The Castro District in San Francisco as a Contemporary Utopia: “Somewhere over the rainbow”

In search of a utopia in a real place, in which groups marginalized by society recreate a space, this article offers an analysis of the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco. This neighborhood inhabited by sexual minorities is an example not only of a utopian counter-space, but also of a resident identity based on an urban space, of an international LGBTQ+ community. First, a micro-history of Castro and the imaginary construction of the neighborhood through images, narratives, words, everything visual and discursive will show, the infrapolitics, the invisible structure of this resistance. In a second phase, the promises and conditions of the neighborhood will be examined in order to discuss the accessibility and credibility of this utopia. Based on Foucault’s concept of heterotopias, the principle of "a system of opening and closing" of this utopian space will be questioned through testimonies of the current inhabitants during the San Francisco Pride of 2019. This analysis of the history, structure and semiology of the neighborhood and its relationship to the outside world will allow us to question the possibility of a utopia that is feasible or achieved in today’s world.

L’utopie bucolique revisitée par l’architecture contemporaine L’exemple du centre commercial Waves Actisud de Moulins-Les-Metz

Utopia is a blurred concept, multi-faceted and ever changing over time. In the Ancient Graeco-Roman world, it takes the form of a bucolic « bubble » of happiness. Theocritus, a 3rd century B.C. hellenistic poet, shapes it as a triangular relationship between the shepherd, his animals and his gods, in an idyllic nature and conceives it as a metapoetic exploration of literature; Vergilius, when he rewrites bucolic utopia, at the very end of the Republican Rome (37 B.C.), mingles it with the symbolism of Arcadia. Waves Actisud is the first Open Sky Shopping Center, opened in Moulins-lès-Metz, in october 31th, 2014, near the A31 highway. Built by the Phalsbourg Company, it plays upon bucolic utopia, reviving pastoral realities in the mercantile present of the 21th century. This contemporary architectural space works on geometric shapes, the outside and the inside, the light – as recommended by the Light Architecture –, while focusing on human needs and thinking of ecological problems. It was conceived as a soothing “matrix”, a “bubble” of bucolic welfare, and a commercial Arcadia in an urban peripheral zone. In that, it has some characteristics of a Utopia.

« On vit dans une utopie ; ce n’est juste pas la nôtre. » De More à Miéville : activisme, spatialité et métamorphose du registre utopique

Since the 1960s, it is more common to encounter criticism rather than praise for utopian ideas. In 1964, while moderating a debate between Ernst Bloch et Theodor Adorno, Horst Krüger stated that « [today] the word ‘utopia’ does not have a good sound to it ». Twenty years later, art historian Robert Hughes goes even further by saying that the xxth century was full of utopian propositions: « drawn, designed, sometimes even built, and in the process it was shown that ideal cities don’t work […]. It seems that like plants we do need the shit of others for nutriments ». However, after decades of rejection, in the work of some writers like China Miéville this mode is being reborn, albeit in a modified form often called « radical fantasy ». Considered by some as the direct descendant of utopia, it similarly puts front and center the figure of the activist searching for progressive social justice and economic equality, but treats the future as an indeterminate and unpredictable topic. This article takes advantage of this apparent resurrection and interest, in order to attempt to decipher our seemingly secular obsession for this shape-shifting genre. Our investigation will briefly summon Michael Gazzaniga’s research in neurobiology, followed by the works of Francesca Polletta in the sociology of social movements field, in order to draw a direct relationship between the act of storytelling and the birth and rise of new collective actors. The critical theory of science-fiction, formulated by the croato-canadian researcher Darko Suvin will allow us to dig deeper into the inner mechanisms of utopia, and to show how this rhetoric device sometimes manages to persuade its audience that its dream-like imagery either is or it should be real. This theoretical framework will be accompanied by two case studies, two utopian examples dating to the beginning of the XXth century: on one hand we will delve into the belligerent manifest of futurist architecture — born in 1914 from F. T. Marinetti’s words and Antonio Sant’Elia’s lines — and on the other, into the vulnerable and pacifist glass worlds imagined by the expressionist writer Paul Scheerbart and architect Bruno Taut. By putting these historic works in parallel with Miéville’s contemporary novel The City & The City (2009) — a reference point in radical fantasy — we aim to unveil the continuities and discontinuities between our historic understanding of the utopian mode and this new contemporary form.

Adolescence, corps et utopie dans Fish Tank d’Andrea Arnold

This article seeks to discover the relationships between adolescence and utopias in the film Fish Tank by British director Andrea Arnold, based on the fact that adolescence is a kind of "horizon of dreams" that galvanizes the hope to build other forms of life and thought. We are particularly interested in utopias fed by heroin, the most important of which is dance. In this sense, the analysis ventures to note that the body becomes the engine of the struggle to emancipate itself from the universe of adults. Also, our reading of the film attempts to establish to what point these utopias build the bases of a thought of emancipation. Although the film does not directly address the subject of utopias, several of the narrative and aesthetic elements evoke the question of ideals in adolescence, as well as the importance of these imaginaries for the projection of the future and to overcome the adversities experienced in adolescence.

Perceived Proximity and Distance in the Doctors-Patients Relationships : Application to the Breast Cancer Treatment Case

An obvious questioning of the doctor-patient relationship leads us to conduct a research on the point of view of patients who have had to follow a breast cancer treatment pathway. We want to know to what extent the notions of distance/proximity make it possible to explain the doctors-patients relationships, and on what realities it is based. It appears that the answer is complex, multifaceted, and rather poses the question of the dimensions of the relationship alongside the medical protocol.

Distance and Social Ties in the « Burqa Affair »: Spatial Arrangements and Regimes of Visibility

This study develops a semiotics analysis of the « burqa affair » on French national press and observes how this public debate interrogates the problematic of the distance (physical, social and symbolical) between the secular and religious subjects in view of the question of social ties (recognition and appreciation). The analysis of the prohibitionist discourse in such debate brings into light the importance of the face in the republican conception of social ties and the primacy of the figure of transparency inside republican regime of visibility. This republican translation of the social cohesion configures a spatial problematic since it generates a semiotic process that redefines the concept of “public space” and consecrate it in the terms of 2010 law. The reconfiguration of distance that results from the mediatisation of the “burqa affair” carries, in return, some significant effects over the practical and symbolical modalities of social ties, notably the relation between oneself and the others, and raises important questionings about the meaning of contemporary public spaces and places.

Teachers and Interpersonal Relationships: a Question of Distance and Social Link?

Social distance and social link are important in the relationships between teachers and pupils. This question deserves to be examined with a sociological eye. The aim of this book chapter is to clarify the meaning of the terms (“social distance” and “social link”) and to analyze the influences of the social distance reconfigurations on the behavior of the first towards the second. Based on interviews with secondary school teachers, this chapter aims to show how do the influences of social distance reconfigurations change or not their oral language practices.