LITR 5737 Literary & Historical Utopias

Monday, 25 June: begin Ecotopia

Monday, 25 June: begin Ecotopia

Historical presentation: sixties utopian movements—Ruth Pilarte

Historical presentation +- web review: Auroville: Carlos Castillo

Tuesday, 26 June: Instructor leads with page samples from Toni Morrison’s Paradise (African American novel with utopian themes) and two virtual-reality novels with utopian themes (Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash [1992] and Dennis Danvers’s Circuit of Heaven [1998])

Historical presentation: virtual utopias or Rainbow Gatherings: Donny Wankan

Web review: Ernest Callenbach sites on course webpage: Ruth Pilarte

Thursday, 28 June: conclude Ecotopia

Discussion-starter: Cindy Goodson

Historical presentation: Amish community / lifestyle: Kristen Bird

Historical presentation: New Urbanism: Yvonne Hopkins

Monday, 2 July: final exam due by Tuesday, 3 July at noon.

midterms

5-weeks session requires fast work, not getting behind

Thanks for cooperating with assignments, deadlines--all to your credit

Midterms returned Friday evening as planned--few responses

5-weeks session doesn't offer much chance to absorb, reflect, re-think

Welcome to review any of your work at any time in future

If feel frustrated, take it by Writing Center for peer review, but also consider conferring with me--direct tutorial conferences are strong learning experiences

Meanwhile, since final exam is upon us, try to connect experiences, demonstrate improvements, which I'll look for and comment on

final exam

model assignments

assignments

Tuesday, 26 June: Instructor leads with page samples from Toni Morrison’s Paradise (African American novel with utopian themes) and two virtual-reality novels with utopian themes (Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash [1992] and Dennis Danvers’s Circuit of Heaven [1998])

Historical presentation: virtual utopias or Rainbow Gatherings: Danny Wankan

Web review: Ernest Callenbach sites on course webpage: Ruth Pilarte

Review last Thursday's class on multicultural dimensions of utopian studies

Nominate other texts to consider in place of or addition to slave narratives, Dr. King's Dream speech, and Chief Seattle

Discussion for Ecotopia

At this point in the course, how do you immediately connect Ecotopia to our previous course texts before the midterm?

1a. How to define the literary genre of “utopias?” What elements and difficulties repeatedly appear? What audiences are involved or excluded?

1b. What different genres contribute to, interface with, or branch from utopia? Examples: dystopia, ecotopia, Socratic dialogue, tract, propaganda, satire, science fiction, fantasy, novel / romance, adventure / travel narrative. Others?

1a. How to define the literary genre of “utopias?” What demarcations and difficulties repeatedly appear?

how identify genre? How does Ecotopia immediately announce that it's in a tradition of literary utopias?

How well does it work as entertaining fiction as opposed to didactic literature?

Cf. Herland as specialty utopia with spin or angle

political or economic theme that is foundation for social improvement

whole world or society based on one principle that affects everything

How does it show its datedness? How have we surpassed? What anticipations of change?

45 cooperative criticism (cf. Oneida)

3 being totally out of touch, no phone service, wire service indirect, uncanny isolation

13 clothes loose with bright colors, denim common

1970s ecological conscience

First "Earth Day" 1970

1968-76: Nixon-Ford administrations + Democratic congresses + Supreme Court surprisingly friendly to environmental movement; support for reproductive rights and international population control (Endangered Species Act, increased mileage standards, reforestation and conservation, creation of Environmental Protection Agency)

late 70s: Carter administration: no-growth or limited growth economics; support for reproductive rights

1980-2007: Reagan: hyper-growth: industrial de-regulation, stimulation of global capital via tax breaks (& debt), non-enforcement of laws by EPA; re-criminalization of abortion and withdrawal of support for international population control

+ "globalization"--local economies globalized, main streets shuttered or boutiqued for corporate big-box stores

"small government" > re-concentration of power in unregulated capital

None of this recent status quo had happened when Ecotopia was written

8 long-range economic policies, diversification and decentralization of production in each city and region

9 total social cost per person

20 [contrast Looking Backward] economies in food distribution. As your grocery executives know, a store handling a thousand items is far less difficult and expensive to operating than one handling five thousand or more, as yours do.

46 20-hour work week, revision of Protestant work ethic upon which America built

46 forced to isolate its economy from the competition of harder-working peoples

65 economy of ecological abundance > generosity (contrast capitalist premise of "scarcity")

2d. How essential is “millennialism” (apocalyptic or end-time narrative) to the utopian narrative?

2 stand-off, helped by national economic crisis

11 San Francisco, fire and earthquake [apocalypse?]

Freedom or equality?

3 Government’s control over population seems to be primitive compared to ours. Americans are heartily hated.

10 manners unsettling, women stare me directly in eyes

11 as if they had endless time on their hands

11 none of the implicit threat of open criminal violence that pervades our public places, but an awful lot of strong emotion, willfully expressed! . . . curiosity . . . lost sense of anonymity

23 horribly over-emotional

24 [couple fight] theatrical, cf. Italy

24 Evidently restraints on interpersonal behavior have been very much relaxed here, and extreme hostility can be accepted as normal behavior

29 a girl’s hair blowing in the wind

33 “Doesn’t this stable-state business get awfully static?” . . . “system provides stability, and we can be erratic within it”

33 x-progress? . . . in practice there’s no stable point

33-4 quarrelsome, can afford to be because of root agreement [cf. Americans polite because armed]

1a. How to define the literary genre of “utopias?” What demarcations and difficulties repeatedly appear?

how identify genre? How does Ecotopia immediately announce that it's in a tradition of literary utopias?

How well does it work as entertaining fiction as opposed to didactic literature?

interest in learning, questioning, evolving

5 [shift to diary entry]

6 [news report?]

7 small booklet, Ecotopia Explains

8 long-range economic policies, diversification and decentralization of production in each city and region

12 boulevard > mall, trees, electric vehicles, bicycle lanes, fountains, sculptures, kiosks, gardens

13 street musicians playing Bach

18 Assistant Minister in work overalls outfit . . . like many Ecotopians, unnervingly relaxed

24 missing years with Pat and kids

25 wire office, couldn’t help smiling back

30-1 something peculiar going on, reminding me of something, confronted with some fine personal opportunity, as if I was a child

35-6 women totally escaped dependent roles . . . above all, no need to manipulate men, x-loading on sex roles, people as people

36 sisterly, x-touch, hung up on my own patterns

52 gruff-sounding man, pleased to hear of my visit, surprise . . . businessmen of some kind: the Opposition!

52 okay ecological reforms, but stifle spirit of enterprise

53 let the managers manage

New Urbanism

27 streets cf. medieval cities

27 groceries home in string bags or bicycle baskets

27 entire population w/in half mile of transit station, many small park-like places, no large paved areas exposed to sun

Gandhi and village democracy

Gandhi and eArchive

Gandhi's personal effects

Gandhi's Seven Deadly Sins

Mohandas Karamachand Gandhi, one of the most influential figures in modern social and political activism, considered these traits to be the most spiritually perilous to humanity.

• Wealth without Work
• Pleasure without Conscience
• Science without Humanity
• Knowledge without Character
• Politics without Principle
• Commerce without Morality
• Worship without Sacrifice

Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: "social capital"

Literary issues

Course objective 1. Genre:

1a. How to define the literary genre of “utopias?” What demarcations and difficulties repeatedly appear?

how identify genre? How does Ecotopia immediately announce that it's in a tradition of literary utopias?

Cf. Herland in imitation of style + change

Herland begins as manly adventure story, adapts to feminist utopia

Narrator slowly converts—does reader too?

Cultural issues

3e. What social structures, units, or identities does utopia expose, extend, or frustrate? What changes in child-rearing, feeding, marriage, aging, etc. result? (Social units or structures: person-individual, gender, sex, family [nuclear or extended], community, village/town/city, class, ethnicity, farm, region, tribe, clan, union, nation, ecosystem, planet.)

Cf. Herland as utopia with special spin or angle, political or economic theme that is foundation for social improvement

How does it show its datedness? How have we surpassed? What anticipations of change?

In what ways does it resist datedness? What surprises?

In what ways does Utopia resemble a novel? (Broadly, the "modern English novel" would not appear for app. 200 more years--DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe 1719)

Lacking plot, what literary pleasures?

2-3 scene, dialogue, narrative

84 character interplay

proverbs 2, 7

anecdote 6-7

figurative speech

21 analogy, proverb

23 no ill simile

25 analogy of a sick man

[rhetoric x poetics]

Roman poet Horace on purpose of poetry / literature: "to entertain and inform"

Compared to most novels, utopian novels emphasize "inform" rather than "entertain"

How to characterize: polemical, didactic, propaganda?

What social structures, units, or identities does utopia expose, extend, or frustrate? What changes in child-rearing, feeding, marriage, aging, etc. result? (Social units or structures: person-individual, gender, sex, family [nuclear or extended], community, village/town/city, class, ethnicity, farm, region, tribe, clan, union, nation, ecosystem, planet.)

Cf. Herland as utopia with special spin or angle, political or economic theme that is foundation for social improvement

E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (1973)

important influence on "slow-growth" or "no-growth" policies of 1970s: Jerry Brown, Jimmy Carter, the Club of Rome

repudiated by hyper-growth policies of 1980s, Reagan, Clinton

Houston projected to grow by 3 million people by 2025 (like adding two San Antonios or 1 Milwaukee to city).

Schumacher sites on Research links

Decentralization, de-industrialization; cf. Gandhi

'swadeshi', which, in effect, means local self-sufficiency

1970s

ecological conscience

mid-70s: Nixon-Ford administration

late 70s: Carter administration: no-growth?

80s: Reagan: hyper-growth 

How does it show its datedness? How have we surpassed? What anticipations of change?

In what ways does it resist datedness? What surprises?