AbstractIn addressing the semiotics of utopia and the utopian, we target the semiotic techniques and principles applied in More’s seminal text Utopia (1516) that established the universal logic for utopian discourse, and raise the question of the legitimacy of describing certain cultural production as utopian. Utopian discourse is often tied with an urban context. We question this association. The semiotic interpause is hard to achieve in the context of the physical environment. Yet this is where the utopia, the city, the society, and the utopian come together. Thus it is useful to review the notion of utopia in connection with the quite practical development of the (urban) sociocultural life in which the status of objects in communicative situations is continually redefined.
Constructing a universal logic of urban control?
