To begin, here is a short sojourn into the academic discourse of the United States and utopia: âThe utopian ideals of certain of the original colonists and of the revolutionary generation, ⌠assert that this New World is to be liberated from the dead hand of the past and become the scene of a new departure in human affairsâ (Slotkin 1973, 3). Utopianism is a âpersistent mode of self-definition in Americaâ (Roemer 1976, xiiâxiii) and, thus, âto know America, we must have knowledge of America as utopiaâ (Roemer 1981, 14). The United States are the âmaterial utopia of the way of lifeâ (Baudrillard 1989, 76). Disneyland is a âdegenerated utopiaâ (Marin 1984, 241). âUtopian discourse has been a crucial component of American political practiceâ (Berlant 1991, 15). âUtopia was discovered at the same time as Americaâ (Hatzenberger 2003, 125). âThroughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the notion of America as utopia has remained highly attractive for a variety of groups and newcomersâ (Paul 2014, 142). A recent publication by the renowned literary and cultural critics Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Ĺ˝iĹžek is entitled An American Utopia (2016). It seems as though any âpassing acquaintance with literary and cultural-history scholarship ⌠is enough to suggest how central the concept of Utopia has been to American cultureâ (Guarneri 1994, 72). Wherever scholars investigating US history and culture look, they find something called utopia.
However, some of these statements do not seem to refer to the same concepts: how the Puritans or nineteenth-century pioneers connect to Disneyland probably eludes most of us. The problem lies with the multiple definitions that come with the term utopia. The term first appeared in 1516 in a book with the eye-catching title Libellus Vere Aureus, Nec Minus Salutaris Quam Festivus, de Optimo Rei Publicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia, which translates into A Truly Golden1 Small Book, No Less Useful than Enjoyable, on the Optimal State of a Republic and on the New Island Utopia, commonly abbreviated as Utopia. Famously, the author, English philosopher, and statesman Thomas More (1478â1535) created the word âutopiaâ using morphemes from Ancient Greek, endowing it with a double meaning: depending on how one pronounces it, it is either a combination of Îľá˝ and ĎĎĎÎżĎ (resulting in eu-topia, i.e., âgood placeâ) or of Îżá˝ and ĎĎĎÎżĎ (uh-topia, which means âno placeâ). Likely, More did this intentionally, as the book is rife with puns that those versed in Latin/Greek could pick up on: for example, the name of the main river Anydrus means âno water,â the leaders are called Ademos, âwithout people,â and the name of the Utopian traveler himself, Hythlodaeus, translates to âspeaker of nonsense.â
The term utopia can then refer to the book by More; and to the republic and the island that he describes; to a good place; and/or a non-existent place, hence the common use of the term to call something ânice but impossible.â Utopia also denotes the utopian literary genre, that is, literature that describes a system which is stylized as radically different, and usually follows a certain set of narrative conventionsâsome kind of journey in, and often out, of the utopia, a guide of some sort, lengthy dialogues, and detailed explanations of the political, economic, and cultural institutions within the system.2 In fact, excessive detail is a characteristic part of utopian fiction because the âgood placeâ has reformed most aspects of life: institutions, finances, private life, marriage, shopping, clothes, and various household items may have been reinvented and therefore necessitate description. All of these building blocks can be found within Moreâs Utopia.
However, when people talk of the United States as utopian, they rarely refer to the genre, even though they might gesture to works of utopian fiction written in or about the United States as a piece of evidence that underpins their argument. Instead, their use of the word utopia denotes the style of thinking that More has engaged in for writing his work: utopianism, that is, the âsocial dreamingâ about âthe ways in which groups of people arrange their lives and which usually envision[s] a radically different society from the one in which the dreamers liveâ and âfocuses on everyday life as well as matters concerned with economic, political, and social questionsâ (Sargent 2010, 4). In the examples above, the United States are utopian because they strike people either as a âradically different societyâ or as a nation of âsocial dreaming,â or as both.
Utopian studies commonly differentiate between three interrelated âfaces of utopianismâ: literary utopia (the literary genre), utopian practice, and utopian social theory (Sargent 2010, 5). Hence, utopia denotes (among other definitions and applications to which I will turn later) the societies described in the literary genre and the genre itself; also, the societies laid out in utopian social theories, which propose the details of an imaginary society, usually to resolve the central flaws the author identifies in her environment, without employing most of the narrative strategies of the literary utopia (and without its propensity for satire and uncertainty). Finally, utopia also refers to the sociopolitical phenomenon of utopian practice in the form of utopian communities, so it also may denote attempts at actualizing a utopian vision.
One oft-cited manifestation of utopianism in the United States is the large number of utopian communities founded on its grounds. Such âinsular, self-sufficient communit[ies] of dissidents who are opposed to and alienated from the established social order, often on religious or political groundsâ (Hogan 1985, 40), are said to have âhave mushroomed in the fertile ground of Americaâ (Balasopoulos 2004, 4). Even though scholars like to quibble over the terminologyâutopian communities versus intentional communities versus communes versus model communities3âthey by and large agree that such communities are comprised âof five or more adults and their children, if any, who come from more than one nuclear family and who have chosen to live together to enhance their shared values or for some other mutually agreed upon purposeâ (Sargent 2010, 34).4 Scholars denote such communal efforts to be utopian practice, as these communities attempt to realize their social dreams of a good place. Utopian communities existed on North American grounds even before the foundation of the United States, for example, the Labadist settlement in Maryland (ca. 1683â1720). Such communities enjoyed popularity and publicity especially in the early nineteenth centuryâwhen they were inspired by social theories and visions of, for example, Robert Owen (1771â1858), Charles Fourier (1772â1837), Ătienne Cabet (1788â1856), and John Humphrey Noyes (1811â1886)âand again in the countercultural context of the 1960s. Utopianists were not idle in the meantime: in fact, scholars such as Robert S. Fogarty (1990) and Timothy Miller (1998, 1999, 2015, 2019) have collected ample data to illustrate that utopian communalism was practiced continuously throughout the history of the United States. It may seem that there is âsomethingâ that inspires the foundation of utopian projects.5 Furthermore, scholars that have studied utopian communities in the United States seem to agree that âa tradition of idealistic social reform has grown and even become embedded in the political culture of the regionâ (Van Bueren and Tarlow 2006, 1), that is, that these attempts to live radically differently have left an enduring impression on the United States.
Viewing utopian communities as part of the United States is, however, somewhat paradoxical, as utopian practice is an expression of dissent. Utopian communities stand in an ambivalent relationship to the nation. Their appearance does both, âsupport and undermine the nation as a eutopia. On the one hand, the willingness of people to try to create a better life for themselves certainly suggests that utopian impulses are alive and well in the country. On the other hand, the very fact that people believe that they must leave mainstream society to live a good life clearly signals that there is something amissâ (Sargent 2007, 100). It is this complex interaction between dissent expressed in utopianism and the United States that I am tracing through a series of novels from the nineteenth century. The following chapters are ultimately concerned with the relationship of nation and utopiaâthe former an âimaginedâ (Anderson 1983) and the latter an âimaginaryâ community (Wegner 2002; Sargent 2007). Each of the works I have chosen has a different take on the state of âsocial dreamingâ in the United States, how likely they are to be turned into a radically different good place and by what means and at what costs this can be brought about.
The novels that I am reading are not utopian fiction . They do not give fictional accounts of entire societies that are long-established and smoothly running. Nonetheless, the narratives discussed are linked to utopianism in so far as they describe the attempt to realize a vision of a good place. They are looking at utopian practice, at the possible beginning of the road to utopia. Precisely because these communities are not fully developed utopian societies, they offer insights into the state of the utopian imagination: that is, if people thought their society could be changed drastically, and what dreams they had; which aspects of soc...