to the dystopia. Except for lesbian utopias, feminist utopias almost disappeared in the 1990s, although there has been a resurgence since 2000. The great exception to the return to the dystopia has been in the environmental utopia. Certainly, many dystopias have depicted the horrors of a future environmental collapse, but Kim Stanley Robinson (b. 1952) and others have published important environmental utopias. Robinson has published two trilogies with environmental themes, the Mars trilogy (1992, 1993, 1996) and a climate change/global warming trilogy whose first volume, Forty Signs of Rain (2004), depicts the dystopia brought about by the failure of politicians to deal with global warming and the two other volumes, Fifty Degrees Below (2005) and Sixty Days and Counting (2007), deal with a change in policy and its ultimately positive results. And the whole subgenre of the ecotopia, named after Ernest Callenbach’s (b. 1928) 1975 novel of that name is today the strongest utopian current, and many ecotopias are also feminist, so that the two strongest currents of the last 50 years are now often combined. For example, novels by Sally Miller Gearhart (b. 1931) such as The Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women (1978) and The Magister (2003) combine both feminist and ecological perspectives." [mijn nadruk] (61-62)

(62) Chapter 2 - Utopian practice

"Over the centuries, many individuals and groups have attempted to put their visions into practice. Some tried to gain political power to do so (few succeeded) and others created social movements (with greater success).(...)
But the most common form of putting a specific vision into practice has been to create a small community either to withdraw from the larger society to practise the beliefs of its members without interference or to demonstrate to the larger society that their utopia could be put into practice."(63)

"Intentional communities have been established so that their members can live a particular way of life. Some have sought to change sexual behavior radically. Many have changed how people ate, and the vegetarian communities changed what people ate. Many communities have changed how work was organized, and particularly have broken down gender distinctions in how work was to be allocated. Others worked with some success at breaking down the distinction between mental and physical labour.
Many have been religious and they tried to lead a way of life that their members believed their faith required. Many have followed a charismatic leader, preaching their version of religious belief, gaining followers, and establishing communities. Others have followed the ideas of a social theorist. There are many other reasons that people choose to withdraw from mainstream society to live differently." [mijn nadruk] (65-66)

"Other religious groups developed in Britain and the United States and chose to establish communities to enable them to practise their beliefs. The best known are groups such as the Shakers (officially the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing) and the Oneida community. One practising Shaker community remains in Maine, but today the Shakers are best known for their craftsmanship. The Oneida community did not last as long and became a stock company producing Oneida Silverplate. But at their height, both were known for their characteristic sexual practices, the Shakers being celibate and the Oneida community practising what they called ‘complex marriage’, with all community members assumed to be married to all others, although sexual relations were not generally promiscuous. Both believed in and tried to practise gender equality, with the Shakers believing that the Second Coming of Christ had occurred in the female form in their founder Ann Lee (1736–84). And the Oneida community instituted a eugenic experiment by choosing those who were allowed to have children together. The experiment is generally considered successful in the sense that most of the children produced proved both healthy and intelligent, and mostly their descendants have continued to be so." [mijn nadruk] (71-72)

"Other communities were established based on the ideas of reformers, such as the men identified by Friedrich Engels (1820–95) as utopian socialists to distinguish them from Marxian scientific socialism. Engels identified three theorists as utopian socialists: the Welshman Robert Owen (1771–1858), and the Frenchmen Charles Fourier (1772–1837) and Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825). Although none of them wrote a utopian novel, they did publish expositions of their ideal societies, and others wrote utopian novels based on the ideas of Owen and Fourier." [mijn nadruk] (73)

"Henry Near, the historian of the kibbutz movement, calls the kibbutz today ‘post-utopian’, arguing that the founding was clearly utopian in that it expected the kibbutzim would create wholly new and better lives for their members but that since no people or social form could ever live up to the hopes of the founding, people must adjust to the reality of daily life with other people and the loss of the original vision."(75)

"The Chinese communes established under Mao Zedong (1893–1976) were an authoritarian version of communalism and show that it can be dystopian in that the lives of many of the people required to join were clearly worse than they had been before."(77)

[Is dit nu waar? Ik zie nergens een bronvermelding. Weer zo'n gemakkelijk oordeel van een Amerikaan of zo?]

"The Sixties produced an explosion of intentional communities throughout the world, with thousands of mostly short-lived urban groups self-identifying as communes and hundreds of rural communities founded with varying utopian visions. Such communities were established throughout Europe and North America. Because of its perception that the communities practised free love or were promiscuous (some were, some were not), the press was fascinated by Hippie communes like the rural Drop City and the Hog Farm and Kerista in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco." [mijn nadruk] (78)

[Leve de sensatiepers. Dat soort zaken in de preutse VS zal wel wat oproepen, ja.]

"But the communities that were most similar to earlier communities were not based on Eastern religions but on a new vision, like the communities inspired by the behavioural psychologist B. F. Skinner’s utopian novel Walden Two. The best known of these communities, Twin Oaks in Virginia, long ago moved away from the Skinnerian model, but the other survivor of the original Skinnerian communities, Los Horcones in Mexico, still follows aspects of the original vision of using the institutions of the community to modify and improve behaviour."(79)

"The eco-village movement is clearly part of communalism, with small communities throughout the world trying to achieve a more ecologically balanced lifestyle, architecture, and community design."(82)

"The co-housing movement, which originated in Denmark and has spread throughout Western countries, has links to intentional communities. In co-housing, property is a mixture of private and collective, with the site and shared facilities held collectively, usually as shareholders, and the individual houses owned individually. The ethos stresses community interaction."(82)

"One approach to success and failure is that stated by the American progressive thinker Henry Demarest Lloyd (1847–1903):
Always failures? Only within these communities has there been seen, in the wide boundaries of the United States, a social life where hunger and cold, prostitution, intemperance, poverty, slavery, crime, premature old age and unnecessary mortality, panic and industrial terror, have been abolished. If they had done this for only a year, they would have deserved to be called the only successful ‘society’ on this continent, and some of them are generations old. All this has not been done by saints in heaven, but on earth by average men and women."(86)

(90) Chapter 3 - Indigenous, colonial, and postcolonial utopianism

"There have been two types of colonies, and both were designed to serve the interests of the home country, not the interests of the colony. One was primarily intended to exploit the labour, raw materials, and wealth of the colony. The second was designed for settlement, either to offload surplus population or as places to send undesirables. Colonies are important to utopianism in that they represented utopian dreams themselves, but also because collectively more literary utopias have been written and more intentional communities have been established in colonies than in the countries from which they originated. All colonies had impacts on the indigenous populations, and the interpretation of those impacts have varied both over time and depending on who was doing the interpreting." [mijn nadruk] (90)

"But the dream of a better life that drove so many was clearly utopian, and settler colonies were all informed by utopian dreams."(91)

[Kun je een individuele droom over een beter leven wel utopisch noemen? Het lijkt er in de tekst zo langzamerhand op dat een utopie gelijk staat aan een 'vision of a better life'. Dat vind ik veel te simpel.]

"Because settler colonies often systematically destroyed the cultures of the indigenous inhabitants while also slaughtering the people, we know much less of their myths or their dreams of a good life than we do about the dreams of the settlers."(93)

"There are utopian traditions among the Aborigines in Australia, the First Nations in Canada, the Maori in New Zealand, and the Native American Indians in the United States. And the struggle against colonialism produced millennial movements with strong utopian elements, such as the Ghost Dance movement in the United States. There were dozens of such movements in South America, and a number among the Maori in New Zealand that still exist, such as the Ratana Church. And some Maori groups have revived traditional forms of communalism that they believe provide better lives for their people than can be achieved through integration into the larger society."(94)

"But most of the utopian literature written by indigenous peoples are dystopias describing their treatment by the settlers both at the time of settlement and continuing to the present."(96)

"Settler colonies became places of utopian experimentation. From as early as 1659, intentional communities were established within the American colonies. While the first such community was founded in Delaware by the Dutchman Pieter Plockhoy (c. 1629–c. 1700) and practised religious freedom, most of the earliest ones were founded by Germans, like the Ephrata community in Pennsylvania, and were religious without internal religious freedom."(112)

(113) Chapter 4 - Utopianism in other traditions

"Thomas More invented a literary genre, but there are numerous texts both in the West and outside it that pre-date More’s Utopia that describe a non-existent society identifiably better than the contemporary society. Thus it is clear that utopian traditions that pre-date More existed outside the West.(...) There are two common utopian forms with parallels in the West that are found in most cultures: an ideal society in the past and some version of paradise. In particular, the image of there being a utopian period in the past is very common and central to utopianism in most cultures."(116)

[Ik denk dat ik dromen van een paradijs na de dood niet erg interessant vind. Ik denk dat ik dromen en mythen over vroegere samenlevingen (zoals Atlantis) evenmin erg boeiend vind. Meestal gaan die samen met ouderwetse ideeën over allerlei zaken. Ik denk dat ik alleen utopieën boeiend vind die mensen werkelijk proberen te realiseren, waarmee ze de huidige werkelijkheid willen corrigeren. Ik vind ook niet dat de werelden die in science fiction geschetst worden per definitie utopieën zijn, het hangt er van waar de makers op uit zijn. Vaak zijn die werelden alleen maar extrapolaties van de huidige wereld met geavanceerder technologie en hetzelfde domme mensengedrag. ]

"The greatest difference between the Christian utopian past of Eden and the other myths is that there is no Fall. There is always some explanation for why the utopian past ended, but never the sort of complete break which the Fall represents."(117)

[Waaraan je kunt zien hoe mensvijandig het christendom is. ]

"Chinese utopianism is the best known of the traditions outside the West. It has roots in Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, followed by Neo-Confucianism and, in more popular form, various dissident groups. Chinese utopian fiction became popular in the 19th and 20th centuries, although beginning earlier, and dystopian literature developed in the 20th century. And there was a strong utopian element in the Communism of Mao Zedong, even though the result of Mao’s policies was dystopian for many." [mijn nadruk] (118)

[Dat laatste moet er natuurlijk weer aan toegevoegd worden. ]

"Early Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist utopianism differed in that the Taoist utopia, which is often called ‘The Great Peace’, was initially opposed to government in all forms and could be called anarchist – and Taoism is today often called anarchist."(119)

"While the ‘Country of Women’ is seen as an early statement on women’s rights, it was not until the 20th century that a number of feminist utopias were published in China.
In the 19th and the early 20th centuries, Chinese utopias tended to focus on the desirability of adopting Western technology, but keeping Chinese morality to soften the impact of the technology, and in the 20th century dystopias developed that rejected Western technology. And the social philosopher K’ang Yu-wei (1858–1927) wrote a number of utopian works accepting Western technology and describing a democratic world state based on far-reaching equality." [mijn nadruk] ()

"In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two Indian authors, Hara Prasad Shastri (1853–1931), a man and a Hindu, and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880–1932), a woman and a Muslim, published utopias. Shastri’s Valmikir Jaya (The Triumph of Valmiki) was probably published in the late 1870s or early 1880s and in English in 1909 and presents the Hindu earthly paradise as a modern utopia. Hossain’s ‘Sultana’s Dream’ (1905) was written and published in English and her Padmarag (1924) was written and published in Bengali. Both are feminist utopias. ‘Sultana’s Dream’ describes Ladyland, a country of women, and Padmarag, which is mostly concerned with the terrible conditions of Indian women of the time, describes a community of women who provide a school for girls, a refuge for abused women, and a hospital for female patients. A school for girls that Hossain founded in 1910 still exists." [mijn nadruk] (125)

"Today, India has a utopian movement that is close to the centres of political power. The Hinduvata movement wants to destroy the religious plurality of India and establish, or as the movement would put it, re-establish, India as a purely Hindu nation. The targets of the Hinduvata movement are Muslims and Christians, and it has used legal and political power as well as violence against these targets." [mijn nadruk] (127)

[Ik vraag me af of je dat wel een utopie mag noemen. Er schort toch wat aan de betekenis van de term hier. Een wensdroom is nog geen utopie. Dit is eerder een ideologie in lijn met wat Mannheim schrijft: conservatief, behoudend intolerant, gewelddadig naar anderen. Als je dit al een utopie noemt, kan ik me voorstellen dat zelfs ik tegen utopieën ben.]

"The Japanese word for utopia is riso-kyo, which derived from an earlier word tokoyo, or a world that exists forever. Tokoyo was used as early as the 8th century to describe the Taoist world of immortals, which in both Chinese and Japanese traditions has been presented as a utopia. And Tokoyo no Kuni refers to the fifth part of the Shinto cosmos which is located across the seas and is utopian. And there is a Japanese tradition of looking to the past for utopia in the hope of recreating it in the future."(128)

"While Islamists disagree among themselves, they all want to establish the Shari’a (Islamic law) as the basis of the social order, and they are the most utopian Muslims today. The vision of the Islamic Republic developed for Iran by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1900–89) and by the Taliban for Afghanistan were clearly utopian, and some of Khomeini’s publications, such as Kashf al-Asrar (The Unveiling of Secrets; 1944) and Hokomat-Eslami (The Islamic Government; 1971), while treatises, give detailed descriptions of the ideal Islamic society as he saw it, and of course he then gained the power to try to put his beliefs into effect."(134)

[Ook hier vraag ik me af wat er dan wel met 'utopisch' bedoeld wordt als er gestreefd wordt naar een samenleving die vrouwvijandig en seksvijandig is. ]

"Buddhist monasteries in India, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia had flourished from as early as 500 BCE. Ashrams, which are dwelling places for those living some form of spiritual discipline in India and emerging from Hinduism, had an even longer history, being traced back to around 1500 BCE. (...)
India and Japan in particular have seen the development in modern times of a significant number of both religious and secular intentional communities, and some of these, like Auroville in India, have been influential throughout the intentional community movement.(...)
Today, outside those involved in the intentional community movement, Indian communalism is likely to be identified with Indian movements that moved outside India and which many would label cults, like the followers of the Shree Baghwan Rajneesh (1931–90) who established communities in the UK and the USA, most notably in Oregon, where, after conflict with the local governments of the area, they were closed down and their leader was expelled from the country. But probably the most familiar group today is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKON), or the Hare Krishna movement, whose members can be seen dancing, parading, and chanting in their colourful robes in most large cities.
Japan has a particularly rich communal history. In addition to Buddhist monasteries, particularly Zen monasteries that attracted many Westerners and have spread throughout the world, Japan has a strong cooperative movement. It has been influenced by the writings of Robert Owen, and there is a long-established Robert Owen Association of Japan." [mijn nadruk] (139-141)

(146) Chapter 5 - Utopianism in Christian traditions

"Most religions have some version of a significantly better life, even if it is only after death, but Judaism and Christianity are permeated with utopian imagery. Christianity was the fount of Western utopianism and utopianism is a central concern, both positively and negatively, in recent Christian theology. Images of the utopian past (Eden) and the utopian future (heaven and hell, the Second Coming of Christ, and the millennium) relate to both this world and the next one, not just to some inaccessible past or problematic future. They become images of a better (or worse) life, often as fantasy, but equally often raising questions about why this life is not better now." [mijn nadruk] (146)

"The New Testament depicts Christ coming to save humankind and speaks of a God of love rather than punishment. There is no utopia as such in the New Testament, but the message of equality, forgiveness, and loving strangers as well as neighbours provided the basis of much Western utopianism and many literary utopias. One of the regular themes was simply that a good society would result if people adhered to Christ’s message"

[Daar hebben we de bijbel niet voor nodig. Alsof we onze utopische dromen op dat punt niet uit de alledaagse sociale verhoudingen kunnen halen. Hier wordt weer veel beweerd, maar weinig onderbouwd.]

"Krishan Kumar has argued in his Religion and Utopia that there is a profound contradiction between the Christian religion and utopia. Utopia is of this world; for many, religion is primarily concerned with the next; therefore, utopia is heretical."(166)

[Ik denk dat ik dat met hem eens ben. ]

"The argument in favour of utopianism is based on Christ’s message and ministry, which is seen as utopian in that it was often directed at human problems that could be solved by human action. Theologians such as Paul Tillich (1886–1965) have argued that the utopian elements in Christianity, particularly its eschatological character, are a significant source of its strength. In addition, Marxist writers such as Ernst Bloch have incorporated Christian eschatology into their Marxism and have developed a non-religious ‘theology’ of hope."(167)

[Die bevrijdingstheologie werd door de kerk dan ook afgekeurd.]

(170) Chapter 6 - Utopianism and political theory

"After 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (it is still the official ideology of China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam), many works were published proclaiming the end of utopia, just as there had been such works predicting the end of ideology in the 1950s. These ‘end of utopia works contended that the opponents had won in the conflict between supporters and opponents of utopia."(171)

[De vaagheid van die term hier. Er is vanzelfsprekend nooit een 'eind aan utopia' omdat er in elke samenleving altijd wat te wensen valt. Alsof het kapitalisme zonder problemen is ... En bovendien wordt even vergeten wat de onwenselijkheden waren in de samenleving waar het socialisme en communisme wat aan wilden doen. En daar nog bovenop wordt de term gebruikt zo gebruikt voor een abstractie die niet bestaat. Dus moet je altijd de vraag stellen: welke idealen in het socialisme en communisme werden wel en welke niet verwezenlijkt en hoe kwam dat?]

Tegen utopia's

"The most common approach of the opponents of utopianism is to equate the utopian with the perfect. In English, ‘perfect suggests finished, completed, unchangeable – and nothing human is finished, complete, or unchangeable, so the equation makes utopias look foolish or at least foolhardy. The political theorist Judith Shklar wrote that ‘utopia, the moralists artifact, is of necessity a changeless, harmonious whole’. The sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf (b. 1920), who became Director of the London School of Economics, wrote that: ‘All utopias from Plato’s Republic to George Orwell’s brave new world of 1984 have had one element of construction in common: they are all societies from which change is absent’. And the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski wrote that one of what he calls ‘the general characteristics’ of the social utopia is ‘the idea of the perfect and everlasting human fraternity’." [mijn nadruk] (172)

[Dat is dus niet zo en dus slaan die auteurs de plank helemaal mis.]

"Many utopias are like a photograph or a glimpse of a functioning society at a moment in time containing what the author perceives to be better and designed to break through the barriers of the present and encourage people to want change and work for it. Most utopias are better at depicting change from current conditions to the utopia than the change within the utopia, and some deliberately restrict change within the utopia on the assumption that something good should not be changed without careful consideration. Still, many utopias welcome the possibility of change ..." [mijn nadruk] (174)

[Zo is dat.]

"Another argument is that utopianism assumes that all utopias are based on human rationality and that human beings are only partly rational."(174)

"Opponents of utopianism like Popper often use the word ‘blueprint’ to describe utopias, a word flatly rejected by most utopians."(177)

[Allebei de opvattingen slaan de plank mis.]

"But the opponents of utopianism are not entirely wrong in that they are describing what can happen if a utopia comes to be believed in as the sole solution to humanity’s problems by a person or group with the power to impose their will on others. (...) But even if we accept that there were utopias a few steps behind the atrocities brought about in their names, in none of them was it the sort of detailed utopia described by utopia’s opponents. The utopias were quite vague, being specific only in parts, and the problem arose when individuals were given the power to fill in the details and try to bring their societies into line with these details." [mijn nadruk] (178)

[Dus het is niet het utopische streven dat tot ellende leidt, maar machtsverhoudingen: mensen die de macht krijgen om hun ideeën aan anderen op te leggen. Kriek op utopieën is vrijwel altijd kritiek op machtsverhoudingen die de vrijheid van individuen aantasten. Zie Popper. Dus moet daar extra aandacht voor zijn. Hoe krijg je grote veranderingen met andere woorden voor elkaar zonder een kleine groep mensen de macht te geven? Niet gemakkelijk, want hoe meer betrokken mensen hoe meer onenigheid, gebrek aan slagkracht, etc. Het blijkt lastig om de vrijheid van bepaalde groepen totaal niet aan te tasten of te manipuleren om een maatschappelijk ideaal te realiseren. En dat geldt ook voor het kapitalisme. ]

"The problems that Koestler suggests here, in his famous Darkness at Noon (1940), and in his contribution to The God That Failed (1950), are the problems of belief and the tendency of some believers to follow a leader wherever he/she goes, even if that be to a dystopia or even to death, as in the mass suicides at Jonestown." [mijn nadruk] (180)

[Dat is dan ook een belangrijk punt in een utopisch streven: goede opvoeding en onderwijs, mensen weerbaar maken, kritiekloos geloof in mensen en opvattingen proberen uit te bannen.]

Vóór utopia's

Bloch wordt even besproken.

"But it is the ‘concrete’ utopia that is embedded in an understanding of current reality and connected to the possibility of actual social improvement that is important."(184)

"The better social order allowing for better people is the classic utopian model and is the focus of most of the attacks by the opponents of utopianism."(185)

[Daar kun je alleen maar op tegen zijn als je niet in menselijke mogelijkheden gelooft en denkt dat mensen in principe slecht zijn en alleen maar aan zichzelf denken. Of als je bij de mensen hoort die profiteren van de status quo.]

"The utopian dream attempts to break through the perspectives that tend toward the acceptance of the current situation, and this can be a shattering experience since it suggests that our current reality is simply wrong."(187)

"Utopia has been central to Jameson’s thought from his Marxism and Form in 1971 through Archaeologies of the Future in 2005, and he has discussed both utopianism in general and a number of utopian texts. He argues that utopianism is positive because it keeps open the possibility of future change, but he also argues that ‘Utopias have something to do with failure, and tell us more about our own limits and weaknesses than they do about perfect societies’. And he stresses that most attempts to imagine utopia reveal its impossibility because we are bound by culture and ideology, and this keeps us from breaking out of our reality to imagine anything radically different, even if better. At the same time, he also stresses the desirability of continuing the attempt, instancing the importance of feminist and socialist utopias that tried to imagine worlds without gender domination or hierarchy."(187)

"Bauman, who began as a strong proponent of a particular utopia, has come to reject both that utopia and the ones he currently finds around him. But he still sees utopianism as fundamental to human existence, to what makes us human, and that is basic to the case for utopia. You may not like a whole range of particular utopias, but it is still essential that we continue to believe in the possibility of a significantly better society."(190)

[Ik vind zijn argumentatie vóór utopia maar zwak. Dat blijft allemaar in abstracties hangen.]

(194) Chapter 7 - Utopia and ideology

"The word ‘ideology’ was coined by the French thinker Antoine Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836) in about 1794 for what he hoped would become a new science of ideas. That usage never caught on, but the word was adopted by others, mostly as a negative description of the ways people mislead themselves and others through their beliefs. Of course, the word ‘utopia’ was coined much earlier, but the two terms have come to be connected, although in ways that can be confusing." [mijn nadruk] (194)

Over Karl Mannheim.

"He argued that the ideas we have, the way we think, and the beliefs that follow are all influenced by our social situation. In particular, he called the beliefs of those in power ideology and the beliefs of those who hoped to overturn the system utopia. In both cases, their beliefs hid or masked the reality of their positions. Ideology kept those in power from becoming aware of any weaknesses in their position; utopia kept those out of power from being aware of the difficulties of changing the system. And both kept the believers from seeing the strengths in the other’s position." [mijn nadruk] (195)

"But as the theologian Paul Tillich said in a review of the 1929 German edition, ‘The utopian knows that his ideas are not real, but he believes they will become real. The ideologist typically does not know this’."(198)

"The central problem for Ricoeur, as it was for Mannheim, is the pervasive influence of ideology and how it can be recognized from within."(201)

"Utopia’s ability to unmask ideology by stating that there are alternatives is clearly one of its positive aspects. And utopia’s ability to challenge ideology is, for Ricoeur, restorative.(...) The role of ideology is to support the current distribution of power; the role of utopia is to subvert that distribution."(203)

(204) Conclusion

[Nogal vaag. Zoiets als dat een utopie altijd uitloopt op een teleurstellende ideologie en dat vandaaruit weer de hoop ontstaat en de utopie over een betere werkelijkheid.]