Visit to Wëlakamike

In this fictional essay, two ethnographers visit Wëlakamike, a community started by a group of citizens who became disillusioned by the failure of nation states to reign in capitalism and manmade climate change. The researchers learn that the technologies and practices designed by community members are used to minimize harm to the environment by human activity while encouraging citizens to engage in spirited democratic practices and artistic interventions. As we articulate in our research statement, this futuristic utopian community is developed upon a critique of contemporary surveillance capitalism and its capacity to disenfranchise people, weaken democracy, and harm the environment.

La Notion de l’inceste heureux dans la littérature utopique de la fin du xviiie siècle

This article examines ways in which the existence of incestuous relationships at the heart of the utopian project at the end of the Eighteenth century poses a philosophical challenge. When a utopian community is built on the principle of a definite improvement, how is it possible to envision a positive future when incest is introduced at the foundation of a society that pretends to be better than the existing one? Furthermore, how is it possible to establish laws and rules in a society when the initial members of this society have not been able to respect a law supposedly inviolable? Lastly, how can a utopian community, which thrives to be an ideological model, adopt incest as a legitimate possibility or even a norm? This article explores how several prerevolutionary utopias try to answer all those questions. Among the texts it considers are Guillaume Grivel’s L’Isle inconnue, Giacomo Casanova’s L’Icosameron, and Jacques Henri-Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie.

Class, Gender, and Utopian Community: In Memory of Erik Olin Wright

This essay, written in memory of Erik Olin Wright (1947–2019), explores Wright’s shift from a decades-long effort to map class structures in industrial societies to a search for paths to a more egalitarian future, pointing to the key role of feminist theory in that shift.

Fully Human Being

In Island (1962), Aldous Huxley presents a utopian community in which theinhabitants aim to become "fully human beings" by realizing their "potentialities."I demonstrate how Huxley's notion of the "human potentialities" havebeen misrepresented, both by scholars and by the founders of the Esalen Institute.Huxley's focus on human potentialities arose from a shift in his thinkingfrom the other-worldly mysticism of The Perennial Philosophy (1945) to thelife-affirming traditions of Tantra, Zen and Mahayana Buddhism. In Island,the population attempt to realize their human potentialities and engage in anexperiential spirituality that celebrates the body and nature as sacred throughthe use of the moksha-medicine and the practice of maithuna. I argue thatwhereas Tantric adepts practised maithuna as a means to acquire supernormalpowers (siddhis), in Island the Palanese version of maithuna is quite differentand is used to valorize samsara and the acquisition of human potentialities.

A Wandering Ship in Utopian Space: ‘Carte blanche’ by Sylvie Lainé

This article shows how the French science-fiction short story ‘Carte blanche’ interrogates individual freedom in the utopian community of a spaceship wandering through space. Although the community chose to secede from Earth to live on this ship according to the motto ‘Le changement, c'est la vie’, it questions how individuals can partake of a social ideal that promotes change but prohibits any amending of the underlining system and argues that characters in the story have deliberately embraced a social order that limits their autonomy and rejects history in order to enjoy, in return, the illusion of eternal youth.

Mere solidarity is not enough: Exploring dystopian reality in Edward Bond’s 'The Tin Can People'

Solidarity is an indispensable part of the utopian and dystopian world since people gather around a common cause either to create an ideal community or to get rid of a difficult situation. Unlike utopia, in which solidarity mostly comes out voluntarily, in dystopia, it grows up compulsorily triggered by emotions such as anxiety, distrust, paranoia, and fear primarily due to a totalitarian regime or the effects of a nuclear war. However, in The Tin Can People (1984), British playwright Edward Bond propounds a new perspective to postapocalyptic dystopia by portraying a group of people who create a utopian community, a heaven in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, as a result of living in solidarity. This article aims to trace how dystopian world reveals the bitter ‘reality’ against this illusionary heaven with the arrival of a stranger and dissolves the community despite the solidarity that the survivors have been preserving for years to show that mere solidarity is not enough to save a community.

The Eagle Creek Venture

In 1801, Waldemar discovers that du Pont's Scott County land is crisscrossed by conflicting claims of ownership, as was typical of much Kentucky land at that time. His work is delayed by the difficulty of persuading the original surveyor to accompany him there. The soil in du Pont's tract, where the latter had originally wanted to establish a utopian community, is not especially fertile. It is in addition too far from outlets for its produce. In November 1801, Waldemar takes emergency steps to prevent the land from being sold for nonpayment of taxes. In the summer of 1802, du Pont sells the land to his son, Victor, and returns to France. Waldemar is rehired as land agent, and having decided to enter commerce, persuades Victor to supply him with merchandise to sell. Victor becomes increasingly slow to reply to Waldemar's letters. Unbeknownst to Waldemar, Victor is staving off a bankruptcy to which in August 1805 he succumbs.