Sarah Coronado

The Style/Subject Crossroads

          I hope it is evident in my essay above that I love language. I grow more amazed at what it can do on its own, despite the author or reader’s efforts to twist it into something big or hype it up. It can certainly be twisted, but when we relax as readers and critical analysts, the language begins to twist us. It is overwhelming and as I get further along in my studies I am humbled in unabashed reverence. But I also like sliding down slippery slopes. And though part of me wants to always be taking the literary high road and talk/learn about form, style, and theory (yes, I did say theory) as if that’s all that is worthy; I also see the value in interdisciplinary approaches, especially in the midst of a fast-paced summer course that allows me to easily utilize my psychology background and political biases! So here we are again at the style and subject crossroads.

          Fortunately, the study of utopian literature allows for a broad range of discussion that includes literary, social, economic, gender and sex issues; especially, as noted in the essay above, when we view it through a Bakhtinian lens. The literary elements bring forth and entertain those of the ideological world. My research posts into leadership and the collective and individual identities of individuals do not have to sit out in left field; Bakhtin makes harmony and unity possible. In fact, I felt a certain sense of pride during the last web review when we discussed Auroville. According to the research in my second post, I felt I could explain why the real-life commune has and continues to be successful from the standpoint that it offers both a collective and an individual identity; a combination theorized in my research to be most promising.  Auroville claims that theirs is a society “devoted to an experiment in human unity” in which all members must practice and believe in. But at the same time, they have over “a hundred different settlements” in which the members can sit around making mud pies, or artistic rock paintings, or whatever they fancy. They can live in a tree, or in a tunnel, or a fancy house. In many ways, they are given license to establish an individual identity while still feeling connected to a greater, societal one. I was glad that I could make that connection to my research.

          Giving our post mid-term readings, however, I realize that my assumption throughout my research was that the individual was at some level aware of their collective and/or individual identity. Adam Smith’s text, The Wealth of Nations, challenges this notion. He contends that an individual, through the pursuit of his own interests “frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.” When we are guided in this way by an “invisible hand,” do we unconsciously sense our contribution to society? One possibility for continued research in this area is to determine the amount, if any, of awareness of our collective contribution is necessary to satisfy our desire.

          Also, in researching identity, I did not pay much attention to external methods of influence by cults/utopias. However, I think something quite like it is evident in the Ecotopia text.  My sources for my second research post were theorists and psychologists who focused on more internal attacks, “and rarely … forced confinement or direct physical coercion”. Forced confinement in the “hot springs” for four days, however, lead to Weston’s startling realization that he wanted to stay in Ecotopia and his belief that “a new self has been coming to life” within him filling him with “terror, excitement, and strength” (Callenbach 180). So, though most utopian groups apply pressure internally, it seems we cannot exclude external pressure as a powerful force as well (or perhaps just a more entertaining force?).

          Another area of study that occurred to me me while I was preparing my own student-led class discussion of Native American texts was how individuals define their relations of self and other (Objective 3b). It leads me to think of applying Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit, particularly the “Master/Slave Dialect”, to utopian ideology. For instance, how does Hegel’s theory that individuals gain self-consciousness only through “a fight to the death for ‘recognition’” explain or contradict what we believe is a basic need for a collective or individual experience (Kojève 7)? In a utopian world, would the members be the ‘slaves’ or the ‘masters’? They work for others but this work also carries a universal benefit to them, but it is not recognition. And if they are the ‘slaves,’ they are presumed to reach a point of transcendence. What becomes of the work to be done? I think this sort of investigation could very easily be supported by our utopian texts. In Chief Seattle’s Treaty Oration of 1854 he is clearly accepting a ‘slave’ existence when he admits, “the Red Man no longer has rights that he [the “Big Chief at Washington”] need respect.” He also depicts his willingness to stop fighting to the death for recognition (and for his lost utopia) when he says, “We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.” In just this humble beginning, I believe there is potential here to make, or at least investigate, the argument that the “Master/Slave Dialect” could connect and converse with utopian/dystopian ideology as it navigates the relations of the self and other.

          To end on a utopian concept, I will say that I believe the soil in literary and historical utopias is of an intensely fertile quality and can be easily cultivated. Its accommodation to either literary or ideological discourses permits its boundaries a broader stretch with a perpetual promise of expansion. Though we will continue to meet at the crossroads of style and subject, we have yet to exhaust the possible routes of exploration from there.

Works Cited

Kojève, Alexandre. Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980. Print.