To the uninitiated, a book about utopian literature would seem puzzling, almost out of date and out of touch with material realities. Any political thought or social action not already working within a discourse situated within an already established horizon would seem a waste of time. Looking at national, transnational, or global politics-for example, the recent 2002 World Summit in South Africa-would appear to prove this point. Why engage with a politics not designed to directly challenge the injustices of global politics? And besides, hasn't history proven that politics of radical social change, like that of the Black Panthers, fail? Indeed, why even dare develop a political position based on the notion of "utopia," a place that by definition does not and cannot exist?
Phillip Wegner's Imaginary Communities: Utopia, The Nation, and The Spatial Histories of Modernity explores the vast potentials of thinking within the "no place." It is within this conceived space that one imagines new subjectivities, possibilities for the future, and new social and cultural formations. Wegner places the "failures" of utopian fiction within the theoretical framework of Ernst Bloch and Fredric Jameson. Both theorists look at failure as a means to mark our inability to imagine utopia. This failure does not stem from lack of imagination; it results from the social, political, and systemic closures that encompass us. A failure, then, illuminates the "outer horizons" of ideological enclosures. And by marking the limits, one begins to think in innovative ways, ones not seeped in a politics of pure opposition.
From the first page, one gets the impressive scope of Wegner's study. Indeed, it appears as if Imaginary Communities is a utopian project in itself. In it he covers: 1) the relationship between space and community during Western modernization; 2) the origins and constructs of the nation-state; 3) the difficulties of trying to imagine new spaces, communities, and histories; 4) the potentiality of representational and narrative practices; 5) the alternatives to methods of studying literature and culture (xv). Wegner's scope of literary texts spans almost 400 years, beginning with Sir Thomas More's Utopia and finishing with George Orwell's 1984. Wegner methodically teases out the relationship between the utopian narrative, spatial dialectics, and the nation-state in primarily seven novels: the previously mentioned Utopia and 1984; Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, 2000-1887; Alexander Bogdanov's Red Star; Jack London's The Iron Heel; Yevgeny Zamyatin's We; and Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed. Rather than discuss each novel and how it significantly contributes to and develops Wegner's argument, I will focus on his discussion of Zamyatin's We and Le Guin's The Dispossessed, as they both explore the dynamics of ontological constraints within ostensibly closed worlds. The issues and problematics of the worlds in these novels eerily parallel social and political constraints experienced under the forces and policies of US-based global capitalism. The "narrative utopia" explores how these constraints are formed, and how to re-imagine new formations.
To begin the process of thinking new possibilities for social and political change within the ideological limits of any milieu, Wegner uses the term "narrative utopia" to emphasize the utopian text engaging in a type of praxis and representational activity (xviii). The narrative utopia does not, however, mimetically represent its world. Rather, it presents an "emerging space through the spatialized representational operation of `figuration,'" a schematic way of thinking that serves as the mediator between "two different cultural and social realities, between the world that is and that which is coming into being" (37). The narrative utopia helps one conceive the world as a production, as something that is shaped through the process of human interventions. It accomplishes this primarily through its emphasis on collective spatial experiences; it focuses on the contructiveness of environments and geographies a reader inhabits. The narrative utopia-a genre in which strange, new worlds emerge-illuminates the experience of space and thus has the capacity to bring the reader a new awareness to the world.
With an emphasis on spatial theories, Wegner places his work on utopian fiction in relation to theorists engaging with problematics of space, to name a few: Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, David Harvey, Meaghan Morris, Edward Soja, Mike Davis, Paul Carter, and Fredric Jameson. Although using and theorizing space differently, each reject the Enlightenment notion that space is a container in which human history unfolds, or a stage on which human activities get played out. Rather, they think of space as a "production, shaped through a variety of social process and interventions" (11). Wegner refers to Lefebvre's The Production of Space to begin thinking of space as socially produced through and by human actions. Quoting Lefebvre, Wegner reminds us that space is "an open-ended, conflicted, and contradictory process, a process in which we as political agents continually intervene" (13).
To better understand the processes of spatial formations and possibilities for human intervention, it is useful to refer to Lefebvre's tripartite schematization of spatiality. He uses the terms "spatial practices," "representations of space," and "spaces of representation" to suggest space is dialectically interwoven. These terms refer to the cognitive domains of the "perceived," "conceived," and "lived," respectively. Rather than summarize how each term functions, I will focus on the conceived as it has the most relevance to the narrative utopia. The "conceived" refers to what we think of as space proper, "mediating between and drawing all three levels together in a coherent ensemble." This is the arena of urban planners, architects, scientists, social engineers, all of whom, according to Lefebvre, "identify what is lived and what is perceived with what is conceived" (14). The conceived mediates the larger social and historical realities to the individual. This process is similar to what Fredric Jameson calls "cognitive mapping," the process whereby one orients his/herself to the ungraspable and complex global totality.
Wegner's work with utopian fiction contributes significantly to the interdisciplinary work of space by placing the narrative utopia with that of the "conceived," the arena of the urban planner, or social engineer. The narrative utopia functions as the "mediating link between the spaces of the individual and the larger social and historical realities she inhabits" (15). Using the narrative utopia this way, Wegner calls into question modes of thought that label utopian fiction as a failure because of its inability to imagine a real alternative world. Wegner reminds us that utopian fiction is not a mimetic representation, a map that literally shows the reader how to build a better world. If we wish to think the narrative utopia as failing to break free of social or political enclosures, then, Wegner reminds us, "we risk losing sight of the unique critical, pedagogical, and representational work performed by the genre [of utopian literature]." Utopian literature is a figuration of a possible world; it teaches us to think and act in new ways. Through its pedagogical function, Wegner adds, paraphrasing Paul Ricoeur, "the utopia transforms the closed circle of ideology or belief into an open spiral" (23).
The tendency to read utopian fiction as an end to itself, in other words, to read it as it were a static representation of one's world, can be seen in Zamyatin's We. Hailed as an anti-utopian novel and model for Orwell's 1984, We explores the notion of possible worlds through two opposite spaces. Briefly, the character D-503 finds himself caught between two worlds: that of One State and Mephi. As indicative in its name, One State exists in the city where every aspect of one's life has been rationally organized in order to ensure happiness, but at the cost of freedoms. Within such a place, collectivity replaces any individual impulse, thereby aligning each member of the One State with the same subjective position to the social. Enter Mephi, a world that exists outside the city walls, in the country, and where people experience a freedom based on principles antithetical to values and laws of One State. While One State organizes every aspect of one's life, Mephi is decidedly anti-collective, anti-bureaucratic. Mephi occupies the position of the negation of One State. D-503, a trusty member of One State, having experienced Mephi finds himself conflicted with the perfect world of One State. At the end, to ease his existential crisis, D-503 voluntarily seeks to have "fantasectomy," a process that erases his imagination. Thus the end of the novel suggests that one cannot escape from the authority of the state. Its all-encompassing web of power crushes any chance to create a new subjective position.
A familiar anti-utopian reading would suggest that this signals the impossibility of social change, that One State will always prevail. Not so. A failure in this case illuminates specific ideological enclosures. In this case, the totality of state power, and the answer to it: destructive anarchism. Rather than reading D-503's capitulation to One State as a failure, Wegner expands the horizons of possibilities by arguing that, besides One State and Mephi, two other possible worlds-and therefore subjectivities-exist. Wegner uses the semiotic rectangle developed by A.J. Greimas to map these pre-existing possibilities. The usefulness of the Greimasian rectangle lies in its ability to locate the ultimate limits of a particular system by generating, between two opposite choices, two other possibilities. In the case of We, the rectangle helps produce other possibilities of subjectivity. While the one position is that of D-503 after his operation, fully assimilated into the State's political machinery, the other unexplored position "remains unfilled: that of the complex resolution, the negation of the negation, or the `impossible' synthesis of the positive opposition of happiness [One State] and freedom [Mephi]" (167). That is, the subjective position and spatial figuration overcome social contradictions by synthesizing freedom and happiness, individual and collective, which leads to a wholly new situation. Wegner reads the character I-330 as the central figure of this idea. In his discussion with D-503, I-330 explains:
"My dear-you are a mathematician. More-you are a philosopher, a mathematical philosopher. Well, then: name the final number."
"What do you mean? I. I don't understand: what final number?"
"Well the final, the ultimate, the largest."
"But that's preposterous! If the number of numbers is infinite, how can there be a final number?"
"Then how can there be a final revolution? There is no final one; revolutions are infinite. The final one is for children: children are frightened by infinity, and it's important that children sleep peacefully at night.. (quoted in Wegner 168)
This exchange marks the vision of the impossibility of a closed, ontologically contained world. The concept of the infinite revolution serves as the placeholder for a possible world to emerge. To the teleologically inclined, We's ending suggests a failure to believe in hope for social change. Wegner offers another version: that We holds "open a place for the utopian potential of revolutionary human action" (168).
Rather than choose between two possible worlds-in this case One State and its opposite, Mephi-Wegner's reading of We suggests that a politics of social change and radical subjective positioning must attempt to conceive of a new world in innovative ways. The narrative utopia, by critically estranging the reader from his/her world, serves to deterrritorialize one's conception of space and therefore becomes suggestive to forms of spatial practices. Although at an impasse for change in We, the message is crucial for future engagements: avoid a politics of negation. A politics based on principles antithetical to systems of power does not lead to innovative social formations. Remaining within pre-established limits means an anti-politics works with the same set of assumptions as the politics to which it is adverse.
Le Guin's The Dispossessed explores similar issues and worlds found in We. She presents to the reader, however, four possible worlds, each in dialectical tension with the other. The tension between the worlds Urras and Annares parallels that of One State and Mephi. Urras is a world that ensures material and natural abundance for the sake of human happiness. Annares, on the other hand, is an exclusionary anarchistic society living on a naturally scarce planet. Although their hunger is painful, the society is based on freedom. A third planet, Terra (Earth), looks like what our world may soon resemble if George W. Bush continues on the path of infinite war and environmental destruction. Terra's scarcity, unlike Annares, has been produced by humanity, by their "rampant consumption of natural resources, greed, selfishness, and warfare, all but annihilating the planet" (177). This condition, combined with unfreedom, produces an apparently static world. Opposite of Terra is Hainish, the world incorporating a balance between Urras and Annares, a world of freedom and happiness. Terra encapsulates the negative elements of Annares and Urras. While we find that that all hope is abandoned here, Hainish, on the other hand, "represents its endlessly lived, and relived, possibilities" (178). That is, the dialectical synthesis of the positive element in Annares and Urras, freedom and happiness. However, we only get a glimpse of what this world would be like; we are not offered what lived experiences are like on Hainish. The horizon of this world "eludes every effort to represent it concretely" (180). Importantly, not representing lived experiences on Hainish suggests that, while it combines the best of both worlds, a utopian vision must strive not towards the realm of the familiar, but beyond its horizon. An absence of concrete representation of utopia leaves the horizon open, enabling "both a critical perspective on the present and a sense of direction in which to move in the future" (180).
Both We and The Dispossessed serve to estrange the reader's familiarity with his/her world. However, the texts defer developing, to use Lefebvre's term, a representation of space, or in other terms, a figuration of a world incorporating the impossible: a dialectical synthesis of two positives. An attempt to mark utopian fiction and thinking as an absolute failure to engage with one's world is avoided by Wegner's use of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattri's writing on space, specifically from the "Treatise on Nomadism:-The War Machine" plateau in A Thousand Plateaus. Here Deleuze and Guattari develop the concept of "striated" and "smooth" space. Striated space is "reterritorialized": it has the components of static space; smooth space is "deterritorialized": it is dynamic space. These opposed spaces exist as an unstable mixture, an ever-changing cocktail of social and political processes. Both terms erase and rewrite each other. And, as Deleuze and Guattari remind us, "smooth spaces are not in themselves liberatory. But the struggle is changed or displaced in them, and life reconstitutes its stakes, confronts new obstacles, invents new paces, switches adversaries. Never believe that a smooth space will suffice to save us" (181). This formulation of two intertwining spaces helps think the possibility of new worlds within pre-existing ones. Within an onologically static world, as seen in We and The Dispossessed, exists the conceived space of not anti- politics, but non- politics, an attempt to formulate radically different social and subjective possibilities that denies absolute closure, absolute stasis. This type of spatialized politics is always emerging through the infinite exchanges between smooth and striated space. And it is within the exchanges between these spaces that new social formations and subjective positions are possible.
While offering innovative readings of utopian fiction, Wegner's methodology is richly suggestive to rethinking politics and our everyday life. Utopian fiction can provide the necessary link between the world we live in and the world we imagine. Or, in other words, the narrative utopia explains this world and suggests the possibilities of other ones coming into being. And between these worlds we find that we matter. In the realm of the "conceived," the practice of the urban or social planner, we find ourselves intimately connected to a world produced by us. As seen with We and The Dispossessed, thinking outside of pre-existing and reified political choices, utopian thinking and praxis establishes a relation to issues that conventional politics refuses to consider. Imaginary Communities suggests that to work within the space of the "no place" is to begin imagining a new critical aesthetic that encompasses new subjectivities, possible futures, and new social formations. Occupying the "no place" continues the infinite revolution of social justice and global freedoms.
Derek Merrill is a Ph.D. student in the English department at the University of Florida. You may contact him at derek@english.ufl.edu.
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