Lori Wheeler

Connecting the Dots

          ​One of the features the most enjoyable model assignments had in common was their ability to connect their discoveries in the Utopia class to previous courses and experiences with which I share.  As I perused the model assignments, those that were of most interest to me were the ones that helped me begin to recognize the connections they found but also to encouraged my own connections.

          ​In her first 2013 research post, Marisela Caylor connects the utopian ideal with suburbs in general and specifically with Lakewood, California, as described in D.J. Waldie’s Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir.  Caylor explains how she came to the idea of suburbia as utopia and the comparison of Lakewood to the intentional community of Twin Oaks.  In doing so, she provides an excellent justification for the connection, but also provides justification for suburbs in general.  Having taken the Los Angeles Literature course with Dr. McNamara and reading Holy Land myself, I found her comparison rather compelling.  It forced me to genuinely consider her hypothesis, which is the ultimate goal of any research endeavor.  Her research post is clearly tied to her own personal interests as she discusses her upcoming relocation to California herself, and on top of that she ties her thoughts back to the objectives of the course by returning to the question of whether utopias can exist in a multicultural society such as California.  In fact, Caylor’s particular attention to the possibilities of utopias in relation to urban centers is explored further in her second research post.  I found these research posts highly informative and engaging, and certainly worthy of sharing as a model.

          ​Chrissie Johnston’s 2011 research post regarding the appeal of dystopian literature to adolescent readers was fascinating as well because it connected the course objectives to my own career in education. Johnston investigated the psychological reasoning behind adolescent motivation to pick up dystopian literature as opposed to more traditional, sanitized texts. In her post, she presents multiple arguments explaining why young readers would prefer dystopian texts and provides a sample text list for further consultation if desired.  One of the reasons I appreciate this research post is because the majority of the post was dedicated to discussing young adult (YA) texts specifically, and the appreciation of YA literature is a cause that is dear to my heart.  There are so many concepts, genres, and periods to which YA lit gives readers access—dystopian literature included.  Perhaps Johnston did not go as far with her argumentation as I might have wished, but she began a powerful dialogue, to be sure, about the place of YA lit in the discussion of utopian and dystopian literature. 

          ​Another important connection I found in the model assignments was Sarah Coronado’s 2011 connection between the genres of utopian/dystopian literature and Romantic texts and Socratic dialogues.  Coronado explains utopian and dystopian texts as a vehicle for human progression and spends significant energy explaining how it does so.  What she does that is critical, however, is to explain how these texts remain so popular.  Her position is that by “borrow[ing] many conventions” from other genres, utopian/dystopian authors fold entertainment into their texts and keep the ultimate task of human progression from becoming solely didactic. The entertainment piece is essential in understanding how utopian and dystopian literature can move humanity forward and facilitate its social evolution.  Without the entertainment piece that draws in readers, these texts would have no platform for progression. 

          ​As discussed in one of the very first class sessions, graduate studies ask the student not to simply examine the text but to place the text within the greater context of literature and the world and to make comparisons with them.  By making connections to other courses, genres, texts, and their lives, the authors of these model assignments have fulfilled their obligations as graduate students of literary utopias. They have defined contexts in which utopian and dystopian literature can thrive.

What I Wouldn’t Give

​          When I signed up for the graduate seminar in literary and historical utopias, I had no idea how often my knowledge of popular dystopian fiction would serve as an advantage.  At almost the half-way point in the semester, I keep thinking about my own version of utopia.  I wonder if I would have been willing to participate or invest in some of the historical utopias we have discovered.  It has never been difficult for me to imagine a dystopian world in which I may find myself living in the near future.  I have always been an avid reader, and as a high school and undergraduate student, I immersed myself in the dystopian worlds of 1984, Brave New World, and The Giver.  Since becoming a teacher, I have read numerous dystopias with my own students and have seen the indignation in their eyes when they realize how much they disagree with the way society is governed.  Together, readers solve the problems of dystopia with characters.  My thoughts at the end of the dystopia always revert to: "What I wouldn't give to run my own world."  I have come to know precisely what I would prefer for the society in which I live.  Becoming practiced in resolving dystopias has surprisingly made me very opinionated when reading the utopian texts with which I was unfamiliar until now. 

          As a graduate student, I had, of course, heard of Thomas More's Utopia, and Herland had actually been recommended to by Dr. Howard in a history class I took.  However, I had never taken the time to read either of them.  The existence of intentional communities was barely on my radar, having read pieces that mentioned them peripherally.  Honestly, though, it had never occurred to me to consider certain historical utopias, like Nazi Germany, as such.  Personal preferences and judgments so often prevent us from ever seeing them as anyone else's ideal if they are not our own.  Thus, we discover the crux of the problem with utopia: while there may be agreement on a general definition, the specifics of utopian life rarely please everyone.  A utopia is defined by the general public as an ideal society where people exist together in harmony and peace.  It is a perfect place.  Course Objective 3 defines utopias as "experiments essential to Western Civilization," which strives to embody and defy the traditional definitions of "no place" and "good place" for utopias.  The experiment of utopia attempts to prove that a good place can exist instead of being simply an abstract idea that is no actual place.

          From both the literary and historical perspectives, utopias serve to further improve society and how individuals interact with each other.  Too often people move beyond the general definition of utopia and try to define what it is with specific rules for society.  Intentional communities and historical utopias have participated in the experiment by creating procedures and structures to govern what they have chosen for their "good place," so that a geographical location becomes better by placing an improved society upon it.  The difficulty of studying utopias, however, is that each one is so vastly different from the others.  Because utopias are created by humans who live in different moments in history and hold sometimes opposing preferences, there is no one set of utopian principles by which to live.  If there was, we would all be clamoring to live in this good place.  For students, though, this means instead of studying specific features of utopia, systems of features must be studied by comparison.  I think this is both a blessing and a curse for students of utopia.  Whether you study utopias in order to create your own or to make a careful analysis of them, it is inevitable that you contemplate your own version of utopia and its efficacy.  Eventually, you come to the point that you realize that one person's utopia is generally only a good place for that one person and perhaps not too many more.  One person's utopia is another person's dystopia, and anyone studying utopias must understand that specificity ruins the veracity of statements about general utopias. 

          All utopias share some general conventions and are closely correlated, or inversely correlated, to dystopias.  Utopias and dystopias serve as two sides to the same coin, and when we consider how that coin comes to us as literature, it typically comes through novel.  It is safe to allow utopia to operate as the umbrella term for both utopian and dystopian texts.  The reader can assume that the societies described in dystopian texts were created and began as utopias.  This is similar to the geometric truth that all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.  Dystopias, for the most part, seem to be utopias for at least some portion of the population not inclusive of the main characters and narrators.  One of the most poignant seminar discussions this semester involved the idea of utopias being cyclical.  Utopias are designed in response to social and political conditions as solutions to society's ills, and their structures remain beneficial as long as they show themselves superior to other cultures in comparison.  As literature, the entertainment value of utopias are endless: the reader enjoys the conflict and resolution of the plot while he considers the society proposed in the text, but on a separate plane, he creates his own theoretical utopia for himself.  Studying utopias and the pendulum that swings between utopia and dystopia, I think about what I wouldn't give to create a society that answers the questions forced upon my current world.

          Typically, narratives and dialogues provide the vehicle to discover what is preferred or disdainful to members of these established utopian societies.  This means that perhaps the most essential characteristic of utopias and their inverses is an established society.  A society must have existed with some level of success for a significant amount of time to allow a member of that society to explain the social and political structures that govern it.  Every utopia requires its organization to be communicated, either through the dialogue of one of its members or a member's experience narrated in novel form.  Despite the classification as utopian or dystopian, to understand the society, the reader needs detailed descriptions of socio-political systems.  This is why utopian texts provide a guide from the community for the visitor as well as the reader.  Dystopian texts use the community member as the main character or narrator to explain the community's structures while highlighting the failings of those structures. 

          Another critical convention in the utopian genre is setting.  These settings are usually hidden and undisclosed or existing in the future, and they are places where ideas flourish, either presently or in the past.  The setting is essential because it provides time and space for utopian leaders and dystopian subversives to fully develop ideas and rationales for socio-political systems and the changes needed in them.  I think to myself, "What I wouldn't give to have time and space enough to really develop the structures for a society that would make me happy!"  In the course materials and in seminar discussions, dystopias have been described as more romantic in nature than utopias.  Recognizing that dystopias include more Romantic features than utopias, both utopias and dystopias strike me as distinctly Romantic.  One of the most obvious characteristic of Romantic texts found in utopias is the prioritization of the frontier and nature that is unblemished by man.  The objectives of the course ask students to consider the possibility of utopias to exist in urban settings because the majority of utopias and dystopias imply that the preferred setting for a peaceful, cooperative existence is exurban, or at least suburban.  The location of these texts are tied to the narrative in order to provide a strong tie between social theory and plot.  In this regard, again dystopias are more obviously Romantic than utopias due to the narrative of the journey from the dystopian city to the more utopian wilderness.  However, utopias more often than not include the cerebral journey to their utopia in explanation and dialogue and represent the location of utopia as a state of mind.  The visitor's process of understanding and commitment to the utopia, in this way, becomes part of the plot. 

          More importantly, the underlying premise of both utopias and dystopias are Romantic.  The idea that humanity can create a place where social and political systems aim to make life better for current and future generations as well as the earth is incredibly Romantic.  To believe that people can create utopias in order to move themselves toward the realization of idealized life is Romantic.  Although utopian and Romantic texts do not always share the same narrative structures, this does not limit a text.  In fact, the first objective of the course considers the utopian genre as a cooperative genre, where texts often operate as hybrids spanning multiple genres and styles.  My previous experience in the genre study seminar for Romanticism taught me to discontinue thinking about texts in a single-serve way, and this semester's study of utopia has only reinforced that idea and perhaps taken it one step further.  I have chosen to focus on the Romantic aspects of utopias, but the argument could be illustrated by discussing utopias as novels or even as precursors to or results of dystopias.  Although it is not articulated as such in the first course objective, utopia is also a hybrid of utopian and dystopian features. 

          At this point, my thinking comes full circle because I come back to the idea we have discussed in seminar of utopias and dystopias being cyclical.  Coming to this seminar after more than a decade reading dystopian texts with adolescent readers, I am able to see the distinctions between utopias and dystopias as mutations rather than distinctions.  As I see it, the features of dystopian communities are not distinct from those features of utopias.  The only difference is the human experience: how each individual experiences the socio-political systems established and intended as utopia.  While many community members appreciate these systems and structures as utopia as evidenced by their participation in the community, some members of these communities will view it as dystopia due to changing preferences, generational placement, or levels of participation open to them.  What I have found in the past two and a half weeks of this course is that as I journey through utopian texts, I celebrate the solutions that the utopian societies have designed for the dangerous issues that plague civilizations even today, but at some point in every utopian text, I begin to feel the impending doom of the community.  I start seeing the shortcomings and shortsightedness in each community that limits their viability as time passes and can anticipate the turn of the society into a dystopia for at least limited numbers of the community.  The process is reversed in dystopian texts.  Readers quickly identify the society's failings and begin to create solutions along with the main characters, ultimately moving toward the creation, at least theoretically, of a new utopian society.  The connection that is missing is the process through which one community moves from dystopia to a new utopian system and back to becoming dystopia.  Much like the "Write vs the World" blog that recognizes the difference between dystopian and post-apocalyptic texts without finding a text that bridges the two, I also realize that recognizable distinctions between utopian and dystopian do not forever separate the two. 

          As an educator, I am cursed to never appreciate a thing for itself.  Instead I look for ways to make it relevant for students.  I find it incredibly easy to explain the relevancy of dystopian texts for my students as they engage in history and government classes in preparation to become productive citizens, but in the past I have found it difficult to find relevancy of utopian texts even for myself, much less my students.  This class has brought relevancy to utopias simply by creating time and space for me to give them greater consideration.  Surprisingly, the study of utopias has given me even more rationale for using modern dystopias in the classroom.  As a teacher, I knew I needed to bring in high interest texts for my students so they would be engaged, and as I transition to administration, I know my focus must now begin to include questioning what and how teachers are bringing new pieces into the classroom.  Dystopias, however, provide their own rationale.  Not only are they engaging for students, but they are one side of the utopia/dystopia coin.  Because dystopias are inseparable from utopias, they become bottom rungs on a utopian genre reading ladder as I discussed in a research post in the spring Romanticism course.  Reading ladders place more engaging and accessible texts at the bottom rungs of the ladder, gradually increasing the reading skills required to access the text and the level of intellectual challenge until you get to the most challenging text at the top of the ladder.  As I assist teachers in their classrooms, I look forward to using dystopias as a reading ladder that will lead students to read and make relevant use of utopias so they can expand their consideration of viable communities and make connections across content areas.  What I wouldn't give to show students how valuable utopias can be in motivating change in society!