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For Utopia: The (limits of the) Utopian function inlate capitalist society

Ruth Levitas

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For Utopia:

The

(Limits

of the)

Utopian Function

in

Late Capitalist

Society

RUTH LEVITAS

This article isabout the uses of Utopia,and the usesof Utopian studies,

in the present historical conjuncture: under conditionsof late modernity,

at

the

start

of a new

millennium.

It

argues that these conditions

(particularly,

but not

only, w hat might

be

called

the

'pos tm odern turn '

in

social and cultural theory) pose very fundamental challenges to the

project and projection ofUtopia. Responsesto these emergent challenges

canbeseen inchanges in Utopian thinking, including Utopian texts, over

the past 30 years,and in thetheo risation of Utopia, the stuff of Utopian

studiesitself. These transformations involve agreater p rovisiona l ly and

reflexivityof theUtopian m ode ,and a marked shift from anem phasison

representation

or

content

to an

emphasis

on

process. While

it can be

argued that these changes demonstrate the continuing strength of

utopianism, astrong casecan alsobe madefor anopposite view: thatthe

ways in which Utopians and utopists (those who study Utopia) have

responded to thecondition of late modernity reflect aweakeningof the

transformative potential of Utopia. Utopia survives, but at a cost, and

that cost is the retreat of the Utopian function from transformation to

critique.

1

Why Study Utopia?

The article is also a defence of Utopia, and a claim for the necessity of

taking

it

seriously.

The

title begs several questions.

The

term 'utopian

function' raises

the

question 'what

is

Utopia for?' . 'For' , here, carries

the

sense of instrumentality or purpose attributed to Utopia itself. For

Utopia' assertsacommitment to Utopian studies,and toUtopia itself, on

my own part , and presumes such acomm i tmen t on the part of Utopian

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26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF UTOPIA

scholars or utopists. Implicitly, therefore, it asks what Utopian studies is

for. This is dangerous ground: the April 1999 British Sociological

Association conference had the theme 'What is Sociology For?'. Laurie

Taylor (1999, p.56) wrote a (spoof) abstract of a paper by Doctor D.W.

Haberperson entitled 'What is "For" For?':

This convoluted paper examines the rhetorical assumptions

implicated within the interrogative formulation, 'What is Sociology

For?'.After an almost interminable introduction in which repeated

references are made to Derrida, Lacan and Foucault, the author

proceeds to delineate the socio-cultural circumstances and

epistemic regimes that are an essentialist precondition for framing

a question about an academic discipline that rests upon the implied

instrumentality of the word 'for'. No conclusions whatsoever are

reached.

There are different reasons why intellectuals and academics might be

interested in studying Utopia. First, since Utopia is the expression of what

is missing, of the experience of lack in any given society or culture,

understanding the Utopian aspirations generated by any society is an

important part of understanding that society

itself.

The study of Utopia

is an essential part of cultural anthropology or the history or sociology

of culture. Utopianism is proper material for historians, anthropologists,

sociologists, and for cultural studies. In so far as Utopia takes the form of

a literary text, it becomes material for literary criticism of various kinds.

Second, Utopia in the sense of a counterfactual model of all or part of a

social or political system, may be used as a heuristic device, as an

exploration of what might be possible or impossible, or in normative

social theory, as a regulative ideal against which the real world can be

measured. Third, we may study Utopia, in terms of its content or its

effects in the world, because we believe the aspirations of others, and

their attempts to articulate the features of a good society, constitute a

resource for us in our own pursuit of the good society.

My suspicion (and my experience) is that most utopists are also to

some extent Utopians. My own interest in Utopia (and, indeed, in

sociology) has always been driven by the conviction tha t the worid could

and should be other than it is. But this does raise questions about the

proper role of academics. Whereas the first two reasons for an interest

in Utopia are safe and uncontentious, because they do not require

commitment to political change, the third reason presumes political

engagement. More than that, it presumes that political engagement is a

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UTOPIAN FUNCTION

IN

LATE CAPITALIST SOCIETY

27

core element, even the core purpose, of this particular field of

intellectual enquiry. Academia, however, is inclined to justify its

existence and its call on the public purse precisely on the grounds of

being politically neutral

and

disengaged. There

may,

therefore,

be a

tension between

the

dema nds placed

on us as

academics

and

those placed

on us as engaged intellectuals.

2

This tension is not peculiar to utopists,

butmay be peculiarly acute for usbecauseof Utopia's 'radical otherness'

and becauseof the potential functions of Utopian thinking.

The Functions

o

Utopia

The three possible approaches

to the

study

of

Utopia

are

roughly

paral le led by the different possible functions of Utopia itself.

Distinguishing these functions dependson thedefinition ofUtopia itself,

w ithout which no sensible discussion cantake place. Th ere is a tendency

to think of Utopia as being one of two things: either a totalitarian

political project, or a literary genre of fictions about perfect societies.

Both these approaches are very different from that of Ernst Bloch

(1986),

whose 1400-pageDas

Prinzip Hoffnung

The

Principle

of

Hope)

is

the

most important theoretical treatment

of

Utopia. Bloch's argument

was that the propensity to reach for a better life ism anifest in everyday

life, in popular culture, in 'high' culture, and in religion. It is a way of

expressing the experience of lack, of dissatisfaction, of ' something 's

missing', in the actuality of human existence. Expressions of Utopian

longingare notnecessarily pro fou nd :at onepointhew rote 'm ost people

in the street look as if they are thinking about something else entirely.

The something else

is

predominantly money,

but

also what

it

could

be

changed into. ' (Bloch,

1986,

p.33.) Following from Bloch,

it is

possible

to develop a broad definition of Utopia which encompasses this rangeof

Utopian expression: namely, that Utopia is the expression of the desire

for a better way of being. Such a definition is analytic rather than

descriptive, that is, it enables one to look at the Utopian aspects of

cultural forms rather than classify them into Utopian or notUtopian(and

is thus singularly

and

properly unhelpful

in

sett ing boundaries

for

'utopian studies').

But it

enables

us to ask

questions about

the

historical

shiftsin the content, form, location and function ofUtopia,and theways

in which specific social and historical circumstances encourage or block

different kindsof Utopian expression and sensibility.

3

The suggestion that Utopia

is

expressive immediately calls into

question the idea that it is for anything:is it, perhaps, expressive rather

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than instrumental? To talk about the function of ideas or institutions is

always to risk confusing purpose and effect, and there is some point in

separating these. For while the expression of lack and of desire may have

no purpose beyond

itself,

no deliberate instrumentality, it may

nonetheless have political effects. In this sense, we can think of Utopia as

potentially having three functions: compensation, critique and change.

'Nowhere, the place of our own',

4

may simply be somewhere that we go

to as an escape: into our daydreams about winning the lottery, and thus

perhaps having the resources to escape physically. Most lottery winners

buy a new house - and this can be seen as the creation of a personal

Utopian enclave, as was Monet's garden at Giverny. On a smaller scale,

endless television programmes, such asChanging

Rooms, Ground

Force

and

Charlie s

Army, are dedicated to the transformation of homes and

gardens - programm es which have the additional fantasy element of

someone else doing the work. The other escape dreamed of by millions

and favoured by lottery winners is travel: the travel industry is probably

the most significant repository of compensatory Utopian dreams, and

advertises itself in explicitly Utopian, or at least paradisaical, terms. This

dreaming transforms only the dreamer's place in the world, not the

world itself - or not directly or intentionally, although of course both

the travel industry and the DIY industry have profound physical, social

and economic effects both locally and globally.

Utopia may be more critical than this. It is implicit in Bloch's

argument that even the most com pensatory of Utopian fantasies has some

critical function, as it articulates the sense that the present is

unsatisfactory. But Utopia as critique (as, for example, in More's Utopia)

foregrounds this and makes it explicit. Identifying the problem as

somehow more general than one's own position in the world is a

necessary, but by no means sufficient, condition for Utopia's third

function, that of catalysing change. Utopia's strongest function, its claim

to being important rather than a matter of esoteric fascination and

charm, is its capacity to inspire the pursuit of a world transformed, to

embody hope rather than simply desire.

Furthermore, if there is a tension between the intellectual and

political motivations of utopists, so there is a tension between the

expressive and instrumental functions of Utopia, between desire and

hope. Part of the appeal of Bloch's work is that he insists on the

importance of all forms of dreaming of a better life, all forms of thinking

beyond the present, including those that are pre-political expressions of

desire. But his major work was called

The

Principle

of

HOPE.Bloch, like

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UTOPIAN FU NC TIO N IN LATE CAPITALIST SOCIETY 29

all other utopists for whom the ultimate value of Utopia lay in its

transformative potential, was forced to make a distinction between

wishful and will-full thinking, between abstract and concrete Utopia,

which is ultimately a distinction between desire and hope.

5

Raymond

Williams argued that the willed transformation of the social world was

an essential characteristic of the Utopian mode, and that without this

there was the danger of Utopia settling into 'isolated and in the end

sentimental "desire", a mode of living with alienation' (1980, p.203);

one of his pieces was called

Resources For A Journey Of H ope,

and a

posthumous collection simply Resources of Hope.

Challenges to U topia: O ld An ti-Utopianism

Where are we now placed in relation to these possible functions of

Utopia, and the distinction between desire and hope? The year 1999 saw

the publication of at least three anthologies of Utopias: John Carey's

Faber Book of Utopias; a Penguin volume, simply called Utopias (Kelly,

1999) ; and Claeys and Sargent's The Utopia Reader. The Centre for the

Human Sciences at Durham and the Critical Theory Group at Bristol

conducted seminar series on Utopia and the millennium. There was an

inter natio nal co nference called 'A M illenn ium of U top ias' at the

University of East Anglia in June. Despite this upsurge of interest in

utopianism, and despite much millennial hype, popular social thought

does no t app ear to be filled with Utopian hop es for the future -

apocalypse, yes; Utopia, not so obviously. Apocalyptic fears were

attached to the 'Y2K bug', although in the event, disaster failed to

strike;

6

and the survivalist movement (especially in the USA) had a new

lease of life as people stockpiled supplies for the millennium. In April

1999 ,

there were two apocalyptic and dystopian series running on

British terrestrial television. One was

The Tribe,

in which all adults are

wiped out by a mystery virus, leaving young people to form themselves

into scavenging bands and warring gangs, or simply to hang out

streetwise in semi-derelict shopping malls. The other was The Last Train,

in which the world is destroyed by a meteorite. A group of passengers in

a train in a tunnel between Chesterfield and Sheffield are cryogenically

preserved thanks to a canister of gas released by one of them, and thaw

out 50 years later for an action-packed journey through ruins.

Admittedly, Utopia is resurrected right at the end, since the protagonists

discover that ' the ones we were running from are the ones we were

looking for', and hostilities (including a couple of crucifixions) are ended

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by the prospect of new hope for the future symbolised by a baby (or two)

and a bit of new age music. Perhaps this does distinguish millennial

dreams from those of the 1980s. The last apocalyptic television drama

set in Sheffield was the post-nuclear Threads, which also ended with a

birth, but the final shot was of the mother's horrified scream at the sight

of her child. Cinema in the 1990s is replete with images of Utopia as

dystopia, as in

The Truman Show

and

Pleasantville,

or straightforward

dystopias such as

Dark City

and

The Matrix

- the latter being the cult

video sold in huge numbers for Christmas 1999 in the UK.

7

True, the

hugely popular film Antz has a Utopian them e, but ' insectop ia' is a

rubbish heap, and the clear reference to Metropolis in the ant world itself

is satirical. These trends need not reflect unremitting pessimism: as

Rafaella Baccolini (1999) argues, 'the critical dystopia is the preferred

form of resistance at the end of the century'; but resistance and survival,

rather than transformation and redemption, are the best that can be

hoped for. Despite the millennium, we may be said to live in dystopian

t imes,

in that both reality and most projections for the future are deeply

depressing or downright terrifying.

These are also anti-utopian times. Russell Jacoby (1999) deplores

The End of Utopia,

the absence of any transforming imagination or

energy in contemporary political culture. Anti-utopianism involves an

active denial of the merits of imagining alternative ways of living,

particularly if they constitute serious attempts to argue that the world

might or should be otherw ise. Political anti-utopianism was intensified at

the end of the 198 0s. W he n the com m unist regimes of eastern E urop e

collapsed, there were repeated references to the 'end of Utopia' . The

discourse of Anglo-American news coverage contained implicit (and

sometimes explicit) equations:

Utopia = Totalitarianism = Co m m unism = M arxism = Socialism

and

Co m m unism = Totalitarianism = Fascism.

Some ten years on, the spate of television programmes representing

those events as history was framed within the same discourse. The BBC's

W ar of the Century

argu ed th at the massive loss of life (both military a nd

civilian) in the nazi invasion of the Soviet Union was as much Stalin's

fault as Hitler's, despite fascinating archive footage and contemporary

testimony which suggested rather the reverse. In addition, almost on the

eve of the millennium, Channel 4 broadcast Hitler and Stalin: Twin

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Tyrants, a lengthy interwoven parallel biogr aphy - althou gh this did

mention in passing that some people still thought that there were

important and substantive differences between the two. Partly as a result

of this discourse, capitalism is widely held to be the only game in town,

and the range of political alternatives in much of Europe has narrowed

to disputations about the true third way: Clinton, Blair, and Schroeder

versus Lafontaine a nd Jospin . P ost-19 89 , it might be said th at w e live, in

an almost biblical sense, after the fall, but with no hope of redemption.

On the other hand, it is arguable that this kind of anti-utopianism is a

constant feature of the dominant ideology, even if its targets change, and

that Utopian currents are identifiable in the growth of nationalism, in

green ideas and movements, and elsewhere. The third way might be

analysed as a Utopia, and is occasionally represented by its proponents as

such (Giddens, 1995; 1998). However, this is best understood as the

incorporation and suppression of utopianism, rather than an opening up

to its radical and transformative potential. What is asserted here as

permissible, for instance in Rorty's (1998) endorsement of 'romantic

uto pian ism ', is a pragm atic, limited reformism - th e very pragma tism

which is essentially anti-utopian in its rejection of radical Utopian

otherness or fundamental social t ransformation. Even Immanuel

Wallerstein rejects utopianism in favour of what he terms 'utopistics'

(that is, possible, 'realistic' futures), although his pragmatism is less

reformist than Rorty's since he still apparently believes in some kind of

cataclysmic collapse of global capitalism. The terms of Wallerstein's

rejection of Utopia are conventional:

The real problem with all Utopias ... is not only that they have

existed nowhere heretofore but that they seem to me, and to many

others, dreams of heaven that could never exist on earth. Utopias

have religious functions and they can also sometimes be

mechanisms of political mobilisation. But politically they tend to

rebound. For Utopias are breeders of illusions and therefore,

inevitably, of disillusions. And Utopias can be used, have been used,

as justifications for terrible wrongs. The last thing we really need is

more Utopian visions. (Wallerstein, 1999, p.l.)

Challenges to Utopia: Postmodernity and Utopia

The political case against Utopia is not new. It argues that where there is

vision, the pe ople pe rish. It imp utes to Utopia bot h a claim to perfection,

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which is then dismissed as impossible, and the imposition of uniformity

on Utopia's inhabitants, rejected as immoral. It argues that Utopia can be

realised only by violence and maintained only by political repression.

Utopia is totalitarian. These arguments are familiar, and the responses to

them have been frequently rehearsed. Utopian writers do not all claim

that their systems are perfect; usually, just that they are considerably

better than those actually prevailing at the time of writing. Not all

Utopias are totalitarian; some, indeed (and William Morris's N ews from

Nowhere

is conventionally cited here, but M arge Piercy's

Wom an on the

Edge of Time

would be a more recent example) are quite the reverse.

Furthermore, Jacoby argues strongly that the attribution of the genocidal

consequences of nazism and Stalinism to 'utopianism' is historically

sloppy, not to say ideological.

A much more interesting set of challenges (more interesting

because more ambiguous, and both theoretical and political) arises

from the condition of postmodernity. Here, the negative consequences

of Utopia are attributed to the pitfalls of modernity, in particular,

to the post-Enlightenment insistence on reason and universal values,

which is potentially totalitarian. The challenges revolve around

questions of hope and desire, and the distinction between them.

Postmodernity and postmodernism are such broadly used terms that a

little clarification may be in order. The term 'postmodernity' can be

used to refer to a structural change in the nature of the society we live

in, or a broad cultural, political and theoretical condition which results

from this structural change, or a narrower artistic or aesthetic

movement more properly termed 'postmodernism', or any combination

of these. The question of the relationship between postmodernity and

modernity, or postmodernism and modernism, has occupied many

hours of scholarly time and will doubtless figure prominently in many

RAE returns (the RAE is the British university system's 'Research

Assessment Exercise', on the basis of which state funding is distributed)

as well as having caused the destruction of a large number of trees. In

all three senses, and especially at the structural level, what is called

postmodernity can be seen to be an intensification and continuation of

trends within modernism, as much as a sharp break from it.

Furthermore, especially at the structural level, it may be preferable to

talk about late modernity or even late capitalism. Thus postmodernity

in the broad cultural sense, and postmodernism in the narrower sense,

can be seen, as Fredric Jameson (1984; 1991) argues, as the cultural

logic of late capitalism.

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UTOPIAN FUNCTION IN LATE CAPITALIST SOCIETY 33

To say that postmodernity presents a challenge to Utopia is not an

uncontroversial statement. Tobin Siebers, for example, argues that far

from this being the case, postmodernism embraces Utopia, that indeed

'utopia has emerged as the high concept of postmodernism' (1994,

p p . 2 - 3 ) . Utopia is essentially about desire, and 'postmodernism turns on

questions of desire' . Aesthetics is central to postmodern theory because

objects of art are 'al legories of desire ' . Desire is central to

postmodernism. This is certainly born out by Deleuze and Guattari 's

Anti-Oedipus

(1984), one of postm odern ism 's founding texts, which was

first published in 1972. Deleuze and Guattari object to both Freudian

and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. The Oedipal triangle, they argue, is

a formulaic representation which does not describe the 'natural '

development of desire, frustration, and healthy transcendence or

otherwise. Rather, Freudian psychoanalysis demands that we understand

our blocked desires in terms of the Oedipus myth, which both constrains

and denies our experience, and proves our desires to have been

illegitimate in the first place. Desire should be understood as a much

more various complex of libidinal flows, and indeed substantive flows of

milk, shit and semen (it is a very androcentric text). Desire is not

oriented solely sexually, nor is it oriented to parental figures, but to

fragmentary, partial objects. Their argument also differs from Lacan in

two ways. The centrality of the phallus, like the Oedipal triangle, is a

totalising myth, which denies the fragmented character of flows of

desire. Moreover, it intrinsically links desire to lack, a formulation which

Deleuze and Guattari repeatedly oppose (Deleuze and Guattari , 1984;

Goodchild, 1996).

Desire is also central to utopianism. But Williams (1980, p.200)

argues , perha ps in implicit response t o D eleuze, 'We cannot ab stract desire.

It is always desire for something specific, in specifically impelling

circumstances.' Bloch does connect desire with lack. 'What is missing' is

central not only to Bloch, but to most of critical theory. For Bloch, the

importance of Utopian imagining, even abstract Utopia, is precisely that it

is difficult to identify a lack, a desire, other than in terms of what

might fulfil it. Re presentation is thu s the first step to fulfilment, altho ugh

representation is also usually (and perhaps necessarily) misrepresentation.

Arguably, Utopia requires the representation, the objectification, of

desire. In Siebers' collection, Utopia is focused on the body as the locus

of desire and human happiness. One might argue that this is a kind of

utopianism which is expressive of desire (despite the fact that Deleuze

and Guattari specifically argue against conceptualising desire as

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expressive), rather than instrumental and transformative, although it

would be more true to say that the shift is in what is to be transformed

(compare Sargisson, 2000), since postmodern aesthetics involve the

willed transformation of the body by ornament, diet, exercise and

surgical intervention. As David Morris argues, 'utopia in the postmodern

era has largely fixed its new location in the solitary, private, individual

body', reflecting 'a belief that the only valid remaining space of

perfection lies ... in our own individual flesh: a paradise of curves and

muscle' (Siebers, 1994, p. 152). If Utopian thought of all kinds is

expressive of a desire for a better way of being, its projection onto the

body, rather than the body politic, may be seen as an important retreat

from hope, at least social hope, to desire. Furthermore, it is a retreat

from understanding desire, as Deleuze and Guattari, Reich, and Marcuse

did, in terms of a libidinal energy suffusing the realm of the social, and

thus fuelling capitalism and fascism as well as their potential Utopian

alternatives. For these writers, desire may emanate from the body in an

essentialist, vitalist way, but it does not stay there.

The suggestion that postmodernity challenges Utopia itself rests on

certain assumptions about what we mean by Utopia. It arises from the

essentially anti-foundational character of postmodern culture, an anti-

foundationalism which is epistemological and moral, but it constitutes a

challenge

in so far as

Utopia entails claims about truth and about

morality. For example, Lyotard's challenge to 'grand narratives' does not

augur well for projecting into the future wholesale schemes of social

transformation (if that is how we understand Utopia). The

'deconstruction of the subject' undermines the possibility of discussing

interests beyond the self-defined identity and identification of

individuals, so that collectivities are theoretically disintegrated into

selves, and further into fragmentary selves. Moral and ethical absolutes

are impossible; the claim that one society is better than another (a claim

perhaps fundamental to the Utopian project) is undermined. Even the

idea of society itself as in some sense a totality, a concept which

underpins the whole notion of social science, as well as Utopia as a

society transformed (if that is how we understand Utopia), is called into

question. There is no t just a loss of hope in the sociai, but a loss of belief

in it. Krishan Kumar commenting on this anti-utopian character of

contemporary social theory, argues that if postmodernists are right, 'it is

not simply that "there aren't any good or brave causes left" to fight for

anymore', but tha t there cannot be (1996, p . 135). The quest for Utopia

in this reading is an irretrievably modernist project (compare Clark,

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1999). Notably, the Penguin

Utopias

collection (Kelly, 1999) is subtitled

Russian Modernist Texts 1905-1940. O ne does no t, in fact, hav e to be

particularly sympathetic to postmodernism to recognise the essential

contingency of our moral and conceptual frameworks; we are all

pluralists now. If we see Utopia as intrinsically evaluative about ways of

life, then pluralism and the recognition of cultural difference certainly

pose a problem. The kind of Utopia implied, though, in this reading of

postmodernism as anti-utopian is a totalising (though not therefore

totalitarian) representation which is holistic, social, future located,

unequivocally better and linked to the present by some identifiable

narrat ive.

This is, I w ou ld argu e, a mistaken view of Utopia, but it is no t wh olly

mistaken, so these are quite fundamental challenges to the project and

projection of Utopia. I used to think that the changes in utopianism

itself,

illustrated both by changes in Utopian literary texts and in critical

responses to these over the past 30 years, demonstrated that Utopia could

answer these challenges. A move from representation to process has

marked both the texts and the way in which Utopia is understood (as, in

Miguel Abensour's terms, heuristic rather than systematic) so that Utopia

in the former sense is either dead or on the point of disappearance. But

if, as Thomas Osborne suggests is the case for postmodernists, 'hope is

heuristic not telic', does it really qualify as hope at all?

8

To pu t it ano ther

way, do the ways in which Utopians and utopists have responded to the

conditions of postmodernity reflect a weakening of the transformative

potential of Utopia?

The Utopian Mode

Abensour argued in the 1970s that after 1850 there was a significant

disjuncture in Utopian thought. The 'systematic' mode, which involves

constructing blueprints was replaced by the 'heuristic ' mode, in which

Utopias become exploratory projections of alternative values merely

sketched as an alternative way of life. The dating and the completeness

of the shift is questionable. Abensour was primarily making a point about

the reading of William Morris 's

News from Nowhere,

writ ten in 1890,

but Edward Bellamy's

Looking Backward

(1888) approximates more

closely to the systematic approach. However, the fact that such claims

can be made about late nineteenth-century Utopias underlines the point

that postmodernity develops, rather than contradicts tendencies present

in m ode rnism itself - or else suggests tha t po stm od ern ism started very

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early indeed. There is a difference, though, between even Morris's

heuristic Utopia and what Tom Moylan (1986) has called the critical

Utopias of the 1970s.

There is a sense in which Morris's Utopia (unlike Bellamy's) is

provisional, reflexive and pluralist. But it is provisional and reflexive

largely in the sense that M or ris u nde rsto od this to be a necessary feature

of Utopian speculation. He thought it both necessary and ultimately

impossible to have a vision of the future. It was, he said, 'essential that

the ideal of the future be kept before the eyes of the working classes, lest

the continuity of the demands of the people be broken, or lest they be

misdirected' (M orris and Bax, 18 93 , p.27 8). He un dersto od that all such

constructions must be provisional, since our capacity to imagine the

future is socially limited: 'It is impossible to build a scheme for the

society of the future, for no man can really think himself out of his own

days. ' (Morris and Bax, 1893, pp.17-18.) Morris is very clear about the

contingency of his own vision and of Bellamy's, and warns against literal

readings. 'The only safe way of reading a Utopia is to consider it as the

expression of the temperament of its author. ' The danger is that Utopias

will not be read in this way, since 'incomplete systems impossible to be

carried out are always attractive to people ripe for change, but not

knowing clearly what their aim is ' (Morris, 1984, p.248). News from

Nowhere endo rses pluralism to o. N atio n states have been abolished, we

are told, allowing for the flourishing of cultural diversity between

peoples. But although the endorsement takes place within the text, the

diversity itself is placed outside the England of Nowhere: 'Cross the

water and see. You will find plenty of variety: the landscape, the building,

the diet , the amusements, al l various. ' (Morris, 1924, pp.99-100.)

Political difference is accommodated through a system of direct

democracy, but it is a system which essentially works because there are

only differences of opinion about the nature of the common interest, not

differences of interest themselves.

In the Utopian texts of the 1970s, reflexivity and provisionality about

the status of the Utopian text become features of the text

itself.

As

Moylan argued in Demand the Impossible, these Utopias have a different,

more fragmented narrative structure than earlier Utopias. The discrete

register (which concerns plot and character) is foregrounded, and the

iconic register (which describes the social structure of both the Utopian

society and its foil) recedes. The societies portrayed are decentralised

and differentiated. T he re is a proc ess of self-interrog ation w ithin the

Utopian society, so that its values and institutions are less unequivocally

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UTOPIAN FU NC TIO N IN LATE CAPITALIST SOCIETY 3 7

endorsed. Many novels contain possible dystopian futures, as well as

Utopian ones, breaking down the sense of a necessary, determined move

toward Utopia, the dependence on a grand narrative. As Williams said of

Ursula Le Guin's

The Dispossessed,

originally subtitled 'an ambiguous

Utopia', 'the Utopian impulse now warily, self-questioningly, and setting

its own limits, renew s itse lf (198 0, p.2 12 ).

All these features are present in Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge

of Time.

So, too, is a cultural pluralism, deliberately and actively

separated from any connection with 'race'. This aspect of pluralism is a

little unconvincing, in that culture appears as an optional add-on to a

whole way of life, rather than an intrinsic part of it, but it is very much

more present than in Nowhere. The political process is also presented as

more contested than in Nowhere, for here there may be differences of

interest to resolve. Argument simply continues until agreement is

reached, and after a major dispute, the winners have to feed the losers

and give presents. The response to a question about how differences are

resolved is 'we argue - ho w else?' (Piercy, 197 9, p.153 .)

Jurgen Habermas (1989) argues that the shift to late modernity

produced a shift in Utopian thought such that it is no longer possible to

say anything about the nature of Utopia

itself,

but only the

communicative processes by which it may be negotiated. Thus the only

kind of Utopia which is possible is the processual and communicative. In

practice, such claims tend to sneak assumptions about the actual

character of Utopia in by the back door, in so far as they explicitly or

implicitly posit the conditions under which such dialogue may be

possible. But the prob lem w ith 'we argue - ho w else?' (especially in a

society which is not, as Piercy's Utopia is not, culturally homogeneous) is

that it presumes that argument will result in resolution. There is, it

seems, not only an assumption that shared interests dominate over

conflicting ones, but also no dispute over the terms of the debate, the

procedures of discussion, and the frame of the argument.

A more radical challenge to the Utopian imagination arises if this

frame is contested. How can Utopia handle the possibil i ty of

fundamental conflicts of interest, or absence of agreement on the rules

of the game? Perhaps it cannot. Incommensurability enters into the

Utopia largely as a dystopian shadow. Arguably, it can only enter in this

way, if Utopia is a space for the fictional resolution of problems that

humankind has not (yet) solved. The first volume of Kim Stanley

Robinson's Mars trilogy, Red Mars (1992), presents a picture of

incommensurable cultures and value positions within cultures. The issue

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of language and translation is a common vehicle for such questions

(Cavalcanti, 1999), as in Suzette Elgin's novel Native Tongue (1985), or

the Irish singer Christy Moore's (1994) lament 'Natives' , which begins

'For all of our languages, we can't communicate; for all of our native

tongues, we're all natives here... ' . The biblical figuration of this is the

Tower of Babel, which seems to be recurring with increasing frequency

even in novels which are not part of an explicitly Utopian or dystopian

genre, such as A.S. Byatt's Babel Tower (1997) and Paul Auster's The

New York Trilogy (1987).

Theorising Utopia

The shift to a greater pluralism, provisionality and reflexivity in the

substance of Utopia has been paralleled by a theorisation of Utopia which

treats it as heuristic rather than telic. This, like the texts themselves,

focuses on process rather than content, but the process in question is one

of dialogue with, rather than within, the text. It sees the function of

Utopia as poised betwe en expressive and instrum ental functions. Th ere is

a convergence between neo-Marxism, cri t ical theory, postmodernism,

and feminism' in thinking about Utopia in terms of desire, in terms of

process rather than content, in terms of how the text works rather than

(simply) what it means.

Abensour, for example, argues for understanding the function of

Utopian texts in terms of desire, not expressively or instrumentally in the

sense of desire for the object portrayed in the text, but in terms of how

the text acts on the act of desiring. This was taken up both by Edward

Thompson and Raymond Williams, who remarks that Bellamy's Utopia

is ' in a significant way a work without desire' (Williams, 1980, p.202).

To read a Utopia is to embark on an adventure:

And in such an adventure two things happen: our habitual values

(the 'common sense' of bourgeois society) are thrown into disarray.

And we enter into Utopia 's proper and new-found space, the

education of desire. This is not the same as 'a moral education'

towards a different end: it is, rather, to open a way to aspiration,

to ' teach desire to desire, to desire better, to desire more, and

above all to desire in a different way' (Thompson, 1976,

p p . 7 9 0 -9 1 ) .

Utopia here, even the Utopian text, is not a naturalistic representation of

the good society, but the catalyst of a process in which the reader is an

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UTOPIAN FUNCTION IN LATE CAPITALIST SOCIETY 39

active agent.

The

central characteristic

of

this process

is the

disruption

and transgression of the normative and conceptual frameworks of

everyday experience, and the provision of a space within which it is

possible to imagine not just the satisfaction of familiar wants unmet by

existing society, but to envisage wanting something other than the

satisfactions which that society endorses and simultaneously denies:

above all, to desire in a different way.

Anglophone utopists, notably Moylan and Jameson, develop a

similar argument.The function ofUtopian fiction is no longerto be seen

as providing

an

outline

of a

social system

to be

interrogated literally

in

terms of its structural properties, and treated as a goal. The Utopian

function isestrangement and defamiliarisation, rendering the taken-for-

granted world problematic, and calling into question the actually

existing state of affairs, not the imposit ion of a plan for the future.

Again, w hat is most important about Utopia isless wha t isimagined than

the act of imagination itself, a process which disrupts the closure of the

present.

For

Jameson,

10

as for

Abensour, this process circles around

the

question

of

desire:

we

might think

of the new

onset

of the

Utopian

process as akindof desiringto desire,alearning to desire,the invention

of the desire called Utopia in the first place' (Jameson, 1994, p.90) - a

passage bearing a remarkable similarity to Abensour 's .

O neof theconsequences of this readingof Utopiaas heuristic rather

than systematic, exploratory rather than prescriptive, is that it provides

an alibi for what otherwise might be seen as the weaknesses, absences

and failuresof theiconic registerof theUtopian text - thelimitations of,

for example, both Morris 's and Piercy's treatment of cultural and

political pluralism. Jameson goes further

and

suggests that these failures

do

not

need

an

alibi. Failure

is

less

the

characteristic

of

particular

representationsofUtopia, mo reaninevitable par tof theprocessof trying

to think Utopia itself. It is habitual to think of Utopia as that which is

imagined, but Jam eson argues (like M ar x and Morris) that Utopia is

literally unimaginable. That which can be imagined always falls shortof

Utopia, so that Utopian texts, for example, 'bring home in local and

determinate ways ,

and

wi th

a

fullness

of

concrete detai l ,

our

constitutional inability

to

imagine Utopia itself (Jameson,

1982,

p .153) ;

they enable the exploration of the structural limits of wha t we can

imagine in order to get a better senseof wha t it isabout the future that

we are unable or unwilling to imagine' (Jameson, 1998, p .76) . The

function of the Utopian text is to provoke ... to jar the mind into some

heightened but unconceptualizable consciousness of its own powers ,

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functions, aims and structural limits' (Jameson, cited in Siebers, 1994,

p.94). Clark similarly stresses the importance of failure as a crucial

feature of modernism (rather than postmodernism ) in art, a movement

which he sees as intrinsically Utopian, claiming that 'the courting of

failure and indescribability is one main key to ... the visual culture of the

last two hundred years' (1999, p. 164). His reasons are perhaps similar to

Jameson's: 'It is only in discovering the system [of representation's]

antinomies and blank spots - discovering them in practice I mean - that

the first improvised forms of contrary imagining come to light.' (Clark,

1999,

p.165 .) For Jameson, referring back to Louis Marin (1984), Utopia

is always 'organised ... around a blind spot or a vanishing point'

(Jameson, 1998, p.75), a point of disappearance."

These appealing formulations may show how Utopia and Utopian

interpretation have adapted to the postmodern requirement for

provisionality, reflexivity and pluralism. On the other hand, these

adaptations themselves have dangers and limitations. One danger is the

adoption of a kind of pathological pluralism, in which the

acknowledgement of the positions and standpoints of others effectively

undermines the capacity to occupy, even critically and provisionally, a

ground of one's own, so that commitment is impossible. It is unclear that

Utopia thus understood can move beyond the function of critique, the

disruption of the

ideological

closure of the presen t. But the

transformative function of Utopia requires the disruption of the

structuralclosure of the present, and it requires us to imagine both what

this might mean and how it might be possible, in order that we may be

able to hope. A 'heightened but unconceptualizable consciousness' of the

mind's own powers will not do. Perhaps forms of Utopian thought which

are more than expressive of desire are intrinsically holistic, totalising and

evaluative. Perhaps prescription is necessary. As Raymond Williams once

said, we must define ourselves in terms of what we are for, not just what

we are against. Content, not just process, remains essential. It is, of

course, also essential that Utopia embraces provisionality, reflexivity and

pluralism, and that Utopians recognise the contingency of their hopes

and desires. This is not incompatible with commitment, with taking

responsibility in conditions where there can be no cpistemological,

moral or historical certainty. The effective synthesis of provisionality and

responsibility may be the condition of keeping Utopia open as a space in

which to reach out to the real possibility of a transformed future.

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UTO PIAN FUN CTIO N IN LATE CAPITALIST SOCIETY 4 1

NOTES

1.

I have been helped and forced to clarify my argum ent by utopists and others on

several occasions in 1999, including by participants in the conferences on

'Nowhere: A Place of Our Own' at Warwick and 'A Millennium of Utopias' at the

University of East Anglia, and by members of the Critical Theory Seminar at the

University of Bristol and the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex.

I would particularly like to thank Vincent Geoghegan, Gregor McLennan, Tom

Moylan, Thomas Osborne, Lucy Sargisson and Carolyn Wilde for perceptive and

constructive comments and stimulating disagreements.

2.

As Thom as O sborne (1998) observes, there are different ways in which

'engagement' can be construed, not all of which are overtly political, while

Forrester (1999) similarly insists that thinking itself is a political act. The

argument that academics, and sociologists in particular, should be 'engaged

intellectuals' has been made forcibly in relation to sociology (in answer to the

question 'What is sociology for?'). See McLennan (1999), Giddens (1998), Rorty

(1998), and Bourdieu (1998).

3. I have argued this at greater length elsewhere. See Levitas (1990a).

4. 'Now here - a place of our own' was the title of an interdisciplinary conference

on the uses of Utopia at the University of Warwick, May 1999.

5. The importance of this distinction is discussed in Levitas (1990b), reprinted in

Daniel and Moylan (1997).

6. The British government, which had spent huge sums of money combating and

encouraging others to combat the Y2K bug, argued, of course, that this was why

nothing had happened. They would of course. But sceptical respondents

wondered why, if this were indeed the case, Blair's government was so insistent

that throwing money at problems was not the solution, as is persistently argued

in relation to poverty, education and the collapsing National Health Service.

7. See Moylan (1999). For an analysis of these films, and a theorisation of the

character of 1990s dystopianism, see Fitting (1999) and Moylan (2000,

forthcoming).

8. I am grateful for this formulation in response to an earlier version of this paper.

9. Irigaray's utopianism is exemplary here . See Sargisson (1996).

10. Fitting (1998) provides an excellent account of Jameson's use of the concept of

utopia.

11 . The impo rtance of perspective, of the 'vanishing po int', and of 'hor izo n' is a

common theme in Bloch, Jameson and Marin. John Berger argues that the

absence of perspective and horizon are fundamental to the effectiveness of

Hieronymous Bosch's depiction of Hell: this visual strategy removes continuity

between actions, between past and future and creates a 'spatial delirium' in which

'nothing flows through, everything interrupts'. Hope, he argues, 'is an act of

faith, and has to be sustained by other concrete actions. For example, the action

of approach, of measuring distances and walking towards (Berger, 1998/99,

pp.1-4), and therefore depends upon perspective.

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