Utopia/Dystopia as an encounter with the Other
Okay, it's been a while since I've written and this is an odd post but this is so that Amy can help me with my project and so I have the info later.
Ideas about my "Christian Encounter with the Religious Other" paper:
The chapter is on Utopias, sort of, specifically it's on Marxist Utopias. Since a good many of the Marxists utopias don't exist anymore, at least in the same form, I thought I needed to add thoughts on dystopias and the fall of utopian ideas. So I called on my very own dystopian expert Amy.
The point of the paper/presentation is to present to the class a group or individuals they may sometime come in contact with, to help them know how to encounter them in a Christian manner (not necessarily for the purpose of conversion, we tend to like the idea of "dialogue") So my thought is that there is an entire group of youngish academic types who have been schooled in literature and politics and live in the tension between utopian ideals and dystopian understandings. Many feel an affinity for the utopian ideas of justice for the oppressed and helping the poor, and as a peice of this, have a great deal of dislike/distrust/anger at the church and Christians (maybe other religions too?) and perhaps it goes without saying the democratic state, for failing to have real justice and equity. However, since the fall of the communist states and post-WWII these youngish people also have ambiguity about whether true utopia can really be achieved, thus the rise in novels like 1984, Brave New World, Oryx and Crake, The Handmaids Tale etc. I know the first two were written pre-WWII so I'm wondering what their connection might be, perhaps they were critiquing the utopian ideas they saw on the horizon. Anyway, the ideas behind these books is that any utopian state will have an oppressed group, or will need to oppress some for the good of all. Perhaps this is Marxism in the negative.
I think I may also be able to pull in Latin American Liberation theology, since it is often more tangible in communist/pre-communist states. Oh, I guess I should say also that a favorite phrase of many people who think like this is "I'm very spiritual, but not religious." These are some ramblings. Any thoughts by anyone out there in cyberspace might be helpful.
posted by Laura @ 7:24 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Dude, that is totally the title to a paper I should write as well...
Derrida says that we can't encounter the Other except through accidents, and we can't desire the Other without the assurance that we'll never actually reach him or her. That seems pretty dystopian to me.
Okay, so here was the thought I was working on:
Utopian fiction was the imaginative playing out of social systems--while there are many pre-Renaissance utopias, the flood of them really came in the 17th century with Enlightenment thinking on society. See Locke et al. Social contract, not theology held together a community.
As the idea of "progress" continued and industrialism exploded (quite literally in some cases...), it seemed that social evolution was possible: humanity could move beyond the "primitive" and ritualistic hunter gatherer societies right up through feudalism, then industrialism, then capitalism, then communism. Just like going from bacteria to Human.
The evidence from Western societies certainly pointed in that direction. Plato proposed a utopian possibility in "The Republic"--a nation led by the brightest, strongest, wisest, most educated (most male, too. Oh well). As soon as the appropriate categories could be sorted, we could all start acting like a good little organism. Sit.
The development of the "individual" in Western thought and the idea of "technology" combined at an odd point in Romanticism (OH GOD). New ideas about what it means to be human had to come out, as machines started doing things humans used to. Plato's Republic didn't make as much sense--sure, philosopher-kings could rein, but what would all the stupid people do for a living?
As the idea of the "individual" grew to be opposed to the idea of "communal" or "community" the global culture was also emerging. So when one dude gets mad in Europe, the whole world goes to war. Technology and the individual clash again, making us ask "what is human" and, I argue "what is worth keeping in human culture?"
The Utopianists were necessarily communal creatures. In order to create a human heaven on earth, the balances between consumption and production, violence and peace, self and other have to be regulated very carefully. Without the denial of the self in favor of the Other, utopias cannot work.
Dystopian novels (note, there are no "dystopianISTS") appeared at the end of WWI. The first was written by a Russian, Yevgeny Zamiatin (spelling varied). The "second" is arguably Brave New World, published a few months before WWII. Post WWII, Orwell got his hands on Zamiatin's book ("We" or "We Others"--note the communal nature is now seen as dystopian) and wrote a British-ized version for a post atomic bomb culture. The popularity of scifi also arose as "low" culture at that time, and the problem of the individual and technology became solidified in that genre. Dystopias became almost common place, if not a little trite, until the feminist dystopias appeared in the 1970s, most notably by Ursula K Le Guin and Marge Piercy.
Utopianism thrives in scifi--while the fiction does not necessarily portray a utopia like Thomas More did, the scifi ideal is a future collaboration of alien races in a technologically smooth world. Note that there is no monetary system on Star Trek. While utopia isn't achieved in most scifi stories, it is uplifted as humanity's ultimate achievement.
This is where utopianism brushes up against Christianity. You're right to point out that utopianists don't want Christianity--they don't want any religion that will deconstruct the communal nature. The "newer" scifi utopias feature a purely individualistic world--here, Christianity is unwelcome because it is an infringment on individual rights.
Which is why I still argue that dystopias are hopeful, and dystopianists are better to "dialogue" with. Utopianists believe humanity, if purified of its base desires for money, for possession, for that individualism which creates heirarchy, can really create perfection. Dystopianists are willing to recognize their own disability; humanity is not capable of creating its own salvation.
Tragedies (which I argue dystopias are a postmodern brand of) are a symbolic cleansing of the base desires that would prevent heaven on earth; we read or see tragedies to "kill the principle" as Burke says, to watch a version of ourselves be punished and cleansed of sin. Dystopias can be seen as a similar corrective: by postualting hell, we prevent ourselves from creating it. We also must recognize the possibility of sin, of human violence within us.
Utopias ask us to encounter the Other by becoming not the Other and not ourselves, but some non-identity. Dystopias ask us to encounter the Other by killing him (and us) symbolically in text; they also teach us to fear the Other because you never know who's watching. The gospel story--which IS Dystopian, I mean, hello, hiding in a garden?--shows us this mechanism (see Girard) of "killing the principle." Like Winston, Jesus is killed for his claims against the grain, but unlike Winston, Jesus does not succomb--he does not end up loving Big Brother. Then he comes back, and instead of using his superpowers to fix the world, he allows the dystopia to continue, because he knows we CANNOT make utopia on earth. To do so would be to take away free will.
If society is a problem because there is always/already a separation of Self and Other, utopianists and dystopianists imagine different outcomes when that relationship is regulated. Jesus asks us to break the entire cycle by introducing the one thing Girard and other current anthropologists can't imagine: absolute forgiveness. Forgiveness as the reconciliation of self and Other to the greatest extent possible.
Um. Yeah. Sorry that's so long. Hope that helps?
Amy this is solid gold. I don't understand it all right now, but maybe when I've had more sleep and don't have a stomach ache and a cold it will sink in. THANKS!
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