compass

2016
on utopia
Looking for Utopia, A quick tour A wisp of cigarette The sounds of
CONTENTS by Paul Graham through Utopia, by smoke, by Andrew change, by Peter
Raven. Emilio Mordini. Curry. Curry.
Pages 2-5 Pages 11-12 Page 15 Page 19
Image: Cindy Frewen

Utopias, real or Making a Designing for The Compass Utopia

otherwise, by Roberto misstopia, by Nick Utopia, with Reading Lists
Poli. Price. contributions from Classics
Pages 7-9 Page 13 Nick Price, Huw Arguments
Williams, and Tanja Edges
Reclaiming Utopias The rhythm of the
Hichert. Fiction
as a futures tool, by new, by Victoria Ward.
Pages 16-18 Collections
Charles Brass. Pages 14-15
Pages 20-21
Page 10

Abraham Ortelius’ map of

New date for
Utopia, 1595. Public domain.
the 2nd APF
Virtual Gathering -
Hold 16th

“Nobody owns anything but everyone

September

is rich - for what greater wealth can

there be than cheerfulness, peace of
mind, and freedom from anxiety?”

Photo: Andrew Curry

www.apf.org
Nullam arcu leo, facilisis ut
 S T O R I E S

A quick tour through Utopia

by Emilio Mordini

Ancient Greeks used to beginning and at the end of human history. "Everything in the world of mortals has the
It is the earthly garden that housed Adam value of the irrecoverable and contingent.
distinguish between topos (place)
and chora (space). While chora means an before the Fall and it is the Paradise, the Among the Immortals, (…) there is nothing
indefinite physical area, topos means a zone place where the righteous go at the end of that is not as though lost between
(physical or virtual) occupied by things, days. indefatigable mirrors. Nothing can occur but
which are in mutual relation and exchange. On the one hand, it is the most human once, nothing is preciously in peril of being
A place is more a web of relations than a of all places; on the other hand, it is lost".
geography; it is an ordered region, which radically different from any other human Borges' short story leads to a further
stands in contrast to measureless and place. Utopia is a place that was, that will aspect of utopianism. Each Utopia is in
unregulated extensions. Places are where be, but it is not. No mortal eye will ever embryo a dystopia (i.e., a negative utopia,
human beings inhabit. To be a human see it. There are several variations of the a no-place that is a bad-place). On the one
being—argues Heidegger—means to dwell Garden of Eden, including the Castle of hand all utopias are political projects,
in a place. the Holy Grail, Shangri-La, Camelot, horizons; on the other they are close to
U-topia is a place. Yet, what kind of Eldorado. The "place of the immortals" is insanity, like Aguirre' s desperate
place is it? It is a"no-place", which is also also the foundational myth of the expedition in search for the Eldorado in
a "good-place", Paul Raven reminds us. movement for improving human Werner Herzog's cult movie. Plato was the
True, but this answer alone could hardly performance. The Garden of Eden has, first to realize that Utopia and Dystopia
satisfy. What does ‘no-place’ mean? Is it a however, a dark side. are inseparable twins. Plato's contrast
no-where or an else-where? Is it inhabited In the short novel The Immortals, Jorge between the ideal city (ancient Athens)
by no-humans? Raven provides some Luis Borges tells the tale of a traveler, who and the evil city (the legendary Atlantis)
possible answers (e.g., an "interstitial is the narrator as well, searching for the initiated a tradition that—passing through
pirate utopia", a "promise of futures and secret City of the Immortals. When he Augustine's metaphor of the two
planning"). I will try to find some more. finds it, he discovers that the City is a Jerusalem—shaped the imaginary of
Utopia until Thomas More. The theme of
Utopia is a Garden of Eden. Utopianism nonsensical place "so horrific that its mere
existence, the mere fact of its having endured the two cities is also connected with
is deeply rooted in the Biblical tradition.
another utopian trope, the "land of
The Garden of Eden is the place where we pollutes the past and the future". Worse, the
narrator realizes that the immortals are contraries." Either the medieval "Land of
all come from, and the place where we all
Cockaigne" or Pinocchio's "Land of Toys,"
aim to return; it is the memory of the past not semi-gods but troglodytes incapable of
the "land of contraries" is an imaginary
and of the future (and we know today that speech. Before becoming immortals, they
place where every rule is subverted, turned
the same neural circuits are involved both were the wisest human beings. After
drinking the water of the river of upside down, and all prohibitions are
in remembering the past and thinking of
disregarded. It is the land of the perennial
the future). It is a "no-place" because it is a immortality, they turned into idiots,
because only death makes sense to the carnival, ruled by laziness, gluttony and
no-man's land. The Garden of Eden is
wantonness. Ultimately, it is a caricature
simultaneously both inside and out, at the world.
of utopianism, the garden of Eden as
dreamt by plebs, rascals and children.
All utopias are political All these themes—Garden of Eden,
heavenly and the earthly Jerusalem, land of
projects. They are also close contraries—can be found in one of the
most extraordinary paintings ever

to insanity. produced, Hieronymus Bosch's triptych

APF Compass | Special Edition 3, 2016 11

 S E Q U O I A C L U B

the Garden of Earthly Delights. It is the menstruating women, pregnant women, the The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus
expression of the same cultural climate elderly, etc." It is a secluded area in which Bosch, late 15th/early 16th century. Image:
that generated Thomas More's novel. social and moral standards are at the same public domain.
Bosch died in 1516, the same year in which time, in a contradictory manner, both about, because it is too important to be
More's Utopia was first published, and exalted and disdained: brothels, spoken of.
works owe a lot to the atmosphere cemeteries, hospitals, nursing homes, "[Marco Polo] said: 'Sire, now I have told
generated in Europe by Columbus' barracks, and alike. All these places are you about all the cities I know'. 'There is still
discovery of the New World and by early simultaneously real and invented, their one of which you never speak'. Marco Polo
reports from travelers returning from the ideal model is the boat - which is, to bowed his head. 'Venice', the Khan said.
new continent. return to Foucault—"a floating piece of Marco smiled. (…) 'Memory's images, once
In particular, More’s novel and Bosch's space, a place without a place, that exists by they are fixed in words, are erased', Polo said.
painting echoed phantasmagorical tales itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same 'Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at
about American natives, their richness in time is given over to the infinity of the sea". once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of
gold and precious metals, their sexual The notion of heterotopia has been other cities, I have already lost it, little by
spontaneity and innocence. For a short adapted by the French anthropologist little'. (Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities,
period, Utopia was the reachable Marc Augé, who coined the phrase "non- 1974).
elsewhere. place" to refer to areas that are neither
Finally, each Utopia is also a heterotopia. places nor spaces. Non-places, says Augé,
The term heterotopia (other-place) was first "are the real measure of our time". They are
used by Michel Foucault in 1967. Foucault airports and aircraft, big stores and
described it as railway stations, chain hotels, and the like.

"a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which

They are without history and memory, Emilio Mordini is a
inhabited by the anonymous global
the real sites, all the other real sites that can psychoanalytically trained
citizen. The non-place, he concludes, is
be found within the culture, are
"the opposite of utopia: it exists, and it does not
psychiatrist and a philosopher.
simultaneously represented, contested, and
contain any organic society". Since the late 1990s, he has 
inverted".
Marc Augé could conclude this tour focused on ethical and societal
A heterotopia is a mirror. Like a mirror,
its image inverts the world it sees.
through some images of Utopia. But there impact of emerging and future
Heterotopia, he writes, is a place inhabited
is one more image to recall. Utopia— technology in the health and
maybe the true one—is also the unsaid
by individuals "in a state of crisis: adolescents, security fields. He lives and works
place, the place that one keeps silent
in Paris.
12 APF Compass | Special Edition 3, 2016