Utopus Discovered
Spring 2005
Dear Friends and Utopians,
Thank you for the contributions and information for this online issue of Utopus Discovered and hope that you will continue doing so.
If you have information and news to share, please send it to: Carrie Hintz, Department of English, Queens College, CUNY, Flushing, NY, 11367–1597, USA. carriehintz@hotmail.com Toby Widdicombe, Department of English, University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, AK 99508, USA: afrtw@uaa.alaska.edu. Nicole Pohl, School of Cultural Studies, University of Northampton, Boughton Green Road, Northampton NN2 7AL, Great Britain. Nicole.Pohl@northampton.ac.uk.
Fall 2006 Bibliography
News from the Society
THE SOCIETY FOR UTOPIAN STUDIES 2005
30th Annual Meeting
CALL FOR PAPERS Wyndham Gardens Hotel ,Memphis, Tennessee, USA
October 27– 30, 2005
The Society for Utopian Studies invites you to submit abstracts for any of the following:
- a paper (maximum length: 20 minutes)
- a panel (usually of 3 papers)
- an informal panel on a topic (e.g., 3 presenters, or a presenter and 2 or 3 respondents)
- a presentation or performance of creative work on any topic related to utopian studies .
Please send a 100–250 word abstract by May 27, 2005 to:
Dr. M. Doretta Cornell
Department of English, Pace University
861 Bedford Road
Pleasantville, New York 10570
Or by email: mcornell@pace.edu
For inquiries on the program call Doretta at (914) 773–3955.
For information about registration, travel and accommodations , please contact the Conference Coordinator:
Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor,
Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences,
University of Memphis, Scates Hall 107, Memphis, TN 38152 USA.
Email: jawagner@memphis.edu.
Phone: (901) 678–3370; Fax (901) 678–4381.
About The Society for Utopian Studies
Founded in 1975, the Society for Utopian Studies is an international, interdisciplinary association devoted to the study of utopianism in all its forms. Scholars and practitioners representing a wide variety of disciplines and endeavors are active in the association and approach utopian studies from such diverse backgrounds as American studies, architecture, the arts, classics, cultural studies, economics, engineering, environmental studies, gender studies, history, languages and literature, philosophy, political science, psychology, sociology and urban planning. The Society encourages participation from those involved in communal living and other utopian arrangements. The Society publishes a journal, Utopian Studies, and a newsletter, Utopus Discovered. The latter contains information on upcoming conferences and workshops, as well as a bibliography of recent publications in the field.
Meetings of the Society for Utopian Studies are ideal occasions for intellectual interchange in a co-operative, non-competitive, congenial, and convivial environment. At each meeting the Society presents the Arthur O. Lewis Award for the best paper by a junior scholar given at the previous annual meeting, and the Eugenio Battisti Award for the best article in each volume of Utopian Studies. SUS’s website is located at http://www.utoronto.ca/utopia/
Calls for Papers
Utopian Studies Society
6th International Conference
New Lanark, Scotland 30 June–2 July 2005
The Utopian Studies Society is an interdisciplinary society that aims to co-ordinate and encourage the diverse work currently taking place on the subject of utopianism. Our members include people researching literature, philosophy, sociology, history, architecture, politics and anthropology.
The Society was established in 1988 by a group of British scholars, following an international conference on utopianism at New Lanark. It was re-launched, following the “Millennium of Utopias” conference at the University of East Anglia in June 1999. For information about the Society visit www.utopianstudieseurope.org.
In 2005, the annual conference of the Utopian Studies Society will return to the World Heritage Site of New Lanark, one of the world’s most famous Utopian sites where Robert Owen initiated his innovative attempt to harmonize the needs of the industrial society with those of his community of cotton-mill workers. For general information about New Lanark visit www.newlanark.org.
The conference sessions will take place in the New Lanark Mill Hotel, an award-winning restoration and conversion of one of 18 th century cotton-mills. Accommodation will be available in the New Lanark Mill Hotel, and if required, in other nearby local hotels. A budget accommodation option is the comfortable New Lanark Youth Hostel, which is housed in one of the former cotton- mill workers’ rows. There are also a number of guest houses and B&B accommodation in and around the nearby market town of Lanark. More details on accommodation and registration costs will be available soon. To register initial interest, please contact
Lorna Davidson, New Lanark Conservation Trust, New Lanark Mills, Lanark ML11 9DB
lorna.davidson@newlanark.org. tel: +44(0)1555 661345; fax: +44(0)1555 665738
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The Fiftieth Anniversary Conference of the William Morris Society
7–10 July 2005 (either at Royal Holloway, University of London, or at Digby Stuart College, London, England)
Papers are invited on any aspect of William Morris’s life, work, circle and influence in Britain and elsewhere. Please send a 300-word abstract by 31 January 2005 to
The William Morris Society, Kelmscott House, 26 Upper Mall, Hammersmith, London W6 9TA, England. Or e-mail to wms50@morrissociety.org
More information about the conference will be posted on the Morris society website www.morrissociety.org as the date gets closer.
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The First Ralahine Conference on Utopian Studies: “Exploring the Utopian Impulse” The University of Limerick, College of Humanities, March 11 and 12, 2005
Reality without real possibility is not complete, the world without
future-laden properties does not deserve a glance.
-- Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope
The land sustaining us seemed to hold firm
Only when we embraced it in extremis.
All I believed that happened there was vision.
-- Seamus Heaney, “The Disappearing Island”
Plenary Speakers: Fredric Jameson, Luke Gibbons
In the current global political climate, it has been argued that utopian anticipation of any sort is to be rejected as either useless dreaming or authoritarian control. However, given the understanding of the utopianimpulse put forward by Ernst Bloch and others, these dark times of closure, privilege, and violence call out more than ever for Utopia’s transformative energy as a necessary stimulus to needed cultural and political change.
The research agenda of the Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies is based on the premise that social policies and practices are ultimately shaped by utopian impulses in the cultures out of which they arise (however debated, conflicted, contested). These utopian impulses can be identified and studied in the social anticipations and visions articulated through a variety of texts (literary, legal, political, theological, musical, visual, etc.) and through social experience (religious and secular intentional communities, political movements, cultural practices). These expressions and experiences are best seen as modes of anticipatory production that generate a pedagogical sense of possibilities. Utopianism, consequently, is most usefully understood as a process of future-bearing social dreaming that informs efforts to make the world a better place, not to the letter of a plan but to the spirit of an open-ended process.
For this First Ralahine Conference, we invite proposals for papers—of 20 minutes in length—in all areas of utopian studies: literary, cultural, historical, sociological, political, theoretical, and philosophical. Papers on Irish dimensions in utopian studies will constitute one stream of the conference. Other streams can include utopian textualties; utopian communities; utopian links with other cultural formations (e.g., pastoralism or horror, musical or visual culture, architectural or urban design, etc.); utopianism and feminism, utopian dimensions of everyday life; utopian dimensions of cultural and political policies and practices (local and/or global; public, popular, or corporate spheres).
Fredric Jameson is William A. Lane Professor of Comparative Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University. His works include The Political Unconscious (1981), and Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), and he has published extensively on utopianism. Luke Gibbons is the Keough Family Chair of Irish Studies at University of Notre Dame, and author of Transformations in Irish Culture (1997), and Edmund Burke and Ireland (2003). Please send a proposal of 200–300 words to Dr Michael Griffin, Department of Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Limerick, Ireland by February 1, 2005. Proposals can be e-mailed as an attachment to michael.j.griffin@ul.ie .
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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS CONFERENCE
From 1995 to 2003, Manchester Metropolitan University hosted a series of very successful annual international conferences on ‘ALTERNATIVE FUTURES and POPULAR PROTEST’. The Tenth conference, planned for April 2004, had to be cancelled. We’re very happy to announce that the Tenth conference will now be held, between Wednesday 30th March and Friday 1st April 2005.
The Conference rubric remains as in previous years. The aim is to explore the dynamics of popular movements, along with the ideas which animate their activists and supporters and which contribute to shaping their fate.
Reflecting the inherent cross-disciplinary nature of the issues, previous participants (from over 40 countries) have come from such specialisms as sociology, politics, cultural studies, social psychology, economics, history and geography. The Manchester conferences have also been notable for discovering a fruitful and friendly meeting ground between activism and academia.
We invite offers of papers relevant to the conference themes. Papers should address such matters as:
* contemporary and historical social movements and popular protests
* social movement theory
* utopias and experiments
* ideologies of collective action
To offer a paper, please contact either of the conference convenors with a brief abstract:
EITHER Colin Barker, Dept. of Sociology OR Mike Tyldesley, Dept. of Politics and Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University, Geoffrey Manton Building, Rosamond Street West, Manchester M15 6LL, England. Email: c.barker@mmu.ac.uk or m.tyldesley@mmu.ac.uk . Tel: M. Tyldesley 0161 247 3438 email: Fax: 0161 247 6312 (+44 161 247 6312)
(Wherever possible, please use email, especially as Colin Barker is now a retired gent, only occasionally collecting physical mail from the Department.)
CONFERENCE PAPERS
Those giving papers are asked to supply them in advance, for inclusion in the bound volumes of papers which will be available from the conference opening.
Preferred method: send the paper to Colin Barker as an email attachment in MS Word. If this is impossible, post two single-spaced copies, on A4 or US Letter paper, with one inch margins, and with a copy of the text on a DOS disk in MS Word format . Word limit 7,000 words (including notes etc.) . Final date for receipt of abstracts: Monday 31st January 2005 . Final date for receipt of actual papers: Monday 7th March 2005. Participants who do not supply their papers by the final date are asked to bring 50 copies to the Conference for distribution. Advance submission is much preferred, since the bound volumes of papers are sent to the British Library but loose papers are excluded.
FURTHER INFORMATION
A selection of papers from the 1995 conference appeared in early 1996 as: Colin Barker & Paul Kennedy (eds.), To Make Another World: Studies in Protest & Collective Action, Avebury, 1996. Manchester University Press published a volume of papers inspired by previous conferences: Colin Barker, Alan Johnson & Michael Lavalette, eds., Leadership in Social Movements (MUP, 2001). A few recent sets of conference papers (two vols. in each year, £25.00 each set, post free) may still be obtained from Colin Barker. Email in advance to check availability. Cheques with orders, please, to Manchester Metropolitan University. Please order direct rather than through booksellers.
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The Martin Buber Institute for Dialogical Ecology
This is to inform you of the establishment of The Martin Buber Institute for Dialogical Ecology within the Department of Philosophy, Religion and Environmental Studies at Pace University. We intend to make this institute an active participant in the international discourse on ecological philosophy. Buber was/is widely influential in many areas of Judaic Studies, Zionist thought, philosophy of religion, theology, psychotherapy, existential philosophy, and communitarian thought, but the dialogical tradition, of which Buber was the most important exponent, has not been thoroughly explored in the context of ecological and environmental philosophy. If you’d like more information or participate in some of our academic activities, or just to exchange thoughts about this, please feel free to send me an email to: hmargulies@pace.edu. Thank you. Hune Margulies, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, Religion and Environmental Studies, Pace University. Director, The Martin Buber Institute for Dialogical Ecology. 914–439–7731
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Humanism—Clearly
by Aleksandar Sarovic www.sarovic.com
Abstract: The new political and economic system, that I have proposed, is equally acceptable to all. It will end all kinds of oppression and give a much greater freedom to everyone, but it will also require each individual to be responsible to all other individuals in society. The whole system is based on a highly developed form of democracy. It will also realize a greater economic productivity than capitalism can, and a stability that capitalism cannot provide at all. Ultimately, it will force capitalism to withdraw. This new system prevents crime, wars, and all kinds of destructiveness in society, as well as encouraging the development of human productive powers. It will totally change the world, and give a wonderful life and harmony to humanity.
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Throughout history, authorities have been trying hard to keep power in their own hands, just as they are doing today. Even though nowadays a formal democracy exists almost everywhere, the people are still impotent. This is the main reason why the world passes through phases of destruction, instead of through continuous productive development. The impotence of the society is so great, that not even an idea exists of what the good society should look like. Finally, thanks to the development of information technology and to my persistence, I have discovered the path to create a good society, as defined in many utopias. My utopia, described in the book “Humanism”, is no longer wishful thinking, but a pure science that defines an unavoidable and bright future of humankind. The new political and economic system, that I have proposed, is equally acceptable to all. It will end all kinds of oppression and give a much greater freedom to everyone, but it will also require each individual to be responsible to all other individuals in society. The whole system is based on a highly developed form of democracy. It will also realise a greater economic productivity than capitalism can, and a stability that capitalism cannot provide at all. Ultimately, it will force capitalism to withdraw. This new system prevents crime, wars, and all kinds of destructiveness in society, as well as encouraging the development of human productive powers. It will totally change the world, and give a wonderful life and harmony to humanity.
***
A positive future for humanity ultimately requires power in the hands of the people. Each person should have the power to directly represent and protect his interests wherever he needs to. I am talking here about brand new ideas that will give to people the power that is, under present circumstances, unthinkable. In the first place, I need to stress that new ideas will bring about a complete change of the existing system, since that system has been built under the influence of authorities.
In order to create a good society, we should first define and accept all kinds of values that are, or should be, important to society. We then need to find out which of these values each person possesses. The sum of all values that a person creates throughout his life, presented by a numerical value, may be called human productive power. Taking into account that most people would probably not like to have their productive power compared to that of other people, such a value may be kept secret, known only to the owner of the value himself.
The value of human productive power will incorporate, in the first place, capitalist values, such as real estate, money, shares, and all assets that capitalism recognizes as valuable. Beside the capital-based value that represents an element of human productive power, we need to recognize and include all other values that society accepts or should accept. Such values are: man for himself, his education, work experience, contributions that he has given, and awards that he has received for creating value for society, etc. The pooling of different forms of value will require a comprehensive study and–certainly–difficult negotiations in society. However, after some time, new democratically regulated standards of all values that can be created in society could be established. Such regulation will be automatically applied whenever necessary. I’ll explain it better in the next paragraphs.
The human productive power will certainly be strongly affected by the existing economic productivity of workers. In publicly owned companies, workers will share profits proportionally to the numerically determined responsibility they themselves propose for their work. Higher responsibility will naturally realize a larger share in profit, in case that the company’s profit increases. Such profit will now be expressed in a value that reflects the workers’ human productive power. And vice versa, in case of production losses, workers who propose higher responsibility for their work will realize larger losses in value representing their productive power.
If the society would like to stimulate education it might raise awards for higher education in the value that represents human productive power. If, for example, a region has too low a birth rate people may decide to award parents with more children with this kind of value. And vice versa, if a region has too high a birth rate people may decide to punish parents who have more children by a certain value representing human productive power.
The value of personal productive power will be specially affected by disobedience to the law. If a person acts against the law he will lose a legally defined value off his productive power. Each crime may be easily judged by existing laws and recalculated into a value representing human productive power. If a person commits a very serious crime he might lose all the value of his productive power, and even get a negative value. The proposed system can make assignment of such a negative productive value much more painful than a prison can be, so that prisons will not be needed any more. Each person will avoid committing any crime much more carefully. If it still happens that a person gets such a negative productive power, he will try hard to escape from it and that will only be possible by hard productive work and by extremely good behaviour over a long period of time.
Society may regulate whatever it needs through evaluation of human productive power. However, all values cannot be regulated, because people have varying individual needs. Therefore, the value representing personal productive power should also depend on unregulated values, based on people’s opinions about free actions of others. This is a completely a new measure and, in my opinion, the most important measure of the future. I call it democratic anarchy.
Democratic anarchy is a new form of social relations, wherein every person exercises equal legislative, judicial and executive power in the society. It is possible to accomplish it in a manner that gives each person the right to evaluate the activity of any other person. Each positive assessment should automatically bring a small increase of the total value of productive power to the assessed person. On the other hand, any negative assessment will result in punishment in the same form. Let us say that awards and penalties of such evaluation would have an equivalent value of one dollar. If the society were afraid of such power of individuals, the power of evaluation could be reduced. Even the evaluation with the power equivalent to just one cent would be enough for improvement of society.
Democratic anarchy will direct each member of society to create the greatest possible advantages for society, and to diminish or abolish creation of all forms of disadvantages. Such a measure will definitely decrease uncontrolled or insufficiently controlled individual power originating in a privileged social status. I have to stress that privileged status of individuals causes the greatest inconveniences and problems to a society. Given that all individuals will have the equal right of evaluation, and that they will give their assessments independently of any written rules, such democracy will assume the form of anarchy. In this extremely simple way, the populus will for the first time in the history of humankind realize a great direct power in society, which will result in highly harmonious and constructive social relations.
It is understandably desirable that the value of human productive power becomes very important to society and therefore its acceptance should be additionally stimulated. That will be accomplished, in the first place, by giving each person the voting power in society proportionate to the value of his productive power. I am talking here about a great change in the democratic system. Today, people have only the right to choose their parliamentary representatives. They have neither opportunity nor right to participate in making other decisions that regard their interests in society. Here we need a compromise equally acceptable to all. Let each person have a right to participate in making any democratic decision in society, but let him earn this right by his productive contribution to the development of value in society. This system proposes unequal voting power, accepted by a consensus of political parties. In reality, it will contribute to the development of democracy because the people will for the first time get a chance to directly participate in decision-making about all questions regarding their interests.
Secondly, each person should get an income for work in publicly owned companies, proportionate to the total value of his productive power. This measure follows the existing state of affairs to a large extent, but it will also introduce new rules, more justice and order in the system of income distribution. Thirdly, personal productive power must be inherited through generations in order to be accepted. Through implementation of such measures, every member of society will recognize the value of human productive power as a great value–this will contribute significantly to the development of society.
***
The new economic system adopts the existing model of market economy. Private enterprises will continue to function in the same way as they do today. The new system will change publicly owned companies greatly. In the first place, the changes will affect the division of labour. There is no fairer or better distribution of labour than an open market competition of workers for every position. The worker who envisages and offers the highest productivity for any public work post at any time will get the job. This measure is necessary, in the first place, because it will definitely abolish work privileges that are the basis of inconvenient orientation and problems in society. If you think that this might lead to a rat race for work positions and you are already afraid for your job, you need not be. The new system will create a new regulation of the division of labour that will prevent such undesirable effects.
The new system will make full employment a reality. If creation of new work positions is not needed, full employment will be achieved by reducing work hours in public companies proportionately to the unemployment rate. Also, under the new system, each job will be equally desirable. This will be achieved by giving the job with a defined productivity to the worker who demands the lowest price for current labour and, consequently, a lower income. Better jobs will realize lower income and worse jobs will be better compensated through higher income. In this way, the labour market will set an objective measure of direct labour value and will balance the interest in all job posts. Since the workers themselves will be setting the price of their current labour, by the same token they will be the most satisfied with their earnings.
The new economy will necessarily require an efficient system of determining the workers’ responsibility for the realization of productivity that they have offered. The system would establish a new way of bearing the workers’ responsibility through the value of their productive power. A failure to realize offered productivity or a fall in productivity would reduce the total value of workers’ productive power proportionately to their responsibility in the productive process. And vice versa, the rise in productivity will increase the total value of workers’ productive power proportionately to their responsibility in the process of production.
No economy can be more productive than the one where the best available worker gets each job. Such economy will easily become significantly more productive than the capitalist one, so that the latter will be forced to recede. Also, the workers will no longer be interested in working for private enterprises, where they do not have enough freedom to choose jobs, to decide on their income, nor do they have an opportunity to share in the profits. Very soon after this system is implemented, private enterprises will be forced to withdraw and join the new system.
The owners of means of productions who voluntarily surrender their private property to society will realize an increase in the total value of their productive power proportionate to the value of the surrendered property. The value of personal power will become a humanistic form of shares, because each worker will receive for work in a public company an income proportionate to the value of his productive power. This fact may additionally encourage inhabitants of a region to voluntarily pool their private companies into what I call a “humanistic” corporation. The united humanistic corporation will develop its production on basis of customers’ orders, and will thus achieve the most stable production. Work competition will ensure the best production performance, and will therefore realise the greatest consumer convenience to society. Last but not least, the system will be based on such a high degree of workers’ and managers’ responsibility that they will have to cooperate at all levels of production processes, and to establish a high level of consensus before making decisions. This kind of market competition will inevitably end up in cooperation at all levels of production processes, and will thus contribute to the productive development of society.
***
Democracy will change totally as well. The future of democracy will no longer be based on elected leaders. Development of computer technology allows people to participate directly, through referendum, in making all key decisions of joint interest. In order to prevent overruling of minority in a society, all the referenda questions must be created by the consensus of political parties. Each decision may have a scale of values prepared by the consensus of political parties; each voter may then choose a value that suits him the best. Mean of all the values expressed by members of the population, as a function of their voting power, would point to acceptability of each and every decision in the society.
The people will directly create policies of their society, in the first place the economic policy. In the system of pooled ownership over means of production, money will also be pooled. Joint ownership of money will make possible the introduction of direct democracy into economy. Each voter will directly participate in distribution of the collectively owned money realized through revenue of a collective. The money will be distributed for purposes of development of the economy (the total quantity of money for investments in the economy), for individual consumption (the total quantity of money for workers’ earnings), and for collective consumption (the total quantity of money intended for collective consumption of the whole population). Given that the new system proposes unequal voting power, each voter will actually distribute the total value of his productive power among different voting groups. Sum total of all the voters’ statements, given in all voting groups, will form the total amount of money intended for these expenses groups. In such a simple way the people will actually directly create the macroeconomic policy of society. The present-day system of income distribution, establishment of fiscal and developmental policies of a society, will thus be directly upgraded in a democratic manner.
The new system has to ensure economic independence of each individual as a main precondition for establishment of a free society. Besides, the system of work competition requires a higher level of social insurance than the existing one, and for that reason every inhabitant will receive some income. The individual income level will depend primarily on the total value of personal productive power, then on the price of current labour, as well as on the accomplishment of proposed productivity. Within the distribution of money intended for individual consumption, the people will also directly establish the ranges of workers’ earnings, by setting the level of minimal earning directly. If workers’ interest in performing their work is insufficient, the society may directly reduce the minimal income, which would stimulate workers to work more. And vice versa, if productivity is higher than necessary, the society will then increase the minimal income and thus reduce the income-based stimulation for work.
Assets intended for economic development will have to be further allocated to those sectors of a “humanistic” corporation that predict higher shorter-term profits in the free market. In that way the society as a whole achieves the greatest consumer and economic benefits. People may also directly decide on the distribution of money for collective-consumption needs, up to the level of their interest. In the future, instability of the market economy will be replaced by a stable planned production based on customers’ orders. Under such circumstances, market policy will be less anarchic and more democratic, which will open up a possibility of development of a democratic planned economy.
The political and economic model here described will improve the efficiency and stability of production, introduce more justice into the process of production and distribution, and provide significantly higher advantages to all members of society. In general, this system will rid the people of authoritative pressure and give them freedom to follow their own interests, while at the same time forcing people to mutual respect. Such experience will demystify the values imposed by authorities, and will teach people to live in accordance with their proper nature, which will in turn free them from all types of alienation characteristic of present-day society. Further, the system will teach people to set their needs in accordance with the possibilities of satisfying them. This is the chief prerequisite for overcoming destructiveness in society, because people who permanently satisfy their needs are not destructive. The proposed system promises a natural, harmonious and highly prosperous development of society.
Finally, I would like to emphasise that the proposed system not only provides the best solution for the future of mankind, but also the only good one. As a crown, the system predicts that the work will become a direct value in itself, whereas commodities will lose their alienated value. Therefore, the development of such a system may realize the nowadays-impossible goal: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” In any case, the system will make Paradise on Earth.
My book “The Humanism” elaborates more precisely everything I have said here, and much more. It is available on line free of charge at sarovic.com. The changes I have described will affect almost every existing science. An individual can make no more significant improvement here. That is a job for teams of scientists. I will appreciate anyone willing to cooperate with me on this project, anyone giving me comments on the book, or even everyone who would just read it.
Thank you very much.
Aleksandar Sarovic www.sarovic.com
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Book Review
(Note: The views expressed in book reviews published in Utopus Discovered are those of the reviewer and not those of the editors. Where possible, space will be provided in a later issue for authors to respond to reviewers should they wish to do so.
The following book review was first published in print in the Spring 2004 issue of Utopus Discovered. We reprint it here in order to give a context for the response by the author that now follows the review.)
Rachel Elboim-Dror. Clean Death in Tel Aviv. New York: iUniverse, 2003. 294 pp. $18.95
Clean Death in Tel Aviv is nothing if not ambitious. It works on several levels. It is a story of a woman neglected by her father, abused by her mother, damaged by a terrible marriage, and ground up and spat out by the academic system. It is also a story of the founding of the state of Israel and the toll that utopian dreams take on those caught up in such dreams. It is, too, a feminist text that castigates the dual standard that continues to operate when it comes to the treatment of women in relation to men.
Clean Death in Tel Aviv is, then, ideologically and thematically ambitious. It is also complex in the way in which it handles narrative. Reminiscent at moments of Joyce (for its stream of consciousness) and of Nathanael West (for its scatology), the novel locks the reader inside the mind of the protagonist, Ruth, as she undergoes what the back-cover copy calls “dissolution,” a dissolution that leads to her suicide at the end of the novel. The first four chapters and the last three (59–61) are set in present time. The rest follow Ruth's sad life from birth to the final sorry event in her life: being turned down for tenure on grounds of age (although her sex is actually the deciding factor).
Students of utopia will, however, be most interested in Elboim-Dror's insights into the difficulties of constructing a utopia anywhere else other than the mind. Here, the focus is on Ruth's Father. He decides to move his family from Ukraine to Palestine for religious and ideological reasons. For him, it is the fulfillment of a dream to create “a society of equals,” a “utopian Jewish commune” as the “first settlers on this god forsaken land” of Palestine (48). For Ruth, the transformation is catastrophic: “Life seemed secure and stable” (44) in Ukraine; as an exile, “Life was never the same again” (46). Along the way to the Father's ultimate failure (from kibbutz and moshav leader to a senior member of Israel's governmental bureaucracy), Elboim-Dror looks at several utopian issues from both personal and historical points of view by showing the gritty aspects of settlement life. There is the problem of leadership qua monomania with the Father as “possessed madman” (76). There is the problem of human nature as a “swamp of pettiness and meanness” (71), of utopia's infinitely regressive promise which will never be fulfilled (128), and of the exclusivity of the radicalism behind utopian thought. As Ruth puts it: “Are only radicals able to create a new world?” Finally, there is the paradox of utopia as the site of competing truths. As Ruth sees it, her Father's generation was fundamentally and destructively selfish: “They only grasped their truth, never considering that of the other. The more self-centered you are, the stronger and the more self-serving you will be. Is another world possible?” (147).
In a recent obituary of Spalding Gray, Peter Marks asserts that “Storytelling is an act of belief” in which the storyteller may “[t]ell you the most astonishingly revealing things, harsh things about himself, things most people don't like to dwell on.” Elboim-Dror's novel passes this test with flying colors, for her protagonist talks in ways that make me cringe about the destructive influence of family on the health of the individual psyche, the hatred that lies at the heart of some marriages, the prevalence of misogyny in society, and the cruel system by means of which academic tenure may (but frequently isn't) granted. I think the novel passes a higher test, however: that of being remembered long after many other works are forgotten by the reader. Just as the protagonist's sense of self is changed so is the psyche of the (malleable) reader after encountering Clean Death in Tel Aviv. As Ernesto (“Che”) Guevara put it in his Notas de Viaje: “'I,' am not I; at least I am not the same [as] I was before.”
This is not to suggest that the novel is flawless. The narrative too easily splits into Mother and “post-Mother” sections; there are problems with point of view; there is too much tell and not enough show; and the dialogue is not always a convincing transcription of the human voice. Nonetheless, the novel is accomplished in its own right, and offers some fascinating insights into the many ways in which the practical pursuit of utopia is so problematic.
Toby Widdicombe
University of Alaska Anchorage
Comments on Clean Death in Tel Aviv book Review
I greatly appreciate Toby Widdicombe’s perspicacious insights, and his empathic and sensitive reading of my book, Clean Death in Tel Aviv. In this brief response, I would like to indicate an additional motif, which subverts the novel's utopian setting, and which foregrounds what I believe to have been a general predicament and tragedy of the pioneering women of the Zionist movement.
The conflicting role expectations of modern women were accentuated by the particular constellation of the relationships between nationalism and gender during the beginning of the pioneering utopian settlement of Jews in Palestine. In order to take part on equal terms in the revolutionary national endeavor, women internalized the demand that they be tough and act like men. But these same masculine perspectives also demanded that they adopt and present traditional and submissive roles, this time, in their roles as partners to these same men. This gender confusion is expressed in the novel in a radicalized form in Ruth's dream.
Gender Antinomies are conspicuously present in all early Zionist utopias written by men. In these utopian societies of equals every aspect of life is radically changed, except the status and roles of women, which are determined by their biological procreative role as mothers, and are therefore precluded from participating in public life. (Elboim-Dror, Yesterday's Tomorrows: The Zionist Utopia, 2 vol. [1993] 1997 in Hebrew).
Rachel Elboim-Dror
☼
Bibliography
This bibliography was compiled with the Library of Congress catalog, the CSA bibliography (which encompasses a large variety of social sciences and humanities indices), the MLA bibliography, and ProQuest bibliography.
BOOKS
Adinolfi, Isabella, ed. Diritti umani : realtà e utopia. Roma : Città nuova, 2004.
Bartter, Martha, ed. The Utopian Fantastic: Sselected Essays from the Twentieth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (1999). Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004.
Beuka, Robert. SuburbiaNation: Reading Suburban Landscape in Twentieth-Century American Fiction and Film. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Davis, Cynthia J., and Denise D. Knight, ed. Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Her Contemporaries: Literary and Intellectual Contexts. Tuscaloosa : U of Alabama P, 2004.
Delano, Sterling F. Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia. Cambridge: Belknap P of Harvard UP, 2004.
Duncan, Floyd H. The Utopian Prince: Robert Owen and the Search for Millennium. [Philadelphia]: Xlibris, 2004.
Echols, James, ed. I Have a Dream: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Future of Multicultural America. Minneapolis : Fortress P, 2004.
Gantman, Ernesto R. Capitalism, Social Privilege, and Managerial Ideologies. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004.
Horowitz, David. Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American left. Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2004.
Kuhlmann, Hilke. Living Walden Two: B.F. Skinner’s Behaviorist Utopia and Experimental Communities. Urbana : U of Illinois P, 2004.
Ma, Qian. Feminist Utopian Discourse in Eighteenth-century Chinese and English Fiction: A Cross-cultural Comparison. Aldershot, Hants, Eng. : Ashgate, 2004.
Miles, Malcolm. Urban Avant-Gardes: Art, Architecture and Change. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Pfaff, William. The Bullet’s Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
Rüsen, Jörn, Michael Fehr, and Thomas W. Rieger, eds. Thinking Utopia: Steps into Other Worlds. New York: Berghahn Books, 2004.
Sargisson, Lucy, and Lyman Tower Sargent. Living in Utopia: New Zealand’s Intentional Communities. Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate, 2004.
Slaughter, Richard. Futures beyond Dystopia: Creating Social Foresight. London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2004.
Sobrino, Jon. Where is God? : Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope [Terremoto, terrorismo, barbarie y utopía]. Trans. Margaret Wilde. Maryknoll, NY : Orbis Books, 2004.
Sutton, Robert P. Communal Utopias and the American Experience: Secular Communities, 1824-2000. Westport, CT : Praeger, 2004.
Vahanian, Gabriel. Tillich and the New Religious Paradigm. Aurora, CO: Davies, 2004.
Vogt, Henri. Between Utopia and Disillusionment: A Narrative of the Political Transformation in Eastern Europe. New York: Berghahn Books, 2004.
Zipes, Jack David. Speaking Out: Storytelling and Creative Drama for Children. New York: Routledge, 2004.
ARTICLES
Abbott, Philip. “Utopians at Play.” Utopian Studies 15.1 (2004): 44–62.
Alessio, Dominic. “A Conservative Utopia? Anthony Trollope’s The Fixed Period (1882).” Journal of New Zealand Literature 22 (2004): 73–94.
Allison, John. “Freedom Songs.” Opera 55.5 (May 2004): 550–52.
Anderson, Perry. “The River of Time.” New Left Review 26 (March 2004–April 2004): 67–77.
Anreus, Alejandro. “The Road to Dystopia: The Paintings of Antonia Eiriz.” Art Journal 63.3 (Fall 2004): 4.
Appelbaum, Robert. “Literature and Utopian Politics in Seventeenth-century England.” History 89.294 (April 2004): 303–04.
Atwood, Margaret. “‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and ‘Oryx and Crake’ in Context”(Science Fiction and Literary Studies: The Next Millennium). PMLA 119.3 (May 2004): 513–17.
Baccolini, Raffaella. “The Persistence of Hope in Dystopian Science Fiction” (Science Fiction and Literary Studies: The Next Millennium). PMLA 119.3 (May 2004): 518–21.
Baley, Shannon. “Death and Desire, Apocalypse and Utopia: Feminist Gestus and the Utopian Performative in the Plays of Naomi Wallace.” Modern Drama 47.2 (Summer 2004): 237–50.
Beaumont, Matthew. “Reinterpreting Oscar Wilde’s Concept of Utopia: ‘The Soul of Man under Socialism.’’’ Utopian Studies 15.1 (2004): 13–29.
Bizzini, Chantal. “The Utopian City in the Cantos of Ezra Pound.” Utopian Studies 15.1 (2004): 30–43.
Bobonich, Christopher. “Plato’s Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and Politics.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.3 (July 2004): 334–44.
Boyle, Michael. “Utopianism and the Bush Foreign Policy.” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 17.1 (April 2004): 81–103.
Breen, Marcus. “Neurotic Reactions: Utopian Dreams.” Popular Music 23.1 (January 2004): 86–87.
Brown, Justine. “Hollywood Utopia.” Labour (Canada) 53 (2004): 294–96.
Cartwright, John. “From Aquinas to Zwelethemba: A Brief History of Hope.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 592.0 (March 2004): 166–84.
Cooke, Maeve. “Redeeming Redemption: The Utopian Dimension of Critical Social Theory.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 30.4 (June 2004): 413–29.
Cusco, Andrei. “Between Revolutionary Utopia and State Pragmatism: The Moldavian ASSR as a Controversial Soviet Piedmont.” Romanian Journal of Society and Politics 4.1 (May 2004): 7–27.
Deszcz, Justyna. “Salman Rushdie’s Magical Kingdom: The Moor’s Last Sigh and Fairy-Tale Utopia.” Marvels &Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies 18.1 (2004): 28–52.
Dunbar Ortiz, Roxanne. “My Realistic Utopia (RADICAL HOPE).” Tikkun 16.6 (November-December 2004): 41–43.
Eghigian, Greg. “The Psychologization of the Socialist Self: East German Forensic Psychology and Its Deviants, 1945–1975.” German History 22.2 (2004): 181–205.
Egorov, B. F. “Zhanry russkikh utopii XVIII-nachala XX vekov.” Izvestiia Akademii Nauk, Seriia Literatury i Iazyka 63.1 (Winter 2004): 28–32.
Elbert, Carlos Alberto. “Rebuilding Utopia? Critical Ciminology and the Difficult Road of Reconstruction in Latin America.” Crime, Law and Social Change 41.4 (May 2004): 385–95.
Gamez, David. “Pax Americana.” Philosophy Now 44 (January 2004-February 2004): 14–17.
Garrett, Brenda “England, Colonialism, and ‘The Land of Cokaygne’” Utopian Studies 15.1 (2004): 1–12.
Geoghegan, Vincent. “Ideology and Utopia.” Journal of Political Ideologies 9.2 (June 2004): 123–38.
Godfrey, Mark. “Future Past.” Art Monthly 273 (February 2004): 7–10.
Gonzalez, Anita. “Urban Bush Women: Finding Shelter in the Utopian Ensemble.” Modern Drama 47.2 (Summer 2004): 250–69.
Greven, Michael. “The Inherently Utopian Nature of Justice. Claus Offe’s Political Thought [Die immanente Utopie der Gerechtigkeit. Claus Offes bundesrepublikanischer Denkweg].” Vorgänge 2.165 (March 2004): 112–26.
Guidi, Marco E.L. “‘My Own Utopia’. The Economics of Bentham’s Panopticon.” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 11.3 (2004): 405–32.
Guidice, Luisa, and Gerald Porter, ed. “Imagined States: Nationalism, Longing and Utopia in Oral Cultures.” National Identities 6.1 (March 2004): 77–79.
Hamera, Judith. “Dancing Other-wise: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Utopia in Hae Kyung Lee and Dancers.” Modern Drama 47.2 (Summer 2004): 290–309.
Hughes, John. “Unspeakable Utopia: Art and the Return to the Theological in the Marxism of Adorno and Horkheimer.”Cross Currents 53.4 (Winter 2004): 475–93.
Hume, Kathryn. “Black Urban Utopia in Wideman’s Later Fiction.” Race and Class 45.3 (January 2004-March 2004): 19–34.
Hunter, Mary Ann. “Utopia, Maps and Ecstasy: Configuring Space in Barrie Kosky’s 1996 Adelaide Festival.” Australasian Drama Studies 44 (Spring 2004): 36–51.
Hurley, Erin. “Blackout: Utopian Technologies in Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro.” Modern Drama 47.2 (Summer 2004): 200–19.
Jacobsen, Michael Hviid. “From Solid Modern Utopia to Liquid Modern Anti-Utopia? Tracing the Utopian Strand in the Sociology of Zygmunt Bauman.” Utopian Studies 15.1 (2004): 63–87.
Jameson, Fredric. “The Politics of Utopia.” New Left Review 25 (January 2004-February 2004): 35–54.
Johnson, Pauline. “Are Our Utopian Energies Exhausted? Habermas’s Radical Reformism.” European Journal of Political Theory 3.3 (July 2004): 267–92.
Karlstrom, Mikael. “Modernity and Its Aspirants: Moral Community and Developmental Eutopianism in Buganda. “ Current Anthropology 45. 5 (December 2004): 595–620.
Kayman, Martin A . “The State of English as a Global Language: Communicating Culture.” Textual Practice 18.1 (Spring 2004): 1–22.
Koenig, Brigitte. “Law and Disorder at Home: Free Love, Free Speech, and the Search for an Anarchist Utopia.” Labor History 45.2 (May 2004): 199–224.
Kopp, James J. “Documenting Utopia in Oregon: The Challenges of Tracking the Quest for Perfection” (Research Files).Oregon Historical Quarterly 105.2 (Summer 2004): 308.
Koppenfels, Werner von. “‘These Irritant Bodies’: Blinding and Blindness in Dystopia.” Cambridge Quarterly 33.2 (2004): 155–72.
Kornfeld, Susan “Suppression and Transformation of the Maternal in Contemporary Women’s Science Fiction.” Extrapolation 45.1 (Spring 2004): 65–75.
Laurant, Cedric. “Surveilling Utopia 2: Multimedia Installations by Ann Stoddard” (Review).Afterimage 32.2 (September-October 2004): 9.
London, April. “Radical Utopias: History and the Novel in the 1790s. “ Eighteenth-Century Fiction 16.4 (July 2004): 783–802 .
Matoko, E. “L’Africa degli Africani—utopia o rivoluzione?” Rivista di studi politici internazionali 71.2 (April-June 2004): 351–52.
McDermott, Sinead. “Future-perfect: Gender, Nostalgia, and the Not Yet Presented in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping.” Journal of Gender Studies 13.3 (November 2004): 259–70.
Muller, Zdenek. “From an Ethical-Religious Utopia to a ‘Nationalizing’ Islam. On a Current Trend in Islamist Movements.” Archiv Orientalni 72.1 (2004): 54–61.
Primiano, Leonard Norman. “‘Bringing Perfection in These Different Places’: Father Divine’s Vernacular Architecture of Intention.” Folklore 115.1 (April 2004): 3–26.
Rhodes, Carl. “Utopia in Popular Management Writing and the Music of Bruce Springsteen: Do You Believe in the Promised Land?” Consumption Markets Culture 7.1 (March 2004): 1–20.
Rich, Charlotte. “From Near-Dystopia to Utopia: A Source for Herland in Inez Haynes Gillmore’s Angel Island.” In Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Her Contemporaries: Literary and Intellectual Contexts. Ed. Cynthia J. SourDavis, and Denise D. Knight. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2004. 155–70.
Rivera-Servera, Ramon H. “Choreographic of Resistance: Latina/o Queer Dance and the Utopian Performative.” Modern Drama 47.2 (Summer 2004): 269–90.
Robin, Christophe. “‘Man Is Come Where He Is Not Wanted, Where There Is No Place for Him’: Utopia and Atopia in Lord Jim.” Epoque Conradienne 30 (2004): 197–209.
Saito, Miwa “Harukanaru togenkyo.” Eigo Seinen/Rising Generation 149.10 (Winter 2004): 618.
Selnes, Gisle. “Exilia, Utopia, America: Et bidrag til eksilets utopografi.” Vagant 1 (2004): 4–15.
Shefrin, E. “Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Participatory Fandom: Mapping New Congruencies between the Internet and Media Entertainment Culture.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 21.3 (September 2004): 261–81.
Simic, Charles. “Reading about Utopia in New York City.” The Gettysburg Review 17.1 (Spring 2004): 85–95.
Spencer, Nicholas. “Social Utopia: Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy’s The Oasis.” L I T: Literature Interpretation Theory 15.1 (January-March 2004): 45–60.
Strain, Christopher. “Soul City, North Carolina: Black Power, Utopia, and the African American Dream.” The Journal of African American History 89.1 (Winter 2004): 57–75.
Tassone, Giuseppe. “The Politics of Metaphysics: Adorno and Bloch on Utopia and Immortality.” European Legacy 9.3 (June 2004): 357–68.
Torres Duque, Oscar. “Idilio realista’ y utopìa en Don Quijote de La Mancha.” Source Torre de Papel 14.1 (Spring 2004): 3–13.
Uebel, Michael “Stripopia?” Social Semiotics 14. 1 (April 2004): 3–19.
Uricchio, W. “Beyond the Great Divide: Collaborative Networks and the Challenge to Dominant Conceptions of Creative Industries.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (March 2004): 79–90.
Walker, Jeffrey M. “Squid-heads and Coppertops: Discursive Power in the Postmodern Filmic Dystopia.” Literature and Psychology 49.9 (Winter 2004): 43–82.
Webb, Darren. “The Bitter Product of Defeat? Reflections on Winstanley’s Law of Freedom.” Political Studies 52.2 (June 2004): 199–215.
Wolf, Stacy “‘Something Better Than This’: Sweet Charity and the Feminist Utopia of Broadway Musicals.’” Modern Drama 47.2 (Summer 2004): 309–32.
Wood, Peter W. “A World Made in Playboy.” Society 41.4 (May-June 2004): 31–36.
Theses and Dissertations
MA Theses
Beene, Dorothy Megan. “Navigating Topos: The Shifting Meanings and Manifestations of Utopia and Dystopia in the Women’s Liberation Movement (Ursula K. LeGuin, Marge Piercy, Joanna Russ, New York).” Sarah Lawrence College, 2004. 68 pages. AAT 1419784.
Sherlock, Michael George. “The Search: Apprehending Visions of Community through Metaphor.” University of Victoria (Canada), 2004. 135 pages. AAT MQ90940.
Ph. D. Theses
Ahmad, Dohra Khadija. “Landscapes of Hope: Anti-colonial Utopianism in America.” Columbia University, 2004. 286 pages. AAT 3128916.
Chan, Edward K. “The Subject of Utopia: Race and Utopia in Contemporary American Literature (Gloria Anzaldua, Samuel L. Delany, Marge Piercy, Dorothy Bryant, Mary Staton).” The University of Rochester, 2004. 294 pages. AAT 3122226.
Ferrara, Mark S.“Religion and Literary Utopianism.” University of Denver, 2004. 221 pages. AAT 3134407.
Hanet, Frederique Elsie.” La litterature du refus en pays domines: Entre continuite, invention et utopie (Jean-Charles Harvey, Aime Cesaire, Martinique).” Universite de Montreal (Canada), 2004. 302 pages. AAT NQ91917.
Heckman, Davin.“‘It’s a Small World After All’: Smart Homes, Narrative, and the Technology of the Perfect Day.” Bowling Green State University, 2004. 237 pages. AAT 3135432.
Lee, Jun Young.” History and Utopian Disillusion: The Dialectical Politics of John Dos Passos’ Novels in the Era of High Capitalism.” The University of Nebraska—Lincoln, 2004. 343 pages. AAT 3126955.
Malisa, Mark. “Unreasonable Reason: The Quest for Utopia in Critical Theory, Critical Pedagogy, and Liberation Theology.” University of Nevada, Reno, 2004. 220 pages. AAT 3131743.
Nelson, Jennifer Schwenk. “Unpacking Utopia: Uncustomary Inspections of the Ideological Baggage of Exploration, Empire, and Otherness in Selected English and American Utopian Fictions.” University of California, Riverside, 2004. 553 pages. AAT 3130272.
Tiitinen, Johanna. “‘Work as if You Live in the Early Days of a Better Nation’: History and Politics in the Works of Alasdair Gray (Scotland).” Helsingin Yliopisto (Finland), 2004. 276 pages. Not Available from UMI.
Voparil, Christopher J. “Politics and Vision in the Thought of Richard Rorty.” New School University, 2004. 254 pages. AAT 3119687.
Walker, Gary L. “Evolving toward Utopia: An Exploration of Evolutionary Ideas in Utopias at the turn of the Nineteenth Century (Mary E. Bradley Lane, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ignatius Donnelly).” Arizona State University, 2004. 170 pages. AAT 3123640.
