LITR 5737: Literary & Historical Utopias
Final Exam Submission 2007
Donny Wankan
02 July 2007
Topic A2:
Genre and Instinct
Literature may suggest that Utopia is a western idea. The problem of finding multicultural, non-western texts dealing in the concept suggests the literary phenomenon at least leans to the west. A few texts from the world outside Europe and the U.S. seem to be exceptions rather than trends in non-western Utopian literature. And, even within the western tradition, the majority of Utopian texts have manifested either "white" or at the least racially uniform populations, which prompts the question of why Utopia--as literature, has rarely attracted or included non-western perspectives.
I would suggest two (probably among other) possibilities. One is a matter of influence, the other of significance. Regarding influence, the issue might be more arbitrary than would seem. Within the tradition of Utopian literature in the west, the most significant artifacts lie at milestones in western history. Plato, at the height of Athenian Greece and Thomas More, at the great exit threshold of the Dark Ages, both are known to western students of culture (who might decide to make a political statement or present a philosophical treatise in an allegorical format), and both presented a Utopian ideal, Plato in both the Philosopher's City and the mythic Atlantis, and Thomas More, of course, in the work entitled, Utopia. We can probably stretch our geographic origins further to western canon from and about other parts of the world, like El Dorado, Shangri-La, and other explorers' fantasies, that present a liminal experience of Utopia in xenocultural dreams of empiricism. As a literary phenomenon, the Utopian text format has passed from a few individual texts to a genre of subject matter. With limited influence and perhaps a lack of concern for western myth or aesthetic traditions, the non-west might have just not experienced the phenomenon of Utopian literature.
This might explain the lack of Utopian texts outside the west, but are there Utopian texts the west has not yet experienced? Is the lack of non-western sources on Utopia, as I--a westerner-- see it, a result of so many centuries of western disregard for non-western literature? There might be evidence outside my experience that the literary phenomenon is not at all unique to the west. I can only speak from the knowledge of my own, western, literary studies. "The Sultana's Dream," an Indian text Brooke Rose-Carpenter pointed out, might be only one example among many others that have not made their way into western significance.
But, what about the worlds handled in the Utopian fiction? The western examples, with few exceptions, are, at least culturally and ethnically, without variation. Gillman's Herland is probably the most obvious example, with its "Aryan" population. Even in Callenbach's attempt at addressing non-white concerns, he presents a clumsy, stereotypical "black" community that has, interestingly, separated itself from the rest of Ecotopia. Both Utopia and Looking Backward spend virtually no text on ethnicity, and their Utopian populations seem to be rather uniform. I think both influence and significance come into play here as well. The concern for Multi-Culturalism in the west is a rather young phenomenon, and writers before the second half of the twentieth century thought little of diversity--not to say that they did not want it (although some did not), but to say that they just didn't think about it, so that a white writer inhabited fiction with white people (or, as has often been said, they wrote about what they knew). Despite the works of people like Mark Twain, whose fame lies partly in his combination of European- and African-American life in his most remembered works, cultural tolerance (as well as cultural variety) have been late in coming to western literary tradition. So, a writer like Bellamy might have ignored a number of cultures of relevance to his time and his society, but to his mind, they were not significant, perhaps for the inherent prejudice of his culture, but also possibly because his culture not only excluded others but also excluded his view of those others. Most likely, the truth is a combination of these two problems.
But outside of the literary world, Utopia manifests itself in experiments on social existence, and in this context, in actual practice, Utopia seems to be (at least closer to) universal. From ancient to modern examples, the human race seems to have a tendency in scattered cultures around the globe, to strive for and dream and attempt to build perfect societies. From, the Hebrews' promised land--a dream that drove a culture, to Tibetan monasteries--designed for perfecting the soul, to Hassan i Sabbah's fortress cult--a mystical and highly political Utopia, to Fela Kuti's Kalakuta Republic--which he declared with a fence around his home and property in the middle of military-controlled Nigeria in the 1970's. Utopian experiments happen everywhere, the human race always reshaping its assumptions and societies in an ongoing attempt to figure out the right way to live and act in concert.
Topic B3c
Utopia Dreaming, On Such a Dystopian Day
Some definite problems presented themselves in reading the general Utopian novels. Ecotopia went a long way to fix some of those problems but still was limited by its agenda. This seemed to be the main issue with the novels, that their intellectual purpose stood in the way of the literary escape element, when the descriptions of the perfect world became textbookish. On the other hand, the fictional presentation sometimes weakened the rhetoric.
In Ecotopia some of the same tricks came out as in Herland, the narrator once hostile to the system gaining respect through his interactions with it, the problematic love affair adding a level of drama to the story, and the personal focus on a protagonist's relationships with people in this new world. Ecotopia, although following in the footsteps of Herland in many ways, was able to spice up the excitement a bit with sex and violence of a more graphic quality than would have been accepted in the 1930's, when Gilman was writing.
Callenbach was able to present a reasonably exciting story between his descriptions of the Ecotopian infrastructure and technology. The journal entries provided a break from the reporter's fact sheets, by taking us into his emotional reactions to the circumstances. It was mainly in the journals that the plot of the story took place, as clear as it was.
As far as plot is concerned, although Callenbach's book was a bit more interesting (probably from a combination of drugs, sex, violence, and it's proximity to us in time), Herland had a more definite plot. Gilman's story maintained a sense of tension throughout, either in the character's sense of being held prisoner, or the question (that she never really clearly answered) of sexual interaction between the men and these once sexless women. She brought this to a climactic end when Terry attacked Alima, and the fate of the men was up in the air. Ecotopia, containing a much more provocatively honest description of various aspects of the protagonist's visit, had a somewhat ambivalent plot. The conflict of his dislike of the Ecotopian system did not last throughout, and in fact, by two thirds of the way through the novel, he has almost fully accepted their way of life.
In the 2005 essays, I found two that dealt with plot and excitement. Daniel Robison suggested that items like the revolutionary group who approaches Weston to establish communication with Washington add a flare to the story that is missing in some of the earlier Utopian novels, and I agree. Still, I think Keri Wellborn finished his statement off quite nicely with her assertion that these little touches, added as interest builders or as plot thickeners, are too little and too spread out.
I found myself wondering if the imperfect relationship between the narrator and Marissa would ever rise to a real conflict and create a soap opera love affair story, but it did not happen, and despite my general dislike for the soap opera format, I was a bit disappointed. Even the issue of the resistance asking him for help was never really developed into a serious conflict. Other upstart attempts at adding spice to the story worked similarly, like the war games. I expected some crisis and solution related to the war games, but it only came across as a more extreme surprise that the narrator had to come to terms with. None of the conflicts sustain themselves as central to the plot, and therefore, as Callenbach admitted himself, the plot is thin.
He did a slightly better job with the characters than with the plot, but he only really developed a few of them. The rest, like the conflicts, were incidental. As fiction, the book reads like a picaresque novel, from one small incident to the next with only a subject linking them, not a larger sense of conflict. Again, Gillman's book out-did Callenbach's, with her distinct three male characters and the only slightly less complex several women central to the plot.
As I said earlier, the plot and the rhetoric seem to struggle against each other. Herland, although more accomplished as a work of fiction, lacked logic on many levels, like the Aryan women in America in the first century BC, and the parthenogenesis which came like Zeus ex machina. Callenbach's novel contains its own problem. For instance, the ridiculous, stereotypical treatment of African Americans, and the war games, which these peace-loving hippie-ish people relish with an almost erotic fascination. But, the science of Ecotopia, at the heart of what the book was intended for, was impressive. Granted, many of the theoretical assumptions from the early 1970's have been debunked, but most of Ecotopia's system seemed reasonable, almost believable.
Putting aside literary conventions for a novel, the Utopian stories are exciting in their own right though, if not for the standard plot and conflict reasons, for the simple fact that they present hope for a better way of living. Even Looking Backward and Utopia, the driest of the bunch, had a certain appeal, and when I consider, for instance, the parallels between the political realities of the 1890's and those of today, Looking Backward offers some attractive suggestions, as do all of these stories in their own ways. As rhetorical devices, the Utopian novels are excellent. Utopia and Looking Backward offer great advertisements for the idea of people living and working together, and Herland calls out powerful questions about the assumptions of male and female abilities and tendencies. Ecotopia does its job as well, but not as a novel; instead, it works as an intellectual tickling, that hits on spots of unknown vulnerability. This, I think, is the value of Utopian novels. These are the theorists who say perhaps up can be down, and despite how ridiculous such an idea may be, they put it together and chart out a map for it. The successful Utopian novel need not be a work of fictional genius, but if it causes us to think, "What if-?" or "How might we-?" it has achieved its goal, to change, or to call into question, the mind of the reader about how the human world should work.