ANGELAKI

journal of the theoretical humanities

volume 8 number 1 april 2003

That new world, which is distant from ours not

so much by geography as by customs and
manners …
More, Utopia
Land ye not, none of you …
Bacon, New Atlantis

ver since Thomas More wrote his Utopia,

E thus giving the genre its main characteris-
tics, utopia has been thought of as an island.
Although the exact location of the ideal govern-
ment is left unsaid, the form and geography of
this non-place have been precisely described:
utopian islands are far away, closed, apart, and
self-sufficient. Utopia is an isolated territory
defined primarily by its boundaries, and delim-
ited by them. As these frontiers draw the sharp
lineaments of a perfect space of order and
harmony, some of More’s commentators have
shown that the interest for justice and peace
seems to end there, and that it does not apply to
what lies outside the island shores. Is it then
impossible to go beyond these limits of utopia?
The insular model of the classical utopia is
indeed challenged when confronted with projects
of a society of nations, especially today, in the
contemporary context of globalization. The
concept of utopia is often held to be irrelevant to
such a new and specific situation, as if the
utopian spirit were now out of date. At the same
time, however, alternative conceptions of the
relations which should exist between the differ-
ent parts of the world are still being elaborated
with reference to utopia – but this reference is
often either merely implicit or ambiguous. The
debates about globalization and the strong criti-
cism of utopia which they imply seem to follow
on from the problem of the relations between
utopia and its outskirts.
antoine hatzenberger
ISLANDS AND EMPIRE
beyond the shores of
utopia
When reflecting on how relevant the tradi-
tional model of utopia can be to contemporary
attempts to sketch a transnational or post-
national political frame, many questions arise.
How can local utopias be developed into a global
utopia? Can the utopian territory be extended
indefinitely? Do contemporary conceptions of
utopia mark a radical change of paradigm?
What form might a non-insular utopia take? Is
it possible to imagine a utopia without a centre?
Does the plea for a global utopia imply that all
sovereign nation-states as such be considered
obsolescent? Would a worldwide form of
government satisfy the criteria of a utopia, or is
it bound to remain utopian, in the most
common, vague and negative sense of the term
(i.e., chimerical)?

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/03/010119-10 © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd and the Editors of Angelaki
DOI: 10.1080/0969725032000093645

119
 islands and empire
In order to better understand these issues, it
is important to concentrate on the geopolitical
concept of the frontiers of utopia, and to exam-
ine how the territory assigned to utopia by the
Pilgrim Fathers of the genre now needs to be
extended, and how, at the same time, utopia
remains an efficient tool for political philosophy.
A critical analysis will show the conceptual links
between utopia and the proposals for a new world
order as formulated in the recent works of the
theorists of the “cosmopolitan democracy” and
the “Empire.” Through reconsidering the origi-
nal paradigm of utopia laid down in More’s
Utopia and Bacon’s New Atlantis, it is possible
to establish that a retrospective interpretation of
utopian foreign policy can enable us to highlight
different ways of understanding the utopian
state, and to reassess the meaning of “utopia”
when applied on a large scale.
In this article, the problem of the frontiers of
utopia will be set out through a critical rereading
of the classical paradigm of the autarkic island.
Firstly, the inherent limits of an international
relationship based on the model of insular states
will be underlined. Secondly, the different forms
of the utopian influence on recent studies on
globalization will be highlighted. Lastly, the
premonitions of the possibility of a “global citi-
zenship” in the concept of “humanity” outlined
in More’s and Bacon’s works will be pointed out.
1. the frontiers of the island
1.1
As described in the second part of Thomas
More’s book, Utopia has enclosed itself within a
series of concentric circles. To begin with, “the
entrance into the bay is very dangerous” (42),
“the coast is rugged by nature, and so well forti-
fied that a few defenders could beat off the
attack of a strong force” (43). History says that
“after subduing the natives, at his first landing,
[king Utopus] promptly cut a channel fifteen
miles wide where their land joined the continent,
and thus caused the sea to flow around the
country”:1
The town is surrounded by a thick, high wall,
with many towers and battlements. On three
sides it is also surrounded by a dry ditch,
broad and deep and filled with thorn hedges;
on its fourth side the river itself serves as a
moat. (46)
Utopians build their towns as they fortify their
camps: “thoroughly, with a deep, broad ditch all
around them, the earth being thrown inward to
form a wall” (94). Inside the frontiers of the
town, and within the walls of the houses, “large
gardens … form the centre of the blocks” (47).
This closure means a rejection of everything
that could arrive from outside the frontiers. Not
only do they not “allow anything dirty or filthy
to be brought into the city” (57), but it is signif-
icant that even the wind is excluded at the differ-
ent Utopian structural levels. More specifies that
in the houses the windows are made such as to
keep out the wind (48). In the towns, “the streets
are conveniently laid out … for protection from
the wind” (46). Lastly, the whole island is “shel-
tered from the wind by the surrounding land”
(42).
The closure is also internal, as there are obsta-
cles to the outward movements of the local popu-
lation. Utopians need a visa in order to travel
either outside the frontiers of the island, or even
between its different districts. “Anyone who
wants to stroll about and explore the extent of his
own district is not prevented, provided he first
obtains his father’s permission and his wife’s
consent”; and “anyone who takes upon himself
to leave his district without permission, and is
caught without the prince’s letter, is treated with
contempt, brought back as a runaway, and
severely punished” (60). The normal life of the
innocent Utopians could almost be compared to
the punishment of the convicted Polylerites,
who, “in each district of the country … are
required to wear a special badge. It is a capital
crime to discard the badge, to go beyond one’s
own district, or to talk with a slave from another
district” (24).
1.2
Despite these measures, Utopia has not
completely renounced all possibilities of commu-
nication with the rest of the world. When consid-
ering the question of the frontiers of Utopia, one
120

can but note that there are two obvious para-
doxes in the second book of More’s Utopia.
Firstly, it is said, on the one hand, that “no city
wants to enlarge its boundaries” (44). On the
other hand, there is a special measure that
provides for colonization. “If the population
throughout the entire island exceeds the quota,
they enrol citizens out of every city and plant a
colony under their own laws on the mainland
near them, wherever the natives have plenty of
unoccupied and uncultivated land”; moreover,
“those who refuse to live under their laws the
Utopians drive out of the land they claim for
themselves” (56).
Secondly, it is said that “few merchants go
there to trade,” because “as for the export trade,
the Utopians prefer to do their own transporta-
tion, instead of letting strangers come to fetch
the goods” (79). However, despite their strong
claim to autarchy, Utopians accumulate silver
and gold coming from elsewhere (61). They also
accept immigrants to work for them – “hard-
working penniless drudges from other nations
who voluntarily choose to take service in Utopia”
(80). Not completely slaves, these proletarians
are not completely citizens either, as “such
people are treated fairly, almost as well as citi-
zens, except that they are assigned a little extra
work, on the score that they’re used to it” (80).
On the one hand, immigrant workers are allowed
to get in, but, on the other, full citizenship is not
enjoyed by all through all the land.
These paradoxes, and the ambiguous concep-
tion of citizenship that is derived from them,
show that the relationship of Utopia with its
outside is not symmetrical. Utopians take what
they need from outside, and their rules exceed
their boundaries. Although Utopians want their
frontiers to be fully hermetic to any foreign
influence, they take care to keep them porous to
their own power upon the other nations. They
exercise an authority that is both legal and
economic. Firstly, Utopians wield their jurisdic-
tion over their neighbours in so far as “some free
nations bordering on Utopia (the Utopians them-
selves previously liberated many of them from
tyranny) have learned to admire the Utopian
virtues, and now of their own accord ask the
Utopians to supply magistrates for them” (85).
121
hatzenberger
Secondly, Utopians exert economic leadership
over the adjacent countries. After a war has
ended Utopians take “landed estates, from which
they may enjoy forever a substantial annual
income” (95) as indemnity. “As managers of
these estates, they send abroad some of their citi-
zens with the title of Financial Factors” (95).
Utopian international relationships are not
organized according to principles of justice, but
governed by mere power relations. Utopians do
not accept any rule in this domain, and do not
commit themselves towards their neighbours
through contracts. “The Utopians call these
people who have borrowed governors from them
their allies; others whom they have benefited
they call simply friends,” but they make no
treaties with anyone (86). According to them
the treaty implies that men divided by some
natural obstacle as slight as a hill or a brook
are joined by no bond of nature; it assumes
they are born rivals and enemies, and are right
in trying to destroy one another except when
a treaty restrains them. (87)
In the end, there is a big difference between
Utopian foreign policy and the Polylerite society
that Hythloday had presented in the first book of
Utopia.2 Utopians differ from Polylerites because
while they are also naturally and artificially
protected from any foreign influence, they
nonetheless maintain relationships with their
neighbours. What is important to note is that the
conditions of this communication are defined
unilaterally by the Utopians, on their own
grounds. Frontiers are considered to be a protec-
tive device, and the Utopians keep entire control
on them. “They go to war only for good reasons:
to protect their own land, to drive invading
armies from the territories of their friends, or to
liberate an oppressed people, in the name of
humanity, from tyranny and servitude” (85–86).
“If a foreign prince takes up arms and prepares
to invade their land, they immediately attack
him full force outside their own borders. For
they don’t like to wage war on their own soil”
(95). Does the fact that Utopians import money,
employ immigrant workers, lead wars, or settle
colonies, mean that in some way their territory is
open? Utopian territory is not open as such, but
 islands and empire
can be extended. Utopians do not open their
frontiers, but push their boundaries further in
function of their needs and their goodwill.
This situation has led George M. Logan to say
that “although [More’s] approach pushes the
boundary problems out to a considerable distance
it offers no solution to them” (245–46).
It is not accidental that the most serious prob-
lems of Utopia, and the ones to which More
most insistently draws attention, are problems
of foreign relations. This is always a problem-
atic area in the best-commonwealth exercise,
simply because of the systemic nature of its
approach to constitutional design. Since the
point of the exercise is to secure the good life
for those within the system, there must always
be differences between the treatment of those
inside and those outside its boundaries. The
boundaries may be of class as well as of geog-
raphy. The most disturbing aspects of the best
commonwealths of Plato and Aristotle are the
discrepancies between the quality of life of the
full citizens of the polis and that of its other
inhabitants. By extending citizenship to all
inhabitants, More eliminates this kind of
boundary problem. But the problems of the
geographical boundary remain. (244)3
Shlomo Avineri, in his article on “War and
Slavery in More’s Utopia,” writes that More rele-
gates sin “abroad, into the confines of other
nations” (288). He asserts that “the dialectics of
perfection thus creates, nay, necessitates, a
condition of utter despondency and degeneration
outside the confines of the ideal common-
wealth,” and adds that “by an extraordinary feat
of vicarious salvation, Utopia can persevere in
her purity and perfection, because all the dregs
have been taken out of her realm and stored
somewhere else.”4 Although the problems of
foreign policy are interpreted here in religious
terms, they are still expressed in terms of “fron-
tiers.”
1.3
The role of boundaries in the utopian model can
be verified in Bacon’s New Atlantis, as shown
by the first contact between the seamen and the
inhabitants of Bensalem:
we thinking every minute long till we were on
land, came close to the shore, and offered to
land. But straightways we saw divers of the
people, with bastons in their hands, as it were
forbidding us to land; yet without any cries or
fierceness, but only as warning us off by signs
that they made. (130)
Bacon’s utopia also takes the shape of an island,
set “in the secret conclave of … a vast sea” (140).
Bacon is more precise than More on the status
of those who reach the shores – which is quite
rare, as thirty-seven years have passed without
any stranger entering the land. “Amongst his
other fundamental laws of his kingdom,” the
lawgiver of Bensalem “did ordain the interdicts
and prohibitions … touching entrance of
strangers” (144). He imposed the cessation of all
“traffic,” “commerce,” “intercourse” with the
other parts of the world (143). People from
Bensalem “should sit at home” (144). The rare
foreigners who have accidentally found access to
this remote part of the world, and to whom its
state gives “licence to stay on land for the space
of six weeks” (135), are forced to remain in the
Strangers’ House.5 We find in New Atlantis the
same dissymmetry as in Utopia:
We of this island of Bensalem have this, that
by means of our solitary situation, and of the
laws of secrecy which we have for our trav-
ellers, and our rare admission of strangers, we
know well most part of the habitable world,
and are ourselves unknown. (136)
As in Utopian law, a contradiction can be
underlined in Bensalem’s attitude towards
foreign countries. It is shown “how sufficient and
substantive this land was to maintain itself with-
out any aid at all of the foreigner,” and that,
“doubting novelties, and commixture of
manners” (144), “the king had forbidden to all
his people navigation into any part that was not
under his crown” (146). But the island does not
completely cut itself from the rest of the world,
as some people are allowed to travel. This excep-
tion is made for a very small number of people,
and very rarely. Every twelve years, six members
of Salomon’s House are sent abroad for strategic
purposes. They must bring back information
about the “sciences, arts, manufactures, and
122

inventions of all the world” (146). These
missions of industrial espionage are consistent
with the principle of control over its own bound-
aries and confirm that any relation with the
outside of the island is based on an unbalanced
exchange. People from Bensalem are willing “to
have light of the growth of all parts of the world”
(147), but they are not keen on enlightening the
world with their knowledge, in sharing the
results of their own discoveries. They take, but
they do not give away: this is the paradox of this
selective closure “preserving the good which
cometh by communicating with strangers, and
avoiding the hurt” (145).
Although the closure of the island of
Bensalem and the measures taken by its inhabi-
tants to prevent communications were inspired,
for Bacon, by the Venetian Lazaretto Nuovo,
which was conceived in the seventeenth century
as a protection against the plague, the landing
rites imposed on the heroes of Bacon’s narrative
resemble modern national boundaries and their
cordon sanitaire, as Michèle Le Dœuff notes
(103). “Bacon’s work astonishes us because it
speaks to us in such an odd fashion about things
which have since become extremely banal”
(30–31; my trans.). Indeed, parallels can be made
today between the boundaries of utopia and the
frontiers of Europe.
2. from local utopias to global utopia
2.1
This parallelism between New Atlantis and
contemporary societies makes it obvious that
some important problems and ambiguities intrin-
sic to the classical utopias are still relevant today,
and can help us to reflect on the difficulties in
defining a postmodern utopia: not only the
organization of peaceful relations between differ-
ent nations, but the construction of a supra-
national political body.
In the new context of what could be called the
European utopia, the question of the boundaries
is central. In “Frontières du monde, frontières de
la politique” (Frontiers of the World, Frontiers
of Politics), Etienne Balibar describes the prob-
lem in contemporary terms:
123
hatzenberger
the frontiers have moved place. While tradi-
tionally and in accordance with their legal
notion as well as with the “cartographic”
representation embodied in the national imag-
inary, frontiers should be on the edge of the
territory, and mark the point where its exis-
tence stops, it appears that frontiers and their
corresponding institutional practices have
moved to the middle of the political space.
(175; my trans.)
What Balibar means is that internalized frontiers
have a “function of social discrimination,” and
that they create a state of “apartheid” on a
transnational level (180). This is a criticism of
the Schengen agreement that erased the frontiers
within the space of the European Union, while
reinforcing the controls on the new external
borders. The demarcation lines are not
suppressed but simply pushed back. According
to Balibar’s analysis, exclusion is the necessary
consequence of the existence of frontiers. For
him, the problem of frontiers arises when one
attempts to answer the following question in a
utopian way: “Is a European citizenship possi-
ble?” According to “Une citoyenneté européenne
est-elle possible?,” one can trace back to the clas-
sical utopia the “permanence of a rule of closure
and autarky associated to citizenship” (47; my
trans.) in the European Union. On this basis,
defining a European citizenship necessarily leads
to the “formulation of a rule of exclusion” (50).
That is why Balibar affirms that “our problem …
consists in taking leave of utopia” (Avant-propos
[Preface] 12; my trans.).
In contrast to this state of affairs, how then
could utopia mean a new global and democratic
order? Once the dark assessment of the world-
wide domination of capitalism and of the weak-
ening of the sovereign nation-states has been
made, are the corresponding reflections about an
alternative model not still tinted with utopian
colours?
2.2
A notable example of the attempts to recognize
the political dimension in the process of global-
ization is provided by those researchers who
work to define “cosmopolitan democracy,” and
 islands and empire
the reforms which its implementation would
require. In Democracy and the Global Order,
David Held notes that “agencies and organiza-
tions … often cut across the territorial bound-
aries of nation-states,” and affirms that “the
possibility of democracy today must, accord-
ingly, be linked to an expanding framework of
democratic institutions and procedures” (267).
The cosmopolitan model of democracy requires
“that the territorial boundaries of systems of
accountability be recast” (267).
When, in “The United Nations and
Cosmopolitan Democracy: Bad Dream, Utopian
Fantasy, Political Project,” Richard Falk affirms
that “at present, clouds on the horizon make
such expectations [i.e., the transformation of the
United Nations] appear utopian” (327), he is
using the term “utopia” in the common and
negative sense. For him, “cosmopolitan democ-
racy is … not a utopian project superimposed by
way of the political imagination, but is rooted in
the evolving norms and patterns of practice in
the life-world of political behaviour” (316). “As a
result, it seems [to him] inappropriate to dismiss
as utopian the prospect of cosmopolitan democ-
racy as the basis for a dynamic world order”
(328).6
According to Held, because this project is
based on “a dialectic between the ideal and the
real” (276), it is not a utopia in the sense that it
is not a “pipe dream” (277). Cosmopolitan
democracy is, however, a utopia, in a specific
sense. Contrary to a loose understanding of the
term “utopia,”7 for Held “to create a framework
for utopia demands not an abdication of politics
in the name of liberty and experimentation, but
a distinctive logic of political intervention” (249).
He states that “the framework for utopia is
cosmopolitan democratic law” (266), and consid-
ers that:
today, any attempt to set out a position
of what could be called “embedded utopi-
anism” must begin from where we are (the
existing pattern of political relations and
processes) and from an analysis of what might
be (desirable political forms and principles).
If utopia is to be embedded, it must be linked
into patterns and movements as they are.
(286)
2.3
A more radical theory of political globalization
was given by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
in Empire. According to their strategy of “alter-
natives within Empire,” the “localist position” is
today both “false and damaging” (44). “It is false
to claim that we can (re)establish local identities
that are in some sense outside and protected
against the global flows of capital and Empire”
(45).
Any proposition of a particular community in
isolation, defined in racial, religious, or
regional terms, “delinked” from Empire,
shielded from its powers by fixed boundaries,
is destined to end up as a kind of ghetto.
Empire cannot be resisted by a project aimed
at a limited, local autonomy. We cannot move
back to any previous social form, nor move
forward in isolation. Rather, we must push
through Empire to come out the other side.
(206)
This rejection of the localist solution to global-
ization targets both the nostalgic return to the
past form of the nation-state, and plans for
future utopian communities. For Hardt and
Negri, on the contrary, “any postmodern libera-
tion must be achieved within this world, on the
plane of immanence, with no possibility of any
even utopian outside” (65). They insist on not
being mistaken for utopians:
There is not finally here [in this immanent
desire that organizes the multitude] any deter-
minism or utopia: this is rather a radical coun-
terpower, ontologically grounded not on any
“vide pour le futur” but on the actual activity
of the multitude, its creation, production, and
power – a materialist teleology. (66)
Beyond the Morean form of utopia would lie not
a global federal state, but the realm of post-
national politics and reunited humanity.
Despite what appears to be a firm refusal of
the utopian model, a millenarian appeal can,
however, be perceived in certain passages of
Empire. They thus remain within the utopian
realm in its larger sense, for example when they
state that: “Outside every Enlightenment cloud
or Kantian reverie, the desire of the multitude is
not the cosmopolitical state but a common
124

species. As in a secular Pentecost, the bodies are
mixed and the nomads speak a common tongue”
(362). Despite their initial anti-utopian stance,
then, Hardt and Negri ask questions that are
relevant to the debate on utopia. To the follow-
ing question: “if we are consigned to the non-
place of Empire, can we construct a powerful
non-place and realize it concretely, as the terrain
of a postmodern republicanism?” (208), they give
answers that are also of interest to utopians:
“The multitude is not formed simply by throw-
ing together and mixing nations and people indif-
ferently; it is the singular power of a new city”
(395); “Global citizenship is the multitude’s
power to reappropriate control over space and
thus to design the new cartography” (400).
The problem that Hardt and Negri, as well as
Held and Balibar, attempt to describe is that of
a possible opposition between the local and the
global level. The solution cannot be clear-cut,
because in the end there is no radical gap
between the two. For Balibar, the necessary
process of “democratization of the frontiers” is a
“global–local” problem (“Frontières” 181). In
Held’s view, “local transformation is as much an
element of globalization as the lateral extension
of social relations across space” (278).8 Finally,
for Hardt and Negri “the construction of
Empire, and the globalization of economic and
cultural relationships, means that the virtual
centre of Empire can be attacked from any
point” (59). In the end, there is no contradiction
between the parts and the whole. Utopia is an
image of the world, and what Leibniz says about
the monad can be said about utopia: “Now this
connection or adaptation of all created things
with each, and of each with all the rest, means
that each simple substance has relations which
express all the others, and that consequently it is
a perpetual living mirror of the universe.”9
3. utopia inside out
3.1
This intertwinement of the local and the global
is probably what gives utopia its contemporary
significance. Indeed, the outer world is in a way
present in utopia; it just needs to be made more
apparent. Let us remember that Utopia was
125
hatzenberger
discovered at the same time as America, and one
might have expected that this would make
Utopia open to other worlds. Raphael Hythloday,
seaman, heir of Ulysses and Plato, and compan-
ion of Amerigo Vespucci, is familiar with the
most remote places of the earth like Ceylon or
Calicut. Bacon’s New Atlantis is located between
Peru, China and Japan. From the very birth of
the genre, there have been different components
in utopian projects. Utopias are not a series of
dogmas, but a rich reservoir of new ideas – and
thus utopia can still be used as a think-tank for
the period we live in.
In this perspective, there are some passages in
More’s Utopia that can be read as criticisms
guarding against the dangers of utopian closure.
Firstly, More presents several models of interna-
tional relations. In the first book of Utopia,
Hythloday criticizes European relations of the
time in general, and particularly the Italian wars
of Francis I.10 If he were able to, Raphael would
tell the king that he “should leave Italy alone and
stay at home, because the kingdom of France by
itself is almost too much for one man to govern,
and the King should not dream of adding others
to it” (30).11 This is a strong criticism of any
imperialist politics of conquest, and a significant
warning against any attempt to expand the
boundaries in a violent way.
Secondly, Hythloday’s criticism of the system
of enclosures being implemented in England at
the time can be interpreted as an internal
metaphoric objection against utopian closure
(understood as an economical barrier between
two social groups). As he demonstrates, the
effect of the fact that “one greedy, insatiable
glutton, a frightful plague to his native country,
may enclose many thousands of acres within a
single hedge” (19) is that the dispossessed have
no choice but to leave. They are chased out of
the countryside and become vagrants. Wealth
inside means poverty outside.
Similarly, as the strangers seeking refuge in
New Atlantis themselves note, Bacon’s message
is not entirely uniform. “The denial of landing
and hasty warning us away troubled us much; on
the other side, to find that the people … were so
full of humanity, did comfort us not a little”
(130). While “preserving the good which cometh
 islands and empire
by communicating with strangers, and avoiding
the hurt,” the lawgiver of Bensalem “hath
preserved all points of humanity, in taking order
and making provision for the relief of strangers
distressed” (144). As Le Dœuff says, a “morality
of the feeling of humanity” animates the inhabi-
tants of Bensalem (126). Without the foreigners
being directly in contact with the people from
Bensalem (as they have not yet landed), they are
already in a relationship of humanity with them.
Giving the right to land and to set foot on the
territory is the first step towards solidarity and
peaceful relations. “The island outside-of-the-
world transcends the divisions in so far as it lays
down a universal moral reality more desirable
than the particular attachment to the region
from where one comes” (Le Dœuff 128). New
Atlantis contains reflections that are still rele-
vant to the situation of the refugees of the twen-
tieth and the twenty-first centuries. Bacon’s
utopia can be interpreted as an incentive to think
about the status of asylum seekers, who are at the
same time stateless and virtually citizens of the
world.12
3.2
On the one hand, then, despite strong contem-
porary criticism of the concept of utopia, the
utopian spirit appears to live on in the most radi-
cal projects of our time. On the other hand, when
keeping in mind the literary specificities of
More’s Utopia (the dual structure of the two
books, the role of Hythloday, the ironical tone),
it seems peculiar to utopia as a genre to contain
antidotes against its own possible excesses. A
critical point of view is inherent to the classical
model of utopia. More’s and Bacon’s works
contain analyses that can therefore be the theo-
retical basis of a critique of the changes occur-
ring in world politics.
After having dialectically considered, firstly,
utopia as an island and, secondly, the utopias of
a new global order, a few conclusions can be
drawn from these reflections on the problem of
the frontiers of utopia. On a definitional level,
one can support Louis Marin’s claim, in “The
Frontiers of Utopia,” that “Utopia is the figure
of the horizon” (11):
This is the merging place of Utopia: a neutral
place, an island in between two kingdoms, two
States, the two halves of the world, the inter-
val of frontiers and limits by way of a horizon
that closes a site and opens up a space; the
island Utopia merging into the “indefinite.”
(10)
On a geopolitical level, however, contrary to the
situation in the sixteenth, seventeenth, or even
the nineteenth centuries, today there is no New
World left to be discovered and therefore no
escape possible from the old continent. There is
no longer any refuge elsewhere. Thus, when
sketching the blueprint for a better life, do
utopians not have to take into account the exist-
ing links with the other islands, and together
build a common strategy of resistance against
the mainland of the state?
When reflecting on the question of the
frontiers of utopia, it is necessary to engage
with the problem of its limits – in the two
senses of the term. Drawing the boundaries
too sharply is indeed a way to avoid addressing
some important difficulties intrinsic to the
communication between a community and
that which lies outside and to the implementa-
tion of principles of justice in international
relations.
Following the theorists who reflect today on
how democracy can be better institutionalized
on a global level, and on how to create a global
citizenship, utopians should consider this possi-
ble opportunity for expanding the framework of
utopia. To do so requires a questioning of the
opposition between the local and the global, and
a slight shift in the debate about utopia from
the classical questions of its place and time to
the questions of its size and its foreseeable
developments and adaptations.
Engaging with these questions, and rereading
side by side both the first canonical utopias and
contemporary proposals of new ways of consid-
ering political relations on a worldwide level,
could perhaps contribute to a
new comprehension of utopia
(as cosmopolitan utopia), and
contribute to defining what a
possible contemporary utopia
could be.
126

notes
1 In the quotes from More’s Utopia, the emphases
are mine.
2 ence between this state and the other states
They are a sizeable nation, not badly
governed, free and subject only to their own
laws … Living far from the sea, they are
nearly surrounded by mountains; and as they
are content with the products of their own
land … they have little to do with other
nations, and are not much visited. By ancient
tradition, they make no effort to enlarge
their boundaries, and easily protect them-
selves behind their mountains … Thus they
fight no wars, and live in a comfortable
rather than a glorious manner, more
contented than ambitious or famous. Indeed,
I think they are hardly known by name to
anyone but their next-door neighbours.
(More 23)
3 “More is acting not as a world-state theorist,
whether of the classical or the Christian variety,
but as a secular city-state theorist”; “Moreover,
since More is functioning as a city-state theorist,
his object is to secure the real interests of the citi-
zens of Utopia, not those of humanity in general”
(Logan 235).
4 “Utopia appears as a centre of a loose yet well-
ordered community of nations, not sharing the
Utopian social system, but being utterly depend-
ent upon Utopia in their foreign policy and having
Utopians as their rulers” (Avineri 261). “This
Utopian imperium … is based on a preconceived,
premeditated plan of securing for Utopia absolute
security and eventual hegemony” (262). “Utopian
ethics is not based on a universal basis” (263). “If
Utopia is a paradise for its own inhabitants, it is
causing life to be very much like hell to all other
nations” (264).
If in any ordinary society holiness and
corruption live side by side, are being judged
by the same criteria and are subject to the
same regulations, Utopian thinking has to
divorce the saints from the villains and keep
them apart. In the case of More’s Utopia, the
separation is even physical, as King Utopus
caused an artificial channel to be dug, thus
making Utopia an island, clearly set apart
from the world as it is. (288)
127
hatzenberger
5
Everything follows on in an exemplary
manner: the natural and geographical
closure – which makes a journey necessary,
thus making materially perceptible the differ-
and the nearly impossible effort one has to
agree to make to reach it. The voluntary
closure, which the refusal of foreigners
deployed in the arsenal of precautions taken
and secrets prudently unveiled represents …
Lastly, the internal closure by which society
prevents its own members from seeking else-
where a means of altering it, even if this
demands however that it remain informed
about what can be integrated without
damage. (Moreau 45; my trans.)
6
Yet it would be foolhardy to be optimistic
about its real transformative impact unless
present intimations are bolstered by
currently unforeseen developments. In this
regard, the globalizing trends could indeed
eventuate in a dystopia, a kind of bad dream
come true. What is proposed, then, is to
posit a sense of uncertainty about the future,
but to note that this doubt will be removed
by the play of contending aspirations, and that
to the extent that cosmopolitan democracy
is accepted as the most beneficial future for
humanity, then it contributes to this possi-
bility by an engagement in a struggle to bring
it about. (Falk 328)
7 Held is referring to Robert Nozick, Anarchy,
State and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974).
8 See also Falk: “The global village dimensions of
social, economic and cultural reality can only be
addressed within bounded space if they are also
addressed in relation to unbounded space”
(326).
9 Leibniz, The Monadology sect. 56 in Philosophical
Writings by Leibniz, ed. and trans. Mary Morris
(London: Dent, 1934).
10
[C]ouncillors hard at work devising a set of
crafty machinations by which the King might
keep hold of Milan and recover Naples …
then overthrow the Venetians and subdue all
Italy; next add to his realm Flanders, Brabant
and the whole of Burgundy, besides some
 islands and empire
other nations he has long had in mind to
invade. (More 29)
11 Hythloday would advise the king “to look after
his ancestral kingdom, improve it as much as possi-
ble, cultivate it in every conceivable way” (More
31). Cf. the Achorians in the first book of Utopia:
“The worthy king was obliged to be content with
his own realm” (31).
12 See Hassner, “Refugees: A Special Case for
Cosmopolitan Citizenship.”
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