LITR 5439 Literary & Historical Utopias

page samples from Toni Morrison’s Paradise (1998; African American novel with utopian themes) & two virtual-reality novels with utopian themes (Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash [1992] and Dennis Danvers’s Circuit of Heaven [1998])

Monday, 6 July: alternative utopias

Readings: handout pages from Toni Morrison’s Paradise (1999); Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (1992); Dennis Danvers's Circuit of Heaven (1998)

Discussion-starter: Joshua Schuetz (Paradise)

Web review: Jonestown: Mary Boudreaux

Tuesday, 7 July:  conclude Ecotopia

Readings: Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (1976), complete

Discussion-starter: Julie Bollich

Web review: Auroville: Cana Hauerland

Thursday, 9 July: final exam due by Friday, 10 July

Review last Tuesday's African American & American Indian texts

Dr. King's Dream speech works best, partly b/c familiarity

Other African American text possibilities, esp. if course is taught in long semester

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)--esp. for "parallel world" or "world within a world" aspects; cf. grandmother baking crackers in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Toni Morrison, Paradise (1997)

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)

Samuel R. Delany, Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (1976)

Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist (1999)

Other American Indian text possibilities? Mexican American?

Black Elk Speaks (1932) esp. chapters on "Ghost Dance" millennial movement

Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead (1991)

Expectations that LITR courses will be multicultural, but "utopia" as phenomenon of Western Civilization, from Greek and Judeo-Christian sources

Trying to respect expectations, but trying also to avoid situation where a multicultural text is forced in and then doesn't work well with other texts

Obj. 3h. How may utopias exemplify multiculturalism or monoculturalism?

• Does defending utopian studies as "Western Civilization" simply muscle out multiculturalism?

• Is the utopian impulse universal or specific only to Western culture or civilization?

• If utopias or millennia are detected in non-Western texts or traditions, are such terms appropriate, or do we simply project our identities and values on cultures that are in fact doing something else altogether?

Obj. 4c. Do some interdisciplinary subjects underprivilege multiculturalism? Do utopian studies privilege western civilization?

(next time, more prominence to these objectives)

Practical issues:

Try to avoid making students read large amounts for just a few pages of relevance

Some conservative students may see such moves as "canon expansion by affirmative action."

Final test: Is the text working for the class?

Morrison's Paradise

Toni Morrison (b. 1931), Paradise (1998)

Title page and list of books--who's familiar with what?

What is Morrison's reputation? Nationally and in schools?

1993 Nobel Prize for Literature--highest international award

First African American and American woman author to win

Experience reading, teaching? 

Toni Morrison probably among handful of greatest American authors (such decisions take time)

Faulkner, Whitman, James plus or minus Melville, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Eugene O’Neill

How establish greatness?

Quality: genius, courage, brilliance, daring, learning—James: “Be one of the people on whom nothing is wasted.”

Development of tradition: great writers inherit and renew the work of previous great writers--e.g. Morrison did a master’s thesis on Faulkner; her style resembles and goes beyond Faulkner's

Influence on later writers, influenced by previous writers: great writers read their important predecessors, and they push to the next level beyond what their predecessors achieved—process repeats in influence on later writers (for Morrison, it’s too early to judge influence on other writers)

Quantity of quality: a number of writers have written a few great works, but comparative thinness of great works affects reputation: Hemingway, Twain, Hawthorne, Fitzgerald all wrote great works, but either didn’t write as much or repeated themselves instead of advancing

Another standard of greatness in fiction:

number & power of distinct characters

in lesser writers, the characters seem alike, similarly motivated, similar profiles and imaginations, fewer in number

Great writers almost god-like in creation of human characters--compare great musicians with creation of melodies (Bach, Mozart)

Shakespeare is the gold standard; next are Dickens and Faulkner--also Flannery O'Connor

Morrison: characters seem always to have been there, self-existent—like they were waiting in some reality to meet you

Power of invention

Not an easy read, though--very challenging--

Reader learns, discovers + experiences delight in putting parts together--participates in creative process (Aristotle: "To learn gives the liveliest pleasure")

 What I discover in Morrison (esp. in Song of Solomon and Paradise):

Self-existent African American world

surprisingly whole unto itself, not defined strictly by reference to white world--white world is often kept at a distance or unremarked

Again a quality of great writers: to create a whole world, a microcosm or mirror: cf. Dickens's London, Dickens for Christmas

 Backstory for Paradise:

 Possible applications to utopian studies:

Compare journey from Haven to Ruby to Moses and chosen people on Exodus to Promised Land

(Recall that Dr. King made similar comparisons b/w himself and Moses)

compare Oven to Arc of the Covenant

"The Convent" as feminine / feminist counterpart to patriarchal town of Haven / Ruby (founded by Big Papa and Big Daddy)

"Convent"--compare to monastery that may have modeled More's Utopia, but for women rather than men

PBS interview of Toni Morrison

 virtual utopias: Snow Crash & Circuit of Heaven

virtual utopias

"virtual" refers to "virtual reality" or "virtual worlds"

Virtual reality--many terms for same development, or different aspects of it

cybernetics, IT (instructional / information technology)

The Matrix

computer-simulated environment

artificial reality

computer graphics

cyberspace, computer-simulated world

wired / wireless world

online

virtual reality: cocooning, infosphere

reality becomes code, data, information

compare Platonism, platonic ideals, simplified geometrical forms

escapes rough edges & messiness of biological existence

virtual reality = technology allowing viewer to interact with simulated environment

virtusphere

pop theory about humans migrating online

Austin TX as one center of cyberpunk movement (Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner, authors of "Mozart in Mirrorshades" etc.)

Other more current terms for virtual reality, cyberspace?

Virtual world = computer-based simulated environment

Second Life, Active Worlds, the Sims

still somewhat geeky, gaming community

Second Life

Wikipedia on Second Life

Users / avatars as “residents”

Linden Lab stated goal of creating world like Metaverse in Snow Crash

Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson (b. 1959), Snow Crash NY: Bantam, 1992

The Diamond Age 1995

Cryptonomicon 1999

The Baroque Cycle 2003-4; eight novels published in 3 volumes

Complexity and detail, pop-culture hip

6 dystopia > Burbclave = city-state

18 family

23-5 Hero at computer > Metaverse

26 freed from constraints of physics and finance (cf. genetics and conditions)

contrast with earth dystopia

32 apartheid Burbclaves

33 microplantation

35 avatars

36 gorilla, dragon

Metaverse as metaphor

37 off-she-shelf avatars—Brandy and Clint

38 a new ethnic group

57 Juanita and faces

58 ethnic group: military

63 Adam & Eve

69 Infocalypse

Circuit of Heaven

Dennis Danvers (b. 1947), Circuit of Heaven 1998 + End of Days 1999

2-3 add Newman Rogers; cf. Big Brother

13-14 cf. Genesis

16-17 Justine > bookshop

36-37 reality only better + maintain illusion of Metaverse

50-51 virtual birth

55 escalator + 60

62 parents

72-3 rapture & fire

84 underground

104 beautiful / same

183 garden city

190-1 Paradise Lost

310-311

Metaverse

Rob Horning, “Marginal Utility: Virtual Utopia.” PopMatters. 9 Oct. 2006.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/columns/article/5897/virtual-utopia/

Virtual Utopia

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Chamber/6168/

Virtual Utopia & Utopian Theory

http://www.resnet.trinity.edu/jcoleman/virtual.utopia.html

Second Life

EverQuest

World of Warcraft