The Concept of Utopia Ruth Levitas ‘Central to the constitution of utopian studies as a field’ - Professor Fredric JamesonTHE CONCEPT OF UTOPIA RUTH LEVITAS Ralahine Citssics Peter LangBibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationelbiblicthek Die Devieche Nationalbiblicthek lists this publication in the Devische Notionalbibliografie: detailed bibliographic dota is aveiloble on the Internet ot http: //dnb.ctnb.de. A catalogue record for this book is available fom The British library. library of Congress Control Number; 2009942692 Firs! published in Great Britain in 1990 by Philip Allan, a division of Simon & Schuster International Group. Cover image: ‘Spoce/No Space’ © Ru Levitos, based on Screen 4 by PRP Landscapes. ISSN 16615875 ISBN 978-3039] 1-365-8. © Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bem 2010. Hochfeldstrasse $2, CH-3012 Bem, Switzerland info@peterlang.com, wrew,peterlang.com, www,peterlang.net All rights reserved, All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outsiele the strict limils of the copyright low, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This opplies in porticular to reproductions, Hanslations, micralilming, tnd storage ond processing in electronic telrievol systems. Printed in GermanyContents Preface to the Second Edition Acknowledgements to the First Edition Introduction CHAPTER! Ideal Commonwealths: The Emerging Tradition CHAPTER 2 Castles in the Air: Marx, Engels and Utopian Socialism cHapTER 3 Mobilising Myths: Utopia and Social Change in Georges Sorel and Karl Mannheim CHAPTER 4 Utopian Hope: Ernst Bloch and Reclaiming the Future CHAPTER 5 The Education of Desire: ‘The Rediscovery of William Morris cHapTER 6 An American Dream: Herbert Marcuse and the Transformation of the Psyche CHAPTER 7 A Hundred Flowers: Contemporary Utopian Studies cHaPTER 8 Future Perfect: Retheorising Utopia Notes Select Bibliography Index 69 97 123 151 179 207 231 253 259Contents Prefa S 1 Editi ; Acknowledgements to the First Edition, xv Tnrrodmerion cHarTers Ideal Commonwealths: The Emerging Tradition iy cHaprer 2 Castles in rhe Air: Marx, Engels and Utopian Socialism cuarter 3 Mobilising Myths: Utopia and Social Change in ‘Georges Sorel and Karl Mannheim 69 cHarTer 4 Utopian Hope: Ernst Bloch and Reclaiming the Future: 97 CHAPTER s “The Education of Desire; The Rediscovery of William Morris 123. cHarrer.¢—An American Dream: Herbert Marcuse and the ‘Transformation of the Psyche 151 cHarrer 7 A Hundred Flowers: Contemporary Utopian Studies 179 CHAPTER 8 Future Perfect: Retheorising Utopia 207 Notes ar Select Bibliography 233 Index. 259Ralahine Classics Utopia has been articulated and theorized for centuries. There is a matrix of commentary, critique, and celcbration of utopian thought, writing, and practice that ranges from ancient Greece, into the European middle ages, throughout Asian and indigenous cultures, in Enlightenment thought and in Marxist and anarchist theory, and in the socio-political theories and movements (especially racial, gender, ethnic, sexual, and national lib- eration: and ecology) of the last two centurics. While thoughtful writing on utopia has long been a part of what Ernst Bloch called our critical cule tural heritage, adistinet body of multi- and inter-disciplinary work across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences emerged from the 1950s and 19605 onward under the name of ‘utopian studies” In the incerest of bring- ing the besr of this scholarship ro a wider, and new, public, che editors of Ralahine Utopian Studies are committed to identifying key titles that have gone out of print and publishing chem in chis series as classics in utopian scholarship.Preface to the Second Edition ‘The manuscript of The Concept of Utopia was completed in the summer of 1989, and the book first published in 1990. The timing was inauspicious. The intervening months had seen the fall of the Berlin Wall and of Communist governments including those in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and the Soviet Union. Political discourse in the West was triumphalist. Francis Fukuyama declared ‘the end of history” claiming chat "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, bur the end of history as such: thar is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government:: Television and press commentary on the collapse af com- munist 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. Ir was not a good moment to bring out a book which is explicitly about the idea of uropia, a large proportion of which is concerned with Marxism and utopia. ‘The eclipse of Marxism has continued. In Spaces of Hope, David Harvey reflects on ‘the difference a generation makes’; in the 1970s, he observes, arguments for the continuing relevance of Marx were filtered through the work of Louis Althusser or Antonio Gramsci, even as academies and stu- dents engaged in reading groups on Capital. Yet in the early ewenty-first century, when the depredations of global capitalism and violent conflicts over natural resources are obvious for all to sce, neither Marx nor Marx- ists are read.’ The failure of Soviet communism is still assumed to be abso- lure 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x Preface to the Second Edition the architect of rwentieth-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 geo- political and environmental context. The eight Millennium Development goals, set in 2000 for achievement by 2015, including the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, and ensuring environmental sustainability, will notbe met.’ If, as Theodor Adorno wrote, “There is tenderness only in the coarsest demand: that no-one shall go hungry any more’ achieving this scems beyond the capability of hegemonic capitalism." The context of global warming and climate change makes clear that environmental sustainability will also not be achieved. Indeed, the potential costs of this in one developed nation have been set out in the Stern Report, commissioned by the British government, with estimates at 40 per cent of GDP and rising,’ The global consequences are momentous. Usable land resources will become scarcer as higher cemperacures bring rising sea-levels and unstable weather patterns. Forced migration will present intensified social and political challenges. Meanwhile, the emphasis on (wholly inadequate) reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases, and the pursuit of carbon neutrality or at least carbon trading, ignores other aspects of pollution and resource limitation. As I write, food prices and energy prices are soaring. These are not unrelated, as biofuels replace food crops on scarce land resources. China's rapid devel- opment pushes up other commodity prices and poses a challenge to the industrialised West's acquisition of an unfair share of the world’s resources. Ilegal armed intervention in Iraq by the United States and United King- dom is part of this struggle for raw materials. Armed conflict in Georgia and South Ossetia during the Beijing Olympics (2008) attracted world attention principally because the region is a transit area for an oil pipe- line, critical for energy supplies in Western Europe. A Marxist analysis in terms of the drive to capital accumulation and expansion of markets would certainly help here, including, as Harvey has pointed out, bringing into sharp focus the return to processes of foreed accumulation of capital." Since capital accumulation necessitates continued and untrammelled expansion of global production and consumption, and docs so in ways thar intensifyPreface to the Second Edition x inequalities and render the poorest most exposed to environmental hazard, alternative modes of organisation may be necessary to human survival. To borrow from René Dumont, what we are faced with is “Utopia or Else.” The continued necessicy of ucopian thinking in a still largely hostile climate might in itself justify the republication of this book. Alchough 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. Butif my interest in utopia has ultimately been driven by actually exist- ing politics, my reasons for writing Concept were more directly influenced by the state of the emergent field of utopian studies. The Society for Utopian Scudies, with an annual conference in North America, was set up in 1975, and its journal Utopian Studies launched in 1988. In Britain in the early 19805, the late Keith Taylor organised a series of meetings on utopianism under the auspices of the Political Studies Association. In 1988, a major international conference, partly organised by the International Communal Studies Association (ICSA) was held at Edinburgh and New Lanark. Here, late one night in the bar, the Utopian Studies Society Europe was set up. One of the problems in the early years of utopian studies — throughout the 19708 and 1980s — was that there was very little interrogation of the concept of utopia itself, still less agreement about its meaning. Most people, most of the time, took for granted that we all knew what was meant - whether itbein the context of ‘utopian’ texts or ‘utopian’ social and political prac- tices. Concept was intended as an interrogation which would require, if not conceptual convergence, at least a habitually more explicic engagement with issues of definition, Ir proposed an analytic rather than a descriptive definition of utopia, strongly influenced by Ernst Bloch's Principle of Hope ~- which of course was only translated into English in 1986. “Twenty years on, much has happened in utopian studies. SUS contin- ues to hold an annual international conference in North America, while USSE has held an annual international conference in Europe for ten years. Specialist research centres have been established in Bologna, Limerickxii Preface to the Second Edision and Madrid. New Lanark, under the leadership of Jim Arnold and Lorna Davidson, has been transformed and has achieved the status of a World Heritage Site. Communication between scholars in the field has been greatly improved by the development of e-mail and the internet. There has been extensive work on conceptual as well as substantive issucs. The wider acquaintance with Bloch’s work, and its increased availability in English, has done much to strengthen the theoretical underpinning of the field. ‘Yet the problems of definition that surround the idea of utopia and which beset those working.in utopian studics remain. Interdisciplinaricy requires a constant attention to assumptions about meaning in fields as different as architecture, law and theology as well as literary, social and political theory. 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 concep- tual 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 defini- tion entirely. A recent collection of essays, Globalisation and Utopia, places utopia at the centre of social theory, but is weakened by the lack of concep- tual precision in some of the contributions." This is the more true of public political discourse, which remains largely hostile as well as conceptually Jax. It was still possible in 2000 for John Carey to edit The Faber Book of Utepias 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.” If | were writing a book on the concept of uropia in 2008, it would have to take into account not only che 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Acknowledgements to the First Edition Many people have contributed directly or indirectly to the writing of this book. I inherited my sense that the world does not have co be like this from my parents, Liz and Maurice Levitas. Together with the rest of a large and complex extended family, and friends of various red and green persuasions, they have sustained my commitment to the quest for utopia, and have constantly reminded me that there are many ways of venturing beyond the present or participating in the Great Refusal. The academic study of utopia is not well established in Britain. Over the years, my conviction that it is a proper area of investigation has been supported by several people, including Krishan Kumar and Lyman Tower Sargent. Keith Taylor, who convened. a study group on utopian thought in the early 1980s, played a large part in encouraging me to ignore general scepticism. My immediate colleagues made possible a term's study leave to begin work on the book. They have also been sufficiently tolerant to encourage me to teach a course on Ideology and Utopia. Iam grateful both to them and to the students who have chasen to take the course, who have forced me to clarify my ideas and have shared their own. Rebecca Amicl and Andrew Chester loaned their Collected Works of Marx and Engels. Vincent Geoghegan, Robert Hunter and Keith Taylor made invaluable comments on an earlier draft of che manuscript; without these I would undoubtedly end up with even more egg on my face than I now will. Participants in the conference on Utopian Thought and Com- munal Experience at New Lanark in July 1988 and in the Third Incerna- tional Congress on the Study of Utopia in Italy in May 1989 made useful and challenging comments on material included here. Parts of Chapter 5 ‘originally appeared in ‘Marxism, Romanticism and Ucopia: Ernst Bloch and William Morris; in Radical Philosophy 51.1 am grateful to Basil Black- well for permission to quote extensively from Ernst Bloch’s The Principle of” Hope. Philip Cross and Clare Grist of Philip Allan and Simon and Schusterxvi Acknowledgements to the First Edition have shown remarkable forbearance over the prolonged non-completion of the manuscript. Writing can be both anti-social and dispiriting at times. Graham Hunter has had much less of my attention than he is entitled to expect, and has cheered me up on many occasions. Robert Hunter has made the entire project possible, both by his active political and intellectual interest in it, and by his unfailing emotional and practical support. I promise to do my share of the chores in 1990.INAUGURAL 6 THE IMAGINARY RECONSTITUTION OF SOCIETY or why sociologists and others should take utopia more seriously Ruth Levitas Inaugural Lecture University of Bristol 24 October 2005” In Wilam Morris's 1899 utopis Mews from Nowhere, there Is 3 very short chapter, “Comceming Poiltics’. The visker, Willam Guest, asks Nis Informant ‘How Go you manage with polltics?". He recelwes the repty *... we are very well off ss to politics, - because we have none.” This lecture ts shout the relationship bebween scciclogy smd utopls, and some might expect Eto be equally brief, and for the same reason, that there is none. H. G. Wels, however, whose A Afodem Utopia was pubilsted 3 hundred yeers ago this year, thought othensise. He srgued ist -.. the creston of utopiss — and their exmsustive criciam — & the Proper and distinctive method of sociology (Wells 1914: 204) ‘This Is counterintumve. Scciclogy, surely, ts 3 Gscipine of socal science, snd even those who doutt Its scientic credentisis, or queston the meaning of scienticity Eself would argue fist & offers thick description snd explanston cf resilty, of whet IS. Utopis, on te omer hand, ts essentisity about whst ts net, snd whst ought be. The only reistionship between the two thst would seem to make sense, therefore, & 8 socieiogy of utopia, In which socology Is the master narrative explaining the various forms and expressions of utopianism In reistion to thelr socal contest. Wells's statement Impiles someting else — that we must consider sociology 35 uton's, and utopls 3s sociology. I shall argue that Wells wes right. A utopian method, The imaginary Reconstitution of Society, Is at least a proper method of sociology, & not necesssrly the proper method. And, | shal argue, & Is ome partcury rutted to addressing some of te many major issues tet cor‘ront us as citizens. Hence my subthe — why sociologists ang omer: should take utopis more sericusty. Utopts Is 3 contested concept. This does mot mean simply that pecpie disagree shout te content of utopis, about what te good society should be Ike. Rather, tere is no consensus about te meaning of the term Bset. Lay understandings are generally ether dismissive or hostile, seeing utopisnism as at best impractcal dresming. The term ‘utopis' Is, of3 course, drawn from Thomas More's 1516 text, in which the tite is 3 pun on goed places mo place, transmuted Into everyday thought as perfect and impossie. in this sense, cur cufure ts sotursied with utopiseism. For example: The music that was pisying before I came in was Ute Lemper singing Youkail, Kurt Weil's seting of Roger Fernay’s words: Youkall, Cest le pays Ge nes desis... Mais Cest un reve, une folie, Il n'y 3 pas de YoukaiL (Youksl ts the tend of our desires...But tls 3 cream, 3 foollstmess; here ts no Youall). The stiribution of fooilshness, accompanied by the same wistfulness, Is expressed in he opening lines of W. H. Auden’s Adantis: Being set on the ides Cf geting to Azantis You have discovered cf course ‘Only the Ship of Foots Is Making the voyage this year. For Harry Potter, utopisn Gesire Is presented as mot merely pointiess Dut positvely dangerous. Harry spencs two nights gazing st his lost family In ‘the Mirror of Ersed, sround which runs the Inscription ‘Erised stra ehru oyt ude catru oyt on wohl", | show not your face Dut your hearts desire (Rowling 18S7:157) On the third might, Frotesser Ou biedore intercepts Harry, ond tells him thst the mirror ‘shows us nothing but the deepest desires of cur hearts. ...However, Sis mirror wil give us nemer knowledge cr trum Men have wasted sway before R, entranced Dy whist they Mave seen, or net knowing F what R shows Is resi or even possbie’. ‘The mirror Is removed to 3 secret location, snd Dumbledore counses Harry ‘It Goes not do to dream snd forget to Ive’. One could spend sn entre lecture refectng om this episode, not least the extraordinary suggestion that knowledge of the deepest desires of our own hearts comsthutes nether krowledge nor ttn. diverts people from ‘real Me". Fiather, as utopis Is equated wrth4 perfection and Impossbilty, projects to implement It ore feared as dangerous and incipientty totelitarism. Al-Gsids Mas been described as utopisn. Indeed, blame for 3/11 Mes even been isid st the coor of kaac Asimov's novel Foundation. The frst epsode cf the current series of the BEC's Spooks, brosdcast after te London bombings of 7 July, and depicting a terrorist ateck, referred to ‘biood-drenched utopias’. Sometmes this ant-utoplan position co-esists with expressed desire for 3 transformed existence. Im lan McEwan's istest novel Soturazy, the central protagonist Henry inks about: ~. the rare moments when musicians together touch something sweeter than teysve ever found before in rehesrsais of performance, beyond the merely collaborative or technicaly proficient, when their expression becomes as easy and grace*ul as friendship ce love. This Is when they give a glimpse of what we might be, cf our Dest seives, and of an impossible word In woich you give everything you Mave to otters, but lose noting o yourser. Out in the real word there exist detalied plans, wisionary projects for peacadie realms, aI contkts resoived, happiness for everyone — mirages for which people ore prepared to ole and AWW. Christs Kingdom on earth, se workers’ paracise, the idea! islamic state. But only in musk, andon rare occasions, does the curtin actually i= cm tis cream of community, and It's tantalsingty conjured, before *scing sway with the isct note. McEwan 2005: 171-2. (McEwan, incidentally, wanted to te a blues guttartst) | Gent Mave Ome in tis lecture to deal property wth the question of totaltaranism. | would ergue, Mowever, that the probiem of totaltarsnism Is exactly that: 3 problem of totaltarisnism, met one of utopisnism. The probiem cf defintion ts not Just 3 @screpancy between lay mesrings and these used by social theorsts or utopist:, those who study utopia. in 1330, | published The Concept of Utopia, which set cut the range of dierent ways in whkh teorists use the term, ofen in direct5 comfadiction of esch cther. So Manr used the term ‘utopian’ for those sociaiists whom he saw as ‘unscientific’, In that they Gd met address or understand te material bests of socisi change. They would have disagreect Robert Owen's, mode! factory at New Lanark Is now 3 World Heritage Ste tismks to the unstinting eforts of Its Director Jim Amoid and Deputy Director Loma Davidson. Owen regarded the possibity of 3 Detter society as not only & moral necessity, Dut a scienttic fact; and since character was, he thought, socisly formed, education wes key. Those some utopisn socialists accepted the division Detween utopis and science, Dut regarded themselves as sclentfic — and reflect exactly the same ambivalence as McEwen After al, says the French utopisn Chares Fourier What Is Utopis? It Is the cresm of well-being witout the means of execution, without an effective meted. Thus ail poilesophical sciences are Utopins, for they have aiways led people to the very opposte cf the ctste of well-being ey promised them. (tied im Geoghegan 1557) And & beth Fourler and Marx regerd Utopia a> something thst Inhibits change, te sociciogist Kari Mannheim, writing 3 century afer Fourier, defined utopia as that which brings change about: Only those orentstions transcending realty wil De referred to by us as utopian which, when they pass over into conduct, shatter, partally or wholly, the order of ings prevaling at the ime. It was evident that utopianism self varied enormously. In terms of content, certainty; but siso In terms of form (3 Merary genre of utopia, poltical wring, goiden age mytick im terms of location (pest, *uture, Mars of Shangr-is); and in terms of function — for utopia may act as compensation, critique or as the catalyst of change. A definition which, Ike those I Mave mentioned, picked on one perticulsr form or function was cf no use to someone interested, as | was, In te sociokgy of utopis, and how these characteristics changed over time. | tried therefore 2 copture what all tiese utopism expressions Med im common, and suggesied 3 broad defrition: utopis ts the expression of the desire for 3 better way of being or of iving.In wrtng ist book, | was indebted to a mumber cf peopie. One of them ts Lyman Sargent, whe Isn't here tonight, and who dsagreed with me, Dut who encouraged @ generaton to continue working In the then very marginal, scarcely existent, field of utopian studies. Tom Moyism has documented In his last book, Scraps of the Untainted Shy, te way in which Sis fleid developed from the mid-1S70s as a series of improvised and overlapping conversations. His own earler book, Demand te impossinve, 35 well as Vince Geoghegan’s Utoplansm and Marxtm, preceded my own, and were invalusbie resources. Togeter wih Lucy Sargisson, whose Feminism and Ltoganism was published in the mic 1990s, and latterty Susan Memenus, whose Fictive Theories Is Just out, they have Deen constant, challenging end supportive Interiocutors over the years. And indeed Tom, as Orrector of tie Fiaishine Centre of Utopisn Studies raised the general question of utopia ss method In the Drief for 3 seminar series in 2003. To Tom, Wince and Susan, whe are here, thank you. Al of us have 3 debt to someone none of us ever met, the German theorist Emst Bloch, bom In 1235. Bioch’s major work, the three-volume The Principle of Hope wes partly writen In exile in the United States In the 1830s, revised and published im the 1SS0s sfter his return to the German Democratic Republic, and transisted Into English In 1385. Bioch argues thst Muman experience is marked by isck and longing, giving rice to 3 utopian Impulse — the propensity to long for and Imagine atemsative ways cf being. Crucisily, however, he said tist tis longing cammce be articulated other than through Imagining te means of Its fufimert. You cannet entty what It Is that Is lacking witout projecting what would meet fat lack, without descrbing what Is missing. In tis sense, everything that reaches to @ transformed existence can be considered to have a utopian aspect His ersmpies range scross myths, fairytales, eatre, new clees, sichemy, archecture and music and religion ss well ss the more obvious descriptions of socis! utcpias. Bioch’s work Gemonstrtes thst f we understand utopis as te desire for 3 beter way of being or of Ilving, then such imaginings are braided ‘through human cufture, and very ‘rom the bens! to the deeply serious, trom fantasising sbout winning the lottery (whetmer or met one has 3 ticket) to 3 (sometimes) secularised version of the quest to understand who we are, why we are here and Mow we connect to one anctuer. Thegeneric utopisn content lies in the attempt to grasp the possibilty of s redicsily diferent humsm experience, even though It i sometimes embedded in forms of fantasy tist are escly dismised as wishful thinking, or is often oblique or fragmentary.It Is precisely this theme cf lack and longing that Is captured by the central protagonist of Dennis Potter's Pennies from Heaven as ‘looking for the blue’. Artur Parker ts 3 traveling salesman hawking he sheet music of popular songs: Months and months I've been carrying this stuff sround — tese songs — ail these lovely songs — ve always believed In ‘em. But | Ghdnt realty know how E was or why It was tist | believe In whets In here. There’s things thst are too big and important and too bleedn simple to put into 3! thst Sh-d-dsh, toffee-nosed poetry and stuff, books and tist — but everybody feels ‘em ... Bs looking for re biue, enn, anc the got. ‘The pstch of blue sky. The gold of the Dieecin’ daan, or te Sght In someone's eyes — Pennies from Heaven, thats what It i. (cRed In Carpenter 1938: 350-1) (That's 2 BE of a cheat — &°s actually the gow of sunset on tne Brmingham-Worcester Canal rater than dawn) Reflecting on tis ister, Potter saic: Those songs stood togetter as 3 package in st Mey seemed to represent the same kinds of things thst the psalms and fary-tsies represented: that Is the most generalized human dreams, that the word should be perfect, Desutful and ving and ail of those things. A kt of te musk Is crvel ... but It does possess an simost reiigious Image of the world es a perfect piace. (Carpenter 1938: 248) Biech does met give equal endorsement to sil mantestations of utopisrism:. Wishful thinking Is the beginning of transformstve agency, Dut It ts only by the ecucation of Mepe fist Ss move can take piace. Bloch chalenges the dichotomy between the real and the imaginary. Utopis & 3 form of antcipatory comscousness. His key concepe Is the ‘net yet’, carrying te Gouble sense of mot yet, but an expected Suture presence, and stil not, 3 current absence. But tist which ts not yet Is° also real, since reailty for Bloch must include the Merizon of suture possbilties - possbilties which are siwsys plural, and which ore dependent on humsn agency for ther actusiisation. Sioch said the hinge im human history Is Its producer’. Or, as Alsm Techmarsh put f, ‘we have to put the heave’ in heaven’. Moreover, as te social theorist Stevo] Zizek recenty pointed cut, Ina piece on counterfactus history called Lenin shct at Firiand Stston', these akematves do not Ile only In tue future. Any word that we Inhabr ts ako someting thst might not have happened, snd those cther past possbilties exist siongside us, at least in Imagination, as akernstve reaites. Zizek suggests that for come people — perhaps including tose Fredric Jameson described as ‘the Invisible party of utopia’ — whist & sometimes teeis less resi than what shoud nave Seen. How Goes thic connect with coclology? Firstty, trea eet fhe The sculptor Barbars Hepworth once wrote: 1 Sunk tist whet we nave to say Is formed In chiidmeed, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to say It. The assumption thst the world was awry, Sst It should be otherwise, and thst one had 3 responsbilty to make — so, was part of my Inheritance. The earlest extent photogrspn of my mother shows her on sm outdoor speaking platform In Hammersm& in the Iste 1930s, sround the ime my father was fighting wih the Intemational Erigades in Spain. Fifty years ister, he wes stll campaigning on street pitches, 20 my Own political involvement was scorcely surpesing. Fwasnt with he pagans, [just fed el Sanner Moreover, I went to university in 1958, the ers of various versions of he siogan ‘Se Resiistic: Demand the Impossbie’.‘Crocisily, on 3 wet Sunday In 1S€6 when | wes seventeen and bored, my mother suggested that | read News from Nowhere. | have her copy sill, Slongside about meen omer edBons. My motmer's view of this utopia was that E wes a nice ides but retrer Impractcal. My father insisted iat the Important part of the book was ‘Tow te change came sbout’. | thought they Med both missed the point — ammough | ister came to resilse that my mother did Indeed, always and Incressingly, Ive as though Morrs's fictonal society were the real realty, and the actual world around her simply a mistske. News from Nowhere wes writen in 1550 when Mors was in his Iste fies, about the age | am mow. He wes by his tme an emnment uriter and crafisman, and mere recenty 3 prominent socisilst News fom Nowhere Degins In Hammersmith, where Mors led, and where | grew up. B opens wih Hammersmith and London transformed, and ends wit ‘3 Journey up the river trom his London house to his country home In Meimscott, 137 miles away in Oxtordstire, on the Upper Thames, whose landscape Mors loved. News from Nowhere depicts a word in welch work Is pleasure, achieved by the abolition of unnecessary production and consumpton of whst Jomm Ruskin calied ‘lth’. For me, —s revelstory character lay in its depiction of pisce, and Its Gemenstration cf the interdependence of ecomemic and socisi relations, the sesthetics of the built envronment, and the use of space. Attne time, Hammersvuth (ike Sristol), was Deing ravaged by planners. Victorian Duldings were tom Gown and repisced by: comcrete monstrosities (Kings Maw, Town Hal extension) 3 funk road which also cut through Morts’s garden; 3 flyover,3 Detting shop which replaced the Classic Cinems. ‘The Lyric theatre wes threstened with demoiltion So | ... Gecided to become an archRect The nest year, | answered 3 question on 3 Cambridge entrance paper: The probiems of urbanization have turned archtects Into sociologists. Discuss’. | went to She“feld, and switched to sociology. While “koking for the bie’ allows for the expression cf utopis to be ‘trogmentary or fleeting, whet Is specTically sociologica! about Morris Is the Gemonstration of te commectedness cf work, art, socisi reistons, spece and mumsn happiness. This connectedness, and especialy te commection between Individusl biography and Mistery, Is ve very essence of the sociological Imagination. Morris preserves the element of desire the core of utopls, Dut cTers an argument shout the condition of it realisation. Later commentsries on utopis have used News from Nowhere to challenge the ides that utopia Is necessarily totaltarian; end to make nother, larger claim sdout utopia and desire, and about the function of utopisn envisioning In general. The society descrded by Moris & 3 berterisn ome, and the text Is not Intended as 3 biuepnint. Morris himself said that any such work could only be ‘an expression of the temperament of ts autor. The primary function of utopia, especialy in tis more holistic form, Is says Miguel Abensour, tie education of desire. Utopia crestes 3 space in which the reader Is addressed not Just cognitively, but experentialy, and enjoined to consider and feel what It would be The not dust to Ive dierenty, but to want Gtferenttly — so that te taken-for- granted nature of the present Is disrupted This is what sociologists cal defamisrising te terilar. As Ecward Thompson glosses Abensour, And In such an adventure, two things happen: our habitual values (the ‘commonsense’ of bourgects society) are thrown Into disarray. And we enter Utopia’s proper and mew-found space: the education of cesire. This Is mot ie same as ‘a morel education towerds 3 given emt: It Is, rather, to open a way to aspiration, to teach desreto desire, to desire better, to desire more, and above ail to Gesire In 3 ciferent way. Soolotogy IT came to sociology by way cf utopia, It lz of much greater significance thst so also did sociclogy Itself. The ‘utopian socialist Henri de Sairt Simon, active in the late eigrteerth and earty nineteen century, Is recognized a: one of the founders cf sociology. All of Manr's writing Is infused wth the Gesire for the worid to be otherwise. The connection Is aiso clesr at the end of the nineteenth century. Moris would never have described himself as 3 sociologist. He was 3 Marxist, but he was aiso sn exponent of 3 kind of Ruskinisn moral economy. As far as socis! scence and the humanGes were comcemed, this wes 3 prediscipinary era. The Doundaries thst divide the Cfferent ‘disciplines’ of social science, and ‘thst we mow try to owercome through ‘interdscipinarty were not yet In pisce. The American sociologist Chariotie Perkins Giman, sumer cf the classic feminist text Women and Economics, aso wrote 3 series of utopiss beginning wih Herland. Edward Gellamy's 1888 Looking Backward, which was te Immediste tigger for News from Nowhere Decause Moms hated It, spawned 8 vast political movement in the United States. I dant think Locking Sackward hes ever been out of pert. in 1348 In Ermsin, te Daty Herald carried 3 review which ssid ‘A Prophet gets reperted — and he's rig so far. interestingly, Looking Sackword, was Intended as a biuepnint, and fas been Gescrbed as 3 novel “curcusly without desre.. ‘Ome can identty a Est cf texts thst sre ‘cassics" of utopisnism, of feminism, of sociology, af written within 3 short period of each cther 1888 Eoward Bellamy Locking Backward 1890 Wiliam Moms News #om Nowhere 1833 Emile Durkheim The Division of Latecur in Society 1895 Friedrich Engels The Origins of the Family, Private Property and ine State 1837 Edward Bellamy Equatty 1838 Chariotie Perkins Giman Woman and Economics 1305 H. G. Wells A Afodem Utopia 1911 Chariotte Perkins Gilman Herand