A Principle of Hope: Recorded Music, Listening Practices and the Immanence of Utopia

In this paper I draw a set of partial connections between ways of using recorded music and utopia. The first half of the paper draws upon the process philosophy of Ernst Bloch to argue that utopia is not located else–where or else–when in a transcendent realm separate from the present but is paradoxically immanent to 'everyday life'. This argument revolves around the novel 'open' experimental ontology that Bloch elaborates through the operator the 'not–yet'. Bloch's work enables the beginnings of an immanent utopianism that is able to discern, rather than critique, the dimly vibrating figures of hope that exist within rather than outside 'everyday life'. The second half of the paper sets this thought in motion by connecting two of Bloch's concepts, the 'trace' and 'novum', to the logic of one particularly common way of using recorded music: the use of music to 'feel better'. Drawing on in–depth case study research with seventeen lower–middle–class households I describe how this practice enables people to momentarily enact two forms of hope that are both based around the geographies of affect and affection: how something better might feel and an ability to forget. I conclude by speculatively describing the practice of a Blochian 'immanent utopianism' that itself embodies 'a principle of hope'.     

A Principle of Hope: Recorded Music, Listening Practices and the Immanence of Utopia

In this paper I draw a set of partial connections between ways of using recorded music and utopia. The first half of the paper draws upon the process philosophy of Ernst Bloch to argue that utopia is not located else–where or else–when in a transcendent realm separate from the present but is paradoxically immanent to 'everyday life'. This argument revolves around the novel 'open' experimental ontology that Bloch elaborates through the operator the 'not–yet'. Bloch's work enables the beginnings of an immanent utopianism that is able to discern, rather than critique, the dimly vibrating figures of hope that exist within rather than outside 'everyday life'. The second half of the paper sets this thought in motion by connecting two of Bloch's concepts, the 'trace' and 'novum', to the logic of one particularly common way of using recorded music: the use of music to 'feel better'. Drawing on in–depth case study research with seventeen lower–middle–class households I describe how this practice enables people to momentarily enact two forms of hope that are both based around the geographies of affect and affection: how something better might feel and an ability to forget. I conclude by speculatively describing the practice of a Blochian 'immanent utopianism' that itself embodies 'a principle of hope'.     

In defence of utopian urbanism: imagining cities after the 'end of utopia'

What is the role of utopian visions of the city today? What is their use at a time when, for many people, the very concept of utopia has come to an end? Taking a wide perspective on contemporary debates, this paper addresses the general retreat from utopian urbanism in recent years. It connects it with the so–called crisis of modernist urbanism in the capitalist West as well as forms of 'utopic degeneration', and assesses some of its implications. Arguing against the abandonment of utopian perspectives, it advocates a rethinking of utopianism through considering its potential function in developing critical approaches to urban questions. The authoritarianism of much utopian urbanism certainly needs acknowledging and criticising, but this need not entail a retreat from imagining alternatives and dreaming of better worlds. Instead, it is necessary to reconceptualise utopia, and to open up the field of utopian urbanism that for too long has been understood in an overly narrow way. The paper suggests the potential value of developing, in particular, modes of critical and transformative utopianism that are open, dynamic and that, far from being compensatory, aim to estrange the taken–for–granted, to interrupt space and time, and to open up perspectives on what might be.     

In defence of utopian urbanism: imagining cities after the 'end of utopia'

What is the role of utopian visions of the city today? What is their use at a time when, for many people, the very concept of utopia has come to an end? Taking a wide perspective on contemporary debates, this paper addresses the general retreat from utopian urbanism in recent years. It connects it with the so–called crisis of modernist urbanism in the capitalist West as well as forms of 'utopic degeneration', and assesses some of its implications. Arguing against the abandonment of utopian perspectives, it advocates a rethinking of utopianism through considering its potential function in developing critical approaches to urban questions. The authoritarianism of much utopian urbanism certainly needs acknowledging and criticising, but this need not entail a retreat from imagining alternatives and dreaming of better worlds. Instead, it is necessary to reconceptualise utopia, and to open up the field of utopian urbanism that for too long has been understood in an overly narrow way. The paper suggests the potential value of developing, in particular, modes of critical and transformative utopianism that are open, dynamic and that, far from being compensatory, aim to estrange the taken–for–granted, to interrupt space and time, and to open up perspectives on what might be.     

ARCHITECTURAL MOVEMENTS,UTOPIAN MOMENTS: (IN)COHERENT RENDERINGS OF THE HUNDERTWASSER‐HAUS,VIENNA

This article explores some of the manifold entanglements of architecture and utopia. It takes as a case study a social housing block in Vienna: the Hundertwasser‐Haus. The house was designed by the artist‐architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser and has attracted enormous attention from the architectural press and tourists. I articulate a series of architectural “movements”, manifest in Hundertwasser's design philosophy, press reportage about the house, residents' experiences of living at the house, and visitors' activities outside it. I argue that from these movements, a series of essentially unconnected utopian “moments” emerged. The article makes two contributions. First, it builds upon gathering interest in the geographies of utopia – specifically by moving beyond an emphasis upon utopian hope. It locates utopian impulses that are imbued with euphoria and joy, and which are not beset by a sense of lack. It also provides empirical examples of “unsettling” utopias of different registers (such as textual and experiential). Second, the article contributes to recent geographical approaches to studying architecture. It uses the analytical motif of movements to gain a sense of how a material building – and the idea of that building – is constituted as much by tenuous relations and disjunctures (even non‐relations) as by relations. Whereas contemporary geographies of architecture do not leave room for tenuous relations and disjunctures in their narratives, this article tries to do so. It highlights how utopian moments at the Hundertwasser‐Haus are proximate to each other: they are located metaphorically and/or literally at the house. Yet those moments neither conform to a coherent, singular narrative, and in some cases, nor do they relate to each other. The article opens debate about the significance of non‐relational sociotechnical constituents to the geographies of architecture.     

No Place for Women? Anti–utopianism and the Utopian Politics of the 1890s

The word 'utopia' can mean both good place and no place, and the common–sense meaning of 'utopian' is unrealistic. This article argues that common–sense assumptions of the impossibility of utopia are ideological, and constructed in part by the way experiments in utopian living have been represented. Historical accounts suggest utopias are doomed to inevitable failure. In fiction and autobiography, committed participants in such experiments as well as outside observers use narrative structures which distance utopian spaces from 'real life'.
Using historical research and textual analysis, this argument is illustrated by discussing several women involved in utopian politics in 1890s England. Four of them, Helen and Olivia Rossetti, Edith Lees, and Gertrude Dix later wrote novels which re–created but also distanced their experiences. This distancing is partly a function of gender: for them utopia was no place for real women. This paper analyses the construction of utopian spaces in their novels, particularly the gendered relationship between domestic and political space. Narrative structure, imagery and humour are all used to undermine a sense of the possibilities of utopian living. These fictionalised accounts are compared with Nellie Shaw's more positive non–fiction account of life in the utopian community Whiteway. Although writing as a committed utopian, she, too, creates an account that distances readers. The critical analysis of such representations can begin to challenge anti–utopianism.     

No Place for Women? Anti–utopianism and the Utopian Politics of the 1890s

The word 'utopia' can mean both good place and no place, and the common–sense meaning of 'utopian' is unrealistic. This article argues that common–sense assumptions of the impossibility of utopia are ideological, and constructed in part by the way experiments in utopian living have been represented. Historical accounts suggest utopias are doomed to inevitable failure. In fiction and autobiography, committed participants in such experiments as well as outside observers use narrative structures which distance utopian spaces from 'real life'.
Using historical research and textual analysis, this argument is illustrated by discussing several women involved in utopian politics in 1890s England. Four of them, Helen and Olivia Rossetti, Edith Lees, and Gertrude Dix later wrote novels which re–created but also distanced their experiences. This distancing is partly a function of gender: for them utopia was no place for real women. This paper analyses the construction of utopian spaces in their novels, particularly the gendered relationship between domestic and political space. Narrative structure, imagery and humour are all used to undermine a sense of the possibilities of utopian living. These fictionalised accounts are compared with Nellie Shaw's more positive non–fiction account of life in the utopian community Whiteway. Although writing as a committed utopian, she, too, creates an account that distances readers. The critical analysis of such representations can begin to challenge anti–utopianism.     

Marx's Utopian legacy

The terms "utopia" and "utopian" have long been used in predominantly dismissive ways. That this is the case is due partly to Karl Marx and his followers, who criticized socialist competitors as ineffectual dreamers. But while Marxism worked hard to present itself as realistic, serious and scientific, this essay argues that core elements of Marx's own project are utopian. Marx's utopianism lay in the aim of abolishing the distinction between state and civil society, and in the harmony he assumed would emerge as a result of that change. Consequently, the very concepts of "freedom" and "equality" would be transformed; the old debates about them would simply be redundant in communist society. This essay will explain why such objectives are utopian and even dangerous, and then evaluate the importance of and problems with this utopian legacy. In recovering Marx's utopianism we need not accept Marx's implication that utopianism itself has no real value for social and political change.     

Utopian Promise or Burdensome Responsibility? A Critical Analysis of the UK Government's Building Schools for the Future Policy

Abstract: This paper critically analyses a nationwide school‐building programme in England: Building Schools for the Future (BSF). It is argued that, between 2003 and 2010, the UK Government's policy guidance for BSF represented a (re)turn to utopian discourse in governmental policy‐making, mobilised in order to justify a massive programme of new school building in the UK. In doing so, BSF connected with the promise of three further discourses: school(‐children), community and architectural practice. It anticipated that new school buildings would instil transformative change—modernising English schooling, combating social exclusion and leaving an architectural “legacy”. However, it is argued that BSF constituted an allegorical utopia: whilst suggesting a “radical” vision for schooling and society, its ultimate effect was to preserve a conventional (neo‐liberal) model of schooling. The paper highlights the critical role that notions of utopia might have in negotiating—and challenging—promise‐laden mega‐building policies like BSF. In doing so, it develops recent geographical research on utopia, education and architecture.     

The relevance of Morris's utopia

This paper considers the reputation of William Morris's News From Nowhere and its evaluation as a utopia. It argues that there is a discrepancy between scholarly estimations of the book's importance and its treatment as a utopia relevant to socialism. Whilst scholars have for many years almost unanimously praised News From Nowhere as Morris's crowning achievement, most have also attempted to argue that Morris did not intend his work to be used as a serious model for socialism. After reviewing some of the secondary literature and distinguishing between a variety of different interpretations of Morris's work, I suggest that the relevance of News From Nowhere might be assessed by the standards which Morris applied to Thomas More's Utopia. Considering Morris's work in this framework of utopianism, I argue that the relevance of Morris's utopia lies in what Norman Geras has called its “maximum” vision.     

The Pervasive Nature of Heterodox Economic Spaces at a Time of Neoliberal Crisis: Towards a “Postneoliberal” Anarchist Future

Abstract: Re‐reading the economic landscape of the western world as a largely non‐capitalist landscape composed of economic plurality, this paper demonstrates how economic relations in contemporary western society are often embedded in non‐commodified practices such as mutual aid, reciprocity, co‐operation and inclusion. By highlighting how the long‐overlooked lived practices in the contemporary world of production, consumption and exchange are heavily grounded in the very types and essences of non‐capitalist economic relations that have long been proposed by anarchistic visions of employment and organization, this paper displays that such visions are far from utopian: they are embedded firmly in the present. Through focusing on the pervasive nature of heterodox economic spaces in the UK in particular, some ideas about how to develop an anarchist future of work and organization will be proposed. The outcome is to begin to engage in the demonstrative construction of a future based on mutualism and autonomous modes of organization and representation.     

Hope’s Work

This article, given as the Antipode RGS‐IBG Lecture on 28 August 2019, argues that hope can be found through training an attentiveness to the social world in troubled times. Hope then is an empirical question and a matter of documenting hopeful possibilities that often otherwise remain unremarked upon. In this sense “worldly hope” draws possibilities that are manifested in the social world and stands in contrast to cruel forms of optimism or an unrealistic faith in future progress. An argument for such an approach to hope and trouble is developed through two examples drawn from contemporary London life, namely, the silent walks at Grenfell Tower in West London and a community arts project in Bellingham, South East London.     

“Follow the Tree Flowers”: Fugitive Mapping in Beloved

This article attempts to analyse mapping practices at the intersection of geography, black studies and literary studies, in order to reassess the political and pedagogical possibilities of mapping under late capitalism. I turn to Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved to track black cartographic practices otherwise obscured or, as Katherine McKittrick writes, “rendered ungeographic”. The novel offers a hidden and unauthorised archive for the often clandestine geographic practices that make possible fugitivity from the mechanics of “slaveholding agro‐capitalism” and its ongoing legacy. As an unofficial archive of black geographic practice, Morrison’s novel might itself be thought of as a map: a contemporary mode of memorialising the depth of place, relation, and navigation—a depth no two‐dimensional map can accommodate. Finally, this article demonstrates the valuable interventions that black studies and black creative production can make within the subfields of critical cartography and critical geography.     

Whispered Utopia: Dreams,Agendas, and Theocratic Aspirations in Yehud

ABSTRACT

To provide collective meaning to displacement and subsequent immigration, the authors of the Persian-period Hebrew texts such as Ezra-Nehemiah construct a schema of theocratic utopia. To be clear, however, the expressed theocratic aspirations of the golah community can only be de-scribed in utopian terms because a theocracy had never existed previously in the histories of Israel or Judah. Using Thomas More's model of Utopia this article compares the agendas and aspirations recorded in relevant Persian-period Hebrew texts to selected components or structures of Utopia. It will al-so express a working definition of theocracy and explain why it should be read in utopian terms. While the similarities will be informative, the differ-ences will reveal different visions of utopia; More's will stem from a more social-economic base while that portrayed in the Hebrew texts will stem from a particular religious base. For both, visions of a utopian society are encour-aged by circumstances in which conflict appears to balefully outweigh con-sensus.

A utopia is literally a “nowhere land,” an ideal society in another place, where justice prevails, where people are perfectly content, and from which sadness, pain and violence have been banned. Utopias, although fictions, are characterized by a conviction that the envisioned society will in fact be with-out problems. Other distinguishing features of utopias are that they are ex-tremely critical in regard to the present society, and contain the “blueprints” for a completely new state. (Marius de Geus)

The trebling of the population in this small and impoverished country, flowing with milk and honey but not with sufficient water, rich in rocks and sand dunes but poor in natural resources and vital raw materials, has been no easy task: Indeed, practical men, with their eyes fixed upon things as they are, regarded it as an empty and insubstantial utopian dream. (David Ben Gurion, NY Herald Tribune 28 Apr 63)

Vtopia priscis dicta, ob infrequentiam, Nunc ciuitatis aemula Platonicae,

Fortasse uictrix, (nam quod illa literis Deliniauit, hoc ego una praestiti, Viris & opibus, optimisque legibus) Eutopia merito sum uocanda nomine. (Anemolius [in T. More, Utopia])     

Counterfactualism,utopia, and historical geography: Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt

Though counterfactual histories are treated with suspicion by some historians, they can be both useful and politically progressive. In fact it is possible to argue that counterfactual historical geographies might even be utopian. Though this seems counter-intuitive (how could alternative histories imagine a better future?), both histories and utopias encourage a kind of popular historicism, a sense that things have been (and could be) different. Whether this makes counterfactual fictions utopian depends on how you define utopia. Recent critical re-appraisals of the concept have suggested that we might think of it as a process, an ongoing critique of the present, not as an end in itself. Counterfactual histories can be utopian because they encourage a critique of teleology and determinism; their geographies can also be utopian because they remind us that spaces are multiple and open. A close reading of Kim Stanley Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt (2002), a novel that describes a world without Europe after a more virulent version of the fourteenth-century plague kills everyone west of Constantinople, demonstrates that counterfactual historical fictions present an unequalled opportunity to reflect upon the practice of history. The novel also suggests that counterfactual historical fictions also allow for a critical evaluation of the nature of space. The paper concludes by demonstrating the value of counterfactual fictions through their representations of history, and of spaces of movement, multiplicity, and agonistic encounter.     

How free?1

This paper is a critique of the Marxian idea of a future stateless utopia. It is an immanent critique. Were one to start from non-Marxist assumptions, detailed argument would scarcely be necessary. Non-Marxists just take it for granted that any organized modern society foreseeable from the present world must necessarily involve state-type institutions of governance. My aim here is to show that, even thinking from within the Marxist tradition, the idea of a stateless utopia is not sustainable, unless as a blind act of faith.     

“They want a different life”: Rural northern settlement dynamics and pathways to homelessness in Yellowknife and Inuvik,Northwest Territories

Visible homelessness in the Northwest Territories, Canada is often described as a recent phenomenon by policy makers and the popular media alike. Indeed, since the late 1990s, homeless shelters in Yellowknife and Inuvik report a steady increase in demand for beds and other support for homeless people. Homelessness in these two communities disproportionately affects Aboriginal northerners, however little is known about their individual pathways to homelessness. Moreover, homelessness in the Northwest Territories is often portrayed as an issue confined to larger “urbanizing” regional centres, yet many homeless Aboriginal northerners have originated from small, rural settlement communities. Despite this, little concern has been paid to how factors at the small community level intersect with more visible forms of homelessness in larger, urban centres, not to mention how these intersections shape a territorial geography of homelessness. In this article, I aim to uncover and explore the often hidden factors at the northern rural settlement level that ultimately contribute to more visible forms of homelessness in northern urban centres. I suggest that uneven and fragmented social, institutional, and economic geographies result in a unique landscape of vulnerability to homelessness in the Northwest Territories. This geography emerges through the production of particular dynamics between rural settlement communities and northern urban centres. In particular, four main factors represent these rural‐urban dynamics: 1) the attractions of opportunity in northern urban centres; 2) rural settlement‐urban institutional flows; 3) chronic housing need in the settlements; and, 4) disintegrating social relationships in the settlements. I explore the particular ways in which these factors influence rural‐urban migration among the homeless population and what roles this mobility plays in individual pathways to homelessness.     

“An opportunity to hope and dream”: Disaster Politics and the Emergence of Possibility through Community‐Led Recovery

Recent awareness of the role of neoliberalism in fostering tactics of de‐politicisation has cultivated recognition of a narrowing of democratic possibilities. Disaster, as a time of disruption can provoke a heightened awareness of dynamics of power and contestation. This provides a fertile ground to understand the possibility for de‐politicisation alongside that of resistance and hope. This paper weaves together and contextualises these ideas within a case study of community‐led disaster recovery in the city of ōtautahi Christchurch in Aotearoa New Zealand following a series of devastating earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. In exploring the entangled relationship between crisis and hope I discuss how forms of de‐politicisation can emerge in the disaster context as well as the resistance that also emerges at the grassroots and everyday scale. I emphasise the need to see post politics as present‐yet‐incomplete alongside the potential for participatory and radical forms of social change at the grassroots scale.     

“Skilled,Cheap, and Desperate”1: Non‐tenure‐track Faculty and the Delusion of Meritocracy

Over the past 25 or so years, geographers have produced sophisticated critical tools to examine systems like patriarchy, racism, and heteronormativity. However, they have not used those critical tools to examine the problem of institutional hierarchy in the academy. There are many kinds of institutional hierarchy, but the paper focuses on one particular structure: the difference between tenure‐track and non‐tenure‐track faculty. I call for much greater critical reflection on the existence and experience of non‐tenure‐track faculty in geography. I argue that it is essential to undermine the structures and assumed wisdom of the hierarchy, for the sake of non‐tenure‐track faculty, the discipline, and the academy as a whole. Destabilizing the structures requires multiple strategies. I argue that one key strategy is for non‐tenure‐track faculty to tell their stories, to offer their critical perspective from the lower rungs of the hierarchy. The last part of the paper is an autobiographical account designed to give a better idea of how one such story might look.     

Between Utopia and Tradition: William Morris’s A Dream of John Ball

ABSTRACT

William Morris, author of the famous nineteenth-century utopian novel News from Nowhere, thought it both possible and desirable to develop a utopian vision that could be affirmed by many individuals. However, Morris also recognised that achieving such utopian unity was not easy. There is, at least potentially, something personal about utopian visions; they are shaped by idiosyncratic desires that cannot be shared. Through a reading of Morris’s A Dream of John Ball, I argue that Morris offers a temporal solution to the problem of utopian unity. The central characters in the text, medieval priest John Ball and a nineteenth-century socialist agitator, come to recognise their shared adherence to the same image of a new society. This is achieved through the mediation of tradition: Ball and the agitator overcome their differences by committing themselves to disappointed hopes elaborated in past struggles that have been handed down to the present. Morris’s articulation of utopia and tradition—the sense that visions of the future can be made shareable through reference to the past—offers the possibility of a transtemporal solidarity of utopians and the bringing together of the dreams of a plurality of individuals.