The idea of a possible utopian state leads to mass failure.

This article is not grounded in sociological theory per se; however, it does argue that a contribution to the field itself may be found in otherwise strictly literary or philosophical texts. Recent sociopolitical uprisings have again demonstrated the tendency to think that genuine change can only be enacted through mass revolt. Critics and opponents of these movements have pejoratively declared them failure because they lack a “positive vision”. Is there a crisis in utopian thinking today? Perhaps. It is thought that mass movements constitute a power onto themselves capable of bringing about genuine change in the world. However, these movements are eventually met with what Slavoj Žižek calls “the proverbial morning after question” (What happens tomorrow morning?) (see Žižek, 2012). Maybe the masses are not the only valid conduit by which to change the system; what is needed is a personal comportment to the world which allows for continuous utopian potential to be lived through and change enacted through. Perhaps one ought to revisit the site of the individual for a possible analysis of overlooked utopian potential. To begin the return to the individual I propose a quasi-hermeneutic move to address the concept of utopia itself, originating as it did with the work of Thomas More in 1516. Fátima Vieira writes that More’s imaginary island was originally to be called “Nusquama”, from the Latin word “Nusquam”, which means “nowhere”, “no place”, “on no occasion”. However, More wanted to convey a meaning that exceeded this notion. Inspired by the travel/imperial expeditions of his time (e.g., Amerigo Vespucci, Christopher Columbus, and Angelo Poliziano) and the then blossoming capitalist markets, More wanted the name of his fictional island to reflect a sense of possibility and hope that the Otherness of these new lands (the New World) would bring for Europe. Furthermore, More wanted to convey the idea of an ideal society that “existed” somehow without being reified qua plan as in the Republic or Laws of Plato (Vieira, 2010: 3-4). As such the Western tradition was indelibly marked by what I will call – echoing Alain Badiou – the More-Event: the invention of the word “utopia”: “derived from the Greek ‘ou’ (‘non-’) and ‘topos’ (‘place’), means ‘no-place’ (with a possible pun on ‘eu’ (‘good’): ‘good-place’)” (Bruce, 2008: xxi). The use of the Greek over the Latin in the naming of Utopia was also intended as a homage to the Classical Ancient period of the Greeks that was thought by those Renaissance Humanists – of which More is counted – as the height of human achievement and culture. But what of this no-place today? How might it to be interpreted today? I believe that insight might be gained if no-place (utopia) is thought of as an always-already being-in-no- place as opposed to no-place as such dwelling just behind the horizon (but close enough that one senses its presence) as it is commonly understood today. This amounts to a veritable involution of no-place from an “out-there” to an “interior” (i.e., subjective) comportment with respect to the world. Indeed there are some contemporary cultural markers which point to the gradual awareness of this involution of the notion of no-place. My argument can be sensed in the words of the nineteenth-century historian Jacob Burckhardt: “We would like to know the waves on which we sail across the ocean; but we ourselves are these waves” (qtd. in Blumenberg, 1997: 69). Here Burckhardt alludes to the limitless frontier that is the face of all that is possible and encourages the recognition that one is already that frontier. It is the responsibility of the subject to “float” upon the “waves” to the point where, like Burckhardt, “we ourselves are these waves”. Jacques Rancière helps clarify this sentiment when he tells of Wordsworth’s experience of the festivals of revolutionary France: “Wordsworth’s path is the poetry of the humble, dedicated to glorifying, in the language of the simple, the most modest of wildflowers that the walker ignores or steps on” (Rancière, 2003: 23). For Wordsworth, one was able to experience the utopian nature of the moment, the here-and- now. Wordsworth writes, Not in Utopia, subterranean fields, Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where! But in the very world, which is the world Of all of us. (qtd. in Rancière, 2003: 11) It may appear that what Wordsworth presents his reader with is the very thing Marx and his followers wanted to abject from the consciousness of man; that is, a form of utopianism which descends into idle daydream and lack of political efficacy. In the words of Žižek – and to reverse Marx – perhaps “the only way to stop the system from working is to stop resisting it” (Žižek, 2012: 108). One may rightly be skeptical of this proposition. However, there is a politically disruptive aspect or potential in perceiving utopia as embedded in the real of the here and now. M. H. (Behooz) Tamdgidi has perhaps argued for this point strongest in the recent literature. Tamdgidi’s claim is that utopia is not a (no-)place properly speaking, nor is it strictly speaking a “desire” for something better; rather, utopia is an “attitude”: In contrast to reactive modes of anti-systemic behavior that concentrate on building a movement that instrumentally focuses on the destruction of the old order in order to reach a good life projected into the future (be that future distant or near, illusively or “realistically” conceived), the utopian attitude involves making effort, whatever their scope, towards imagining, theorizing and/or practically realizing that future goal in the here and now. (Tamdgidi, 2003: 131) My argument is one that espouses a form of Quixotism, where “inns must be castles” (De Unamuno, 1954: 327), or, like the response to Billy’s questions “where am I?” and “how did I get here?” upon being abducted by the Tralfamadorians in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five: It would take another Earthling to explain it to you. Earthlings are the great explainers, explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved or avoided. I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber. (Vonnegut, 1991: 85-86) Utopia is to be sensed and developed as such from the non-signifying experiences of the individual. This sensation is an affective quality inherent to one’s comportment with respect to the world that can then be emitted outward into the greater social body, continuing to balloon outward until “utopia” comes to affect all things in the cosmos. The catch, however, is that, much like Vonnegut’s Tralfamadorians, Tamdgidi’s seemingly expanding balloon of utopia does not begin in the individual and end with the cosmos; it simply is. At this point I will transition to a working example or case study through which I hope to develop a more concrete interpretation of the conception of an interior foundation for utopia. I think China Miéville’s The City and the City beautifully expresses the intimate connection between the cosmic and the non-signifying – “silent utopias” – which “never find expression in any tangible literary or communal forms” (Tamdgidi, 2003: 137) and yet no less constitute Utopia. This potential is located in Miéville’s brilliantly weird concept of “unseeing”.