By describing unreachable places, the authors of utopias wanted to sharpen
curiosity and the imagination: "ah if these places existed, how I would like themto be real..." It's about lighting up the desire, that of a world where the life,the city, the relations would be softer and fairer... It is still a question ofgiving the tracks to approach its coasts. ---- U-topia, means "in no place" (fromthe Greek). A place that does not exist or that it is impossible to locate. FromThomas More's Utopia (1516) to the writings of Swift, Cyrano, Casanova, Voltaireof the Age of Enlightenment, the meaning is gradually changing, notably throughthe pronunciation of English (iou-topia) which leads to to think that we would infact speak of a good place, in Greek eu-topia.On arrival in this nowhere, finally, the two meanings come together and merge: itis an infinitely desirable landscape, organization and mores that give themselvesto the traveler to see, an exhausting journey, a storm at sea, or ingeniouscalculations have led to this (not yet) place.If for Thomas More, and even more so for François Rabelais, allegory and fablewere a question of circumventing the religious and political censorship of theirtime, the following centuries would make the utopian narrative a way of exploringpolitical options, to make rebound theses of governance, social organization,educational, etc.Move to overtakeAll the power of the genre is due to the displacement of these theses from thefield of the essay, to that of the imaginary. The public is wider and will beaffected, moral mistrust is circumvented, and above all the audacity of thesescan be completely unbridled. We are of course far from mass propaganda. But theutopian imagination of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries makes it possible to gobeyond the religious imagination of a good life in the hereafter, conditioned oncivil and moral obedience, towards a good life in the present, or in the nearfuture, which it is possible to build by human means.The use of the imaginary emotionally involves the reader and the listener, thereis projection and the desirable becomes desired. This literature is alreadyprogrammatic, first by disseminating much more widely than the political treatiseof a Plato, a Machiavelli, or a Montaigne can. Then, by proposing to this widerpublic, the big questions that agitate hearts and bodies: emancipation frominjustice[1], living a more comfortable life away from wars and selfish passions,establishing absolute equality[2], put Reason in the foreground over superstition(Swift, Voltaire), build a salubrious, harmonious city, capable of harboringutopia[3].Indeed, Antoine Hatzenberger[4]observes that there is a "convergence of the majorissues specific to utopological reflection: the geographical question of theplaces of utopia, the pragmatic question of its realization and the politicalquestion of the relationship between principles of government and the happinessof the people".courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare LibraryRealizing utopiasThus, utopia is not written only to conjecture, but to be realized. The issuescited by Hatzenberger will remain constants until Fourier, or the ZAD.It is true that religious thought and praxis have already shown that it ispossible to come together between people of the same sensibility, of the sameproject, to create experimental communities. Whether authorized by the Church ofRome (monastic orders), or pursued as heretics (Cathars, Vaudois...), theseexperiments attempted to concretely realize the ideals of their times (and theirparadigms).The 18th century "of the Enlightenment" also tried to realize its utopias, tomake the principles of life concrete. If they are still often under religiousinfluence, the emancipatory and political character of these experiences isembodied in what must be described as alternative societies: Libertalia, thepirate community of Madagascar, the Quilombo and other maroon communities in thenew world, the phalansteries of the following century.In many respects, and before it became irremediably bourgeois, Freemasonry (1717)is a pure product of this era, and projects itself as a place and practice ofequality, tolerance, to the point of sheltering the most revolutionary of theEuropean carbonari (1830, 1848), or even holding the barricades of the ParisCommune...Utopias materialize above all in the ideas disseminated, put into practicethrough institutional transformation. It is in the organization of society thatidealism becomes reality: no Babeuf and his "society of equals" withoutCampanella. No abolition of autocracy without all these dreams of self-regulationthrough Reason, cooperation, mutualism. The final word, as much as the genesis ofthe genre, goes to Thomas More, who has already set conditions for everything. InUtopia, no god intervenes, no magic operates, except that of cooperation andagreement around a social project.The imaginary as ruptureMore importantly, it posits a form that breaks with the surrounding paradigm.More is not satisfied (first part of the book) with hollowly criticizing thesociety of his time. He understands well that the point-by-point criticism,ideological in short, of the existing system, does not allow us to get out of it,does not allow the mind to free itself from the dominant model. Its second partproposes precisely not only to contradict the ideology of its time, but to gobeyond it by proposing something else. The only way is to place ourselves in theimagination, to ignite our revolutionary capacities.At the time when we are finalizing this file on June 28), the police haveinvested the ZAP of Pertuis (see Alternative libertarian of June) and are tryingto expel the utopians. Does this mean that our dreams are defeated? The answer isalways no, since More, Rabelais, Babeuf, Bakounine, Landauer, Goldmann...Cuervo (UCL Aix en Provence)To validate[1]Louis-Sébastien Mercier, author in 1771 of the first science fiction storytaking place elsewhere in time: L'An 2440, rêve if ever there was one.[2]Tommaso Campanella, The City of the Sun (1613).[3]Stanislas Leszczynski, author of Interview of a European with an Islander ofthe Kingdom of Dumocala (1752)[4]Antoine Hatzenberger (dir), Utopias des Lumières, Lyon, ENS Editions, 2010.https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Utopies-De-nul-lieu-au-lieu-bon_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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