| SHARED SACRIFICE THE JOURNAL OF PROGRESSIVE THOUGHT 12 FEBRUARY 2009 |
- Art’s very artistry, even if that is now a question of pure form, effects a
spurious form of sublimation which will bind and confiscate the very
energies it hopes to release for the purposes of political change. We
stumble upon the contradiction of all utopianism, that its very images
of harmony threaten to hijack the radical impulses they hope to
promote. -Terry Eagleton
This column engages in a few of the debates over the term ideology in an
attempt to re-map and revamp the intersection between ideological and
utopian impulses, arguing that visionary discourses cannot always be
distinguished from an underlying material reality. In other words,
ideology/utopia often depends on a three-fold gap between the real, the
construction of the real, and the possibility of a new real. The first argument
is simple: the imaginary, fictive, phantasmic, and mystical trajectories of our
everyday lives are not always part of false emancipation or trapped in a
performative contradiction. If the “real” breaks down into multiple realities,
then ideology does not have a uniquely utopian danger--every path is
littered with projections and competing modes of materiality. The second
argument stems from the first: an emphasis on heterotopias, which would
also include utopias (Foucault, 1973, 1986; Longxi, 1988), admits to the
inevitability of imagined realms and shifts the debate away from ideology.
The fracturing of ideology through the notion of heterotopia may take on
ideological tendencies itself. Nevertheless, those tendencies can be given
expression within a heterotopia that constitutes contingent forms of culture
such that representation becomes more than political imagery. Foucault
posits that our “heterotopic” era makes the places that we occupy “at once
absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and
absolutely unreal” (1986, p24).
1. Ideology
Citing a 1925 article in which Herbert Wichelns links discourse and oratory to
literary criticism and public address, Wander (1972) attaches the concept of
ideology to rhetorical criticism. Moving toward a notion of ideological
criticism, Wander notes that Wichelns expressed ideological motives through
his field of focus. By analyzing influential leaders and public addresses,
Wichelns excluded certain groups (immigrants, women, working class) from
participation in rhetorical citizenship. Wander notes that “the political
significance of what Wichelns left out, the concept of the ‘public space’ within
which he worked ... became mirrored in neo-Aristotelian tradition” (Wander,
1972, p108). Similar to the problems that arise when history revolves
around “great men” and great events, limiting public address to famous
oratories has a conservative ideological effect of its own.
Wander turns away from the conservative impulse represented by Wichelns
and argues that rhetorical criticism must include historical contextualization.
The problem, however, is that Wander is primarily interested in the ways
criticism can “‘unmask’ rhetoric in light of the way it functions in an historical
context” (Wander, p109). Thus, his call to fight against ideologies that
exclude particular voices becomes equally ideological (favoring such ideals
as the peace movement or the environmentalist cause). He has engaged in
an interpretive project, assuming that an ideology establishes a certain gap
between the way things are, the way things are perceived, and the way
things could be. These gaps between true and false, between real and
fictive, between original and copy must be broken down and charted in a
different way. Bipolar relationships and social dichotomies can still exist
within a more fragmented and varied method of criticism. If we limit ourselves
to drawing borders between the dominant and the emancipatory, or between
the collective and the private, however, we threaten to bypass third and
fourth options, angles lurking in the margins that function as inversions or
implosions or escapes or traps. Interventions that operate between and
beyond the carpeted world of ideology and utopia, moves such as Bhabha’s
third space of enunciations, Zizek’s interpassivity, Stewart’s space on the
side of the road, Morse’s ontology of distraction, and Butler’s performativity
of political discourse all require articulation. Are these views compatible
within a discussion of ideology? If so, how can ideology be mapped without
being lured into the process of interpretation?
Of course, ideology may be one of most slippery terms in contemporary
criticism, requiring certain boundaries to allow it to have explanatory value
but also requiring enough flexibility to thwart any attempt to contain it with a
definition. Eagleton, in a book entirely devoted to the subject, offers a
myriad of possible meanings of “ideology,” including the contention: “What
persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods
or vermin is ideology” (Eagleton, 1991, pxiii). Eagleton’s project, though, is
to revive the concept of ideology after the blows levied by critiques of
representation, critiques of epistemological certainty, and arguments that link
ideology to power as omnipresent and thus tautological. In the face of these
(ideological) attacks against the very concept of ideology, it makes sense
that Eagleton would offer an expansive reinterpretation. By now it should be
apparent that perspectives on ideology are, in a strange way, more
numerous than ideologies themselves. Eagleton’s interpretation emphasizes
ideology as a set of false of deceptive beliefs, but he is not willing to concede
that ideologies are always “mistakes” (1991, p30).
These debates have been circulating for hundreds if not thousands of
years. Early revolutionaries in Europe used the phrase to refer to the critical
study of ideas. Eventually, ideology as “critical thought” became associated
with abstract intellectualism (as opposed to history and knowledge of the
heart), demonstrated by Napoleon who branded these intellectuals as
subversive and impractical. Arguably Marx appropriated the term next, using
it to describe the legitimizing ideas of the ruling class. Of course Marxism
itself can be ideological, hinting that anti-ideologies are often ideological.
The dominant class does not necessarily have a monopoly on ideologies.
Soon the Frankfurt school--Adorno, Kracauer, Marcuse, etc.--invested
themselves in ideology, conceiving of it as a form of masking. In other
words, ideology designated “the lack of totality or completeness in any
attempt to generalize...the connection between what is embraced or
concealed and the interests served by a particular formation” (Wander,
1972, p106). This transformation in ideology is summarized well by Onions
(1966, p460), who argues that the meaning of ideology shifted from the
“science of ideas” to “ideal or visionary speculation,” and then to “a system
of ideas concerning social and political life.”
A chronological approach to ideology, though, especially one that follows a
linear progression, ultimately fails because it privileges the views that have
emerged most recently. At that point, ideology simply depends on the
particular framework being deployed and the specified historical context. In
his Chapter entitled, “What is Ideology?” Eagleton rattles off sixteen potential
definitions like he is writing the second volume of the Chinese Encyclopedia.
His list includes “any action-oriented set of beliefs,” “systematically distorted
communication,” and “forms of thought motivated by social interests” (1991,
p2). Complicating the issue, Deleuze and Guattari (1983, p4) note that
“there is no ideology and there never has been.” They group ideology with
the arboreal (tree-centered) arrangement of reality, an arrangement that has
been shattered and overcome by the cartography of rhizomes (surfaces,
territories, and protrusions). If ideology has vanished, are the effects any
different than Foucault’s contention that, subsumed by power relationships,
ideology is omnipresent? Either way--whether ideology is everywhere or
nowhere--it loses its descriptive value. Unlike Foucault or Deleuze, Zizek
(1997) manages to hold on to a way to map ideology by borrowing from
Lacan. He positions ideology as not only “irrational obedience,” but also the
rationalization “which masks the unbearable fact that Law is grounded only in
its own act of enunciation” (Zizek, 1997, p39). Ien Ang goes in still another
direction, emphasizing the way pleasure can “get the best of ideology”
through ironic tactics or “distancing.” She argues that an “ironic attitude
makes a reconciliation possible between the rules of the ideology of mass
culture and the experiencing of pleasure” (Ang, 1993, p408).
Similar to Ang, there is also the approach that ideology describes the
process of reification and the management of potentially oppositional
discourses by the logics of dominant economic interests. Cloud (1998) cites
Jameson to argue that “postmodernism” is ideologically concurrent with late
capitalism in the way it obscures class consciousness in the name of
“commodified micropolitics” (p163). When Jameson (1980) reads Jaws, the
novel by Peter Benchley, he sees the shark as a polysemous collection of
anxieties. The shark is a symbolic vehicle that gathers together fears of the
other, fears of the organic nature of death, and fears of the unreality of daily
life. In Jameson’s interpretation, though, it is the shark’s polysemous
function itself which is ideological. Jameson believes that the shark’s
diversity of surfaces somehow creates a homogenous anxiety--an anxiety
that can be contained by a heroic response that perpetuates the status quo.
The validity of this position, though, depends on a view of ideology that
stresses the legitimizing structures of the dominant class (often describes as
the utopian function). Ideology, particularly the ideology of the therapeutic,
points to the way material realities are manipulated by overemphasizing
“consciousness, idea, speech, and text as the determinants of such change”
(Cloud, 1998, p20). Following this train of thought, ideology is seen as a
type of cultural formation, creating a situation where “a critique of culture
must unmask the shared illusions of a society as ideas promulgated by and
serving the interests of those who control the production and distribution of
material goods” (p20). This is a powerful statement with which we can
critique the economic hierarchies of society; nonetheless, it may be the case
that the “therapeutic” does not always serve as a mask and it may be the
case that struggling against the therapeutic requires an equally rigid
ideology. At this point, at least two options provide alternatives to the uses
and dilemmas of ideology as a concept: one, a reformulation of ideology in
different terms; or, two, a replacement of ideology with a notion of discourse
or culture. When evaluating these two options, though, it is important not to
sidestep issues of materiality and exploitation.
It is here where the utopian surface joins the arrangement.
2. Utopias and Heterotopias
Another aspect of ideology involves its intersection with utopias or utopian
thinking. The nexus between these motivations surfaces in a number of
places. A utopia for whom? At what cost? Indeed, the “idea” or the “ideal”
at the root of ideol-ogy gestures to an abstract, theoretical, or imagined
concept. Likewise, the topos in utopia signals the absence of a place (ou =
not, topoi = place). Karl Mannheim joins ideology and utopia in the historical
process, positing that “the utopias of ascendant classes are often, to a large
extent, permeated with ideological elements” (Mannheim, 1936, p205). One
of his examples is “freedom” and the way it is offered as a real, or authentic,
utopia. The edge of freedom that challenged the pre-existing social system
(guild and caste orders) gave the rising bourgeoisie a realizable or possible
future. But how could a utopia (as an ideal place) ever present itself as
within reach (or even actually existing)? The notion of an “ideal” transcends
specific places and times--the ideal cannot be located except in incomplete
stages or in the abstract.
The issues surrounding utopias are similar to those surrounding ideology,
only most ideologies attempt to relate, as much as possible, to a particular
view of the “real” or the present. Utopias, by comparison, are rooted in
idealism and prophesy, serving as a Golden Age of the distant past or the
remote future. These visions and fantasies exist as a reconciliation that will
(could) occur in the future (Goodwin & Taylor, 1982; Levitas, 1991). The
ability to map the future, though, necessitates an awareness and
engagement with the present. Eckersley (1991, p186) posits that, “to be
realized, the aspirations released by utopianism must be critically related to
one’s knowledge of the present,” and Plattel (1972, p44) asserts that “the
critical portrayal of the future is the essence of the utopia.” Common
utopias include religious imagery: kingdom come, heaven on earth, or a
thousand years of peace. The dictionaries define it as “an ideally perfect
place, an impractical and idealistic concept for social and political reform.”
Etymologically, utopia extends from the name of Sir Thomas More’s
imaginary republic in 1516 (Onions, 1966). In a rumination on More’s
Utopia, Jameson (1977, p2) portrays the event itself as the moment when
“historical time was suspended, institutions and the Law itself in its totality
was challenged in and by speech, (and) communication circuits reopened
between those who near or far were drawn within it.”
This is not to say that all utopias are abstract, naive fantasy or wishful
thinking. Impracticality is not an inherent trait of utopias. Delicath (1996),
for example, embraces utopian thinking in an article on ecotopias and
radical environmentalism. Contending that environmentalism needs to “be
utopianized” (p154), Delicath seeks a view of utopia as “dialogue,” a
dialogue that is “interested in social movement and the mobilization of the
rhetorical in the effort to transform society” (p155). Interestingly, this
process of utopian dialogue positions itself as a response to ideology.
Delicath cites a number of theorists in defense of utopia as a process, a
concrete link to social change, a reconciliation with the future, or a
necessary complement to any political reform (Bammer, 1991; Bloch, 1986;
Kumar, 1991). Thus, a concrete utopia is one that “offers a well-articulated
critique of existing conditions, a constructive vision of an alternative, and
evidence of its practicality and feasibility” (Delicath, 1996, p163). These
components of utopian dialogue, according to Delicath, open the
possibilities for a rhetorical utopianism that challenges the rigidity of
postindustrial ideologies. He specifically claims that utopian dialogue that
stresses ecological sensibilities can root itself in history and in material
conditions to become “more than an appropriate response to the
fragmented and alienated conditions of late Western capitalist societies”
(p163).
The internal critique of Delicath’s position is fairly evident--he has targeted a
certain social formation (industrial growth) with such fierceness that his own
embrace of utopian dialogue takes on totalizing characteristics. Utopian
dialogue, although “diverse” in name, is constructed in opposition to
industrialism, individualism, post-humanism, and a number of other
perspectives that may be at odds with the goals of the ecotopian
movement. Even so, Delicath directs and contains his vision of utopia by
attempting to “cultivate cultural sensibilities that are consistent with
ecological concerns” (1996, p164). The external critique of this embrace of
utopian thought is equally persuasive--utopias ultimately permit the renewal
of a stratified social order. By effectively managing our anxieties and
freedoms, a utopia “projects a whole new strategy of legitimation; and it
effectively displaces the class antagonisms between rich and poor which
persist in consumer society” (Jameson, 1980, p144). In another vivid
passage about the naturalizing function of utopian discourse, Jameson
(1977, p12) depicts the city as a utopia during the high and late middle
ages. The “freedom of the city” mentality, framed as an ideological effect of
the revitalization of city life, encouraged individuals to travel to the city to
“shake off the constraints of village life, or, even more fundamentally, those
of serfdom and the feudal order” (Jameson, 1977, p12). The way the city
offered an unconditional “release” contributed to the rapid legitimation of
capitalism and of the market itself, not to mention the bolstering of
bourgeois individualism. The utopian city legitimized its own roots, creating
a modern condition that requires suburban or rural utopias. Jameson
explains: “The principal anxiety we have about the city today can probably
be best expressed in terms of sheer urban concentration” (1977, p12).
Suddenly we are faced with two contradictory theories of utopianism. One
view contends that utopia can be reconceived as a process of dialogue,
while the other view argues that it is precisely utopian dialogue that
functions as a legitimizing tool of dominant interests. One way to accept the
critique of utopian discourse--that it is a form of masking--without altogether
abandoning a sense of imagined reality, is to turn toward an arrangement of
“heterotopias.” In “Of Other Spaces,” Foucault (1986) outlines a few
principles of heterotopias. Many of his statements draw on the preface to
the Order of Things (1973) where Foucault positions China as a heterotopia
in relation to the West. There, Foucault postulates on a “certain Chinese
encyclopedia” referenced by Borges that seemingly defies categorization,
comprehension, and language. Within the encyclopedia,
Foucault sketches the madness of this passage by charting China in “our
dreamworld” (1973, pxix) as a precise region of space overburdened by
figures, “whose name alone constitutes for the West a vast reservoir of
utopias.” Putting aside the specifics of China and Orientalism (Said, 1978),
it is valuable to relate some of the angles of this heterotopia. As opposed to
mere utopias, heterotopias “are disturbing, probably because they secretly
undermine language, because they make it impossible to note this and that”
(1973, pxviii). Longxi (1988, p109) comments that the absurdity and chaos
of these juxtapositions belong to “heterotopia, the inconceivable space that
undermines the very possibility of description in language.” From another
angle, heterotopias admit to the impossibilities of accurate representation
through language. Because the name and its place have no necessary
correspondence (Derrida, 1995), it becomes the critic’s task to “describe
these different sites by looking for the set of relations by which a given site
can be defined” (Foucault, 1986, p23). But what does this mean? Can
heterotopia mean anything? How do we read these “other” spaces?
Providing principles for heterotopias may seem to be antithetical to the
project, but Foucault’s six guidelines are extremely enabling.
3. Toward a Heterotopia
First, all cultures constitute heterotopias, even though they have no
universal form. A crisis heterotopia serves as a space where identity
connections are worked out (sacred or forbidden places). A heterotopia of
deviation acts as a normalizing place by excluding the “margins” of society
(asylums, retirement homes, prisons). Second, heterotopias are contingent
on the unfoldings of history in that they only have a precise and determined
form within a given society. Third, heterotopias can juxtapose several
spaces within the same place, “several sites that are in themselves
incompatible” (Foucault, 1986, p25). When we sit in a chair in a theater or
in a seat in a car, we are moving and we are absolutely stationary: our
frozen bodies are transported through our eyes and the screen to
experience the world as shot by the camera; or, our slightly moving bodies
are changing gears while we are literally propelled across the earth at
astounding speeds, only to witness the surroundings as the distant
panorama (road and billboards) framed in the windshield by the dashboard
of controls. Fourth, heterotopias are linked to slices in time, breaks from a
traditional notion of time. These temporal rituals perform an “absent
presence” in places of layering (museums and libraries) or in places of
accumulation (fairgrounds and festivals). Fifth, heterotopias assume a
varied system of opening and closing that conceals their existence while
simultaneously revealing it (clubs, temples). Sixth, heterotopias function in
relation to all the space that remains (colonies, ships, police stations).
These places either create illusions to expose “real” space, or they create
incredibly ordered microcosms to try to arrange surrounding spaces in their
image.
Theorists write about the “both/and” and attempt to contrast the opening
and transgressive nature of the “both/and” with the exclusionary properties
of the “either/or.” Why should we accept a forced choice between this and
that when we can embrace both this and that? The entire equation
requires context for any sensical comparison, but the quandary over utopian
imaginations and the political pragmatism of an ideological approach is one
that must be “either both and or” a heterotopia. There are a few major (and
probably many minor) problems with the heterotopias as conceived by
Foucault, namely the distinction between a multidimensional place and
multiplicity in communication as well as the immanence of place as chora
missing from the abstract principles of a heterotopias. The future is the
key, but it is derived from the past and it turns the corner in the present. A
heterotopic theory of social criticism can either reject the utopian ideal and
the blatant self-interest of the ideological or it can accept both the utopian
and the ideological and recognize them as one and the same—seeking
space in the tussle between the two.
Kevin Douglas Kuswa teaches rhetoric at the University of Richmond
only most ideologies attempt to relate, as much as possible, to a particular
view of the “real” or the present. Utopias, by comparison, are rooted in
idealism and prophesy, serving as a Golden Age of the distant past or the
remote future. These visions and fantasies exist as a reconciliation that will
(could) occur in the future (Goodwin & Taylor, 1982; Levitas, 1991). The
ability to map the future, though, necessitates an awareness and
engagement with the present. Eckersley (1991, p186) posits that, “to be
realized, the aspirations released by utopianism must be critically related to
one’s knowledge of the present,” and Plattel (1972, p44) asserts that “the
critical portrayal of the future is the essence of the utopia.” Common
utopias include religious imagery: kingdom come, heaven on earth, or a
thousand years of peace. The dictionaries define it as “an ideally perfect
place, an impractical and idealistic concept for social and political reform.”
Etymologically, utopia extends from the name of Sir Thomas More’s
imaginary republic in 1516 (Onions, 1966). In a rumination on More’s
Utopia, Jameson (1977, p2) portrays the event itself as the moment when
“historical time was suspended, institutions and the Law itself in its totality
was challenged in and by speech, (and) communication circuits reopened
between those who near or far were drawn within it.”
This is not to say that all utopias are abstract, naive fantasy or wishful
thinking. Impracticality is not an inherent trait of utopias. Delicath (1996),
for example, embraces utopian thinking in an article on ecotopias and
radical environmentalism. Contending that environmentalism needs to “be
utopianized” (p154), Delicath seeks a view of utopia as “dialogue,” a
dialogue that is “interested in social movement and the mobilization of the
rhetorical in the effort to transform society” (p155). Interestingly, this
process of utopian dialogue positions itself as a response to ideology.
Delicath cites a number of theorists in defense of utopia as a process, a
concrete link to social change, a reconciliation with the future, or a
necessary complement to any political reform (Bammer, 1991; Bloch, 1986;
Kumar, 1991). Thus, a concrete utopia is one that “offers a well-articulated
critique of existing conditions, a constructive vision of an alternative, and
evidence of its practicality and feasibility” (Delicath, 1996, p163). These
components of utopian dialogue, according to Delicath, open the
possibilities for a rhetorical utopianism that challenges the rigidity of
postindustrial ideologies. He specifically claims that utopian dialogue that
stresses ecological sensibilities can root itself in history and in material
conditions to become “more than an appropriate response to the
fragmented and alienated conditions of late Western capitalist societies”
(p163).
The internal critique of Delicath’s position is fairly evident--he has targeted a
certain social formation (industrial growth) with such fierceness that his own
embrace of utopian dialogue takes on totalizing characteristics. Utopian
dialogue, although “diverse” in name, is constructed in opposition to
industrialism, individualism, post-humanism, and a number of other
perspectives that may be at odds with the goals of the ecotopian
movement. Even so, Delicath directs and contains his vision of utopia by
attempting to “cultivate cultural sensibilities that are consistent with
ecological concerns” (1996, p164). The external critique of this embrace of
utopian thought is equally persuasive--utopias ultimately permit the renewal
of a stratified social order. By effectively managing our anxieties and
freedoms, a utopia “projects a whole new strategy of legitimation; and it
effectively displaces the class antagonisms between rich and poor which
persist in consumer society” (Jameson, 1980, p144). In another vivid
passage about the naturalizing function of utopian discourse, Jameson
(1977, p12) depicts the city as a utopia during the high and late middle
ages. The “freedom of the city” mentality, framed as an ideological effect of
the revitalization of city life, encouraged individuals to travel to the city to
“shake off the constraints of village life, or, even more fundamentally, those
of serfdom and the feudal order” (Jameson, 1977, p12). The way the city
offered an unconditional “release” contributed to the rapid legitimation of
capitalism and of the market itself, not to mention the bolstering of
bourgeois individualism. The utopian city legitimized its own roots, creating
a modern condition that requires suburban or rural utopias. Jameson
explains: “The principal anxiety we have about the city today can probably
be best expressed in terms of sheer urban concentration” (1977, p12).
Suddenly we are faced with two contradictory theories of utopianism. One
view contends that utopia can be reconceived as a process of dialogue,
while the other view argues that it is precisely utopian dialogue that
functions as a legitimizing tool of dominant interests. One way to accept the
critique of utopian discourse--that it is a form of masking--without altogether
abandoning a sense of imagined reality, is to turn toward an arrangement of
“heterotopias.” In “Of Other Spaces,” Foucault (1986) outlines a few
principles of heterotopias. Many of his statements draw on the preface to
the Order of Things (1973) where Foucault positions China as a heterotopia
in relation to the West. There, Foucault postulates on a “certain Chinese
encyclopedia” referenced by Borges that seemingly defies categorization,
comprehension, and language. Within the encyclopedia,
- animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame,
(d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the
present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine
camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that
from a long way off look like flies. (Foucault, 1973, pxix).
Foucault sketches the madness of this passage by charting China in “our
dreamworld” (1973, pxix) as a precise region of space overburdened by
figures, “whose name alone constitutes for the West a vast reservoir of
utopias.” Putting aside the specifics of China and Orientalism (Said, 1978),
it is valuable to relate some of the angles of this heterotopia. As opposed to
mere utopias, heterotopias “are disturbing, probably because they secretly
undermine language, because they make it impossible to note this and that”
(1973, pxviii). Longxi (1988, p109) comments that the absurdity and chaos
of these juxtapositions belong to “heterotopia, the inconceivable space that
undermines the very possibility of description in language.” From another
angle, heterotopias admit to the impossibilities of accurate representation
through language. Because the name and its place have no necessary
correspondence (Derrida, 1995), it becomes the critic’s task to “describe
these different sites by looking for the set of relations by which a given site
can be defined” (Foucault, 1986, p23). But what does this mean? Can
heterotopia mean anything? How do we read these “other” spaces?
Providing principles for heterotopias may seem to be antithetical to the
project, but Foucault’s six guidelines are extremely enabling.
3. Toward a Heterotopia
First, all cultures constitute heterotopias, even though they have no
universal form. A crisis heterotopia serves as a space where identity
connections are worked out (sacred or forbidden places). A heterotopia of
deviation acts as a normalizing place by excluding the “margins” of society
(asylums, retirement homes, prisons). Second, heterotopias are contingent
on the unfoldings of history in that they only have a precise and determined
form within a given society. Third, heterotopias can juxtapose several
spaces within the same place, “several sites that are in themselves
incompatible” (Foucault, 1986, p25). When we sit in a chair in a theater or
in a seat in a car, we are moving and we are absolutely stationary: our
frozen bodies are transported through our eyes and the screen to
experience the world as shot by the camera; or, our slightly moving bodies
are changing gears while we are literally propelled across the earth at
astounding speeds, only to witness the surroundings as the distant
panorama (road and billboards) framed in the windshield by the dashboard
of controls. Fourth, heterotopias are linked to slices in time, breaks from a
traditional notion of time. These temporal rituals perform an “absent
presence” in places of layering (museums and libraries) or in places of
accumulation (fairgrounds and festivals). Fifth, heterotopias assume a
varied system of opening and closing that conceals their existence while
simultaneously revealing it (clubs, temples). Sixth, heterotopias function in
relation to all the space that remains (colonies, ships, police stations).
These places either create illusions to expose “real” space, or they create
incredibly ordered microcosms to try to arrange surrounding spaces in their
image.
Theorists write about the “both/and” and attempt to contrast the opening
and transgressive nature of the “both/and” with the exclusionary properties
of the “either/or.” Why should we accept a forced choice between this and
that when we can embrace both this and that? The entire equation
requires context for any sensical comparison, but the quandary over utopian
imaginations and the political pragmatism of an ideological approach is one
that must be “either both and or” a heterotopia. There are a few major (and
probably many minor) problems with the heterotopias as conceived by
Foucault, namely the distinction between a multidimensional place and
multiplicity in communication as well as the immanence of place as chora
missing from the abstract principles of a heterotopias. The future is the
key, but it is derived from the past and it turns the corner in the present. A
heterotopic theory of social criticism can either reject the utopian ideal and
the blatant self-interest of the ideological or it can accept both the utopian
and the ideological and recognize them as one and the same—seeking
space in the tussle between the two.
Kevin Douglas Kuswa teaches rhetoric at the University of Richmond
Works Cited
Ang, Ien (1993). “Dallas and the Ideology of Mass Culture,” in ed. Simon During, The Cultural Studies Reader. New York:
Routledge.
Bammer, Angelika (1991). Partial Visions: Feminism and Utopianism in the 1970s. New York: Routledge.
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Butler, Judith (1997). Excitable Speech. New York: Routledge.
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U. of Minnesota Press.
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Plattel, M. (1972). Utopian and Critical Thinking. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne U. Press.
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Princeton U. Press.
Virilio, Paul (1997). Open Skies. Trans. Julie Rose, New York: Verso Press.
Walter, E.V. (1988). Placeways: A Theory of the Human Environment. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Wander, P. & Jenkins, S. (1972). “Rhetoric, Society, and the Critical Response.” Quarterly J. of Speech 58, pp441-450.
Wander, Philip (1983). “The Ideological Turn in Modern Criticism.” Central States Speech Journal 34, pp1 - 18.
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Zizek, Slavoj (1997). “The Supposed Subjects of Ideology,” Critical Inquiry 39, 2, pp 39-59.
Ang, Ien (1993). “Dallas and the Ideology of Mass Culture,” in ed. Simon During, The Cultural Studies Reader. New York:
Routledge.
Bammer, Angelika (1991). Partial Visions: Feminism and Utopianism in the 1970s. New York: Routledge.
Bhabha, Homi (1994). Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.
Bloch, E. (1986). Principle of Hope. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.
Butler, Judith (1997). Excitable Speech. New York: Routledge.
Cloud, Dana (1998). Control and Consolation: American Culture and Politics. New York: Sage Publications.
Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Felix (1983). “Rhizome.” In (eds.) Deleuze & Guattari, On the Line. trans J. Johnston. New York:
Semiotexte, pp1-69.
Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Felix (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia. Trans. B. Massumi, Minneapolis:
U. of Minnesota Press.
Delicath, John W. (1996). “In Search of Ecotopia: ‘Radical Environmentalism’ and the Possibilities of Utopian Rhetorics,” ed.
Star Muir, Earthtalk: Communication Empowerment for Environmental Action. Westport, Conn: Praeger, pp153-169.
Derrida, Jacques (1995). “Khora.” On the Name. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press, pp89-150.
Eagleton, Terry (1990). The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.
Eagleton, Terry (1991). Ideology: An Introduction. New York: Verso Press.
Eckersley, Robyn (1991). Environmentalism and Political Theory. Albany: State U. of New York Press.
Foucault, Michel (1973). The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York.
Foucault, Michel (1986). “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics. Spring, pp22-27.
Goodwin, B. & Taylor, K. (1982). The Politics of Utopia: A Study in Theory and Practice. London: Hutchinson.
Greene, Ronald Walter (1998). “Another Materialist Rhetoric,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 15, 21-41.
Jameson, Fredric (June, 1977). “Of Islands and Trenches: Naturalization and the Production of Utopian Discourse,” Diacritics,
p3-21.
Jameson, Fredric (Wntr, 1980). “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture,” Social Text 1, pp130-148.
Kumar, K. (1991). Utopianism. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press.
Levitas, R. (1991). The Concept of Utopia. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse U. Press.
Longxi, Zhang (Autumn, 1988). “China in the Eyes of the West,” Critical Inquiry, pp127-142.
Mannheim, Karl. (1936). Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Morse, Margaret (1990). “An Ontology of Everyday Distraction: The Freeway, the Mall and Television,” Ed. Patricia
Mellancamp, in The Logics of Television. Bloomington, Indiana: U. Indiana Press.
Onions, C.T. (1966). “Ideology,” in Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. New York: Oxford Press.
Plattel, M. (1972). Utopian and Critical Thinking. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne U. Press.
Said, E. (1994/1978). Orientalism, 2nd edition. New York: Vintage Books.
Stewart, Kathleen (1996). A Space on the Side of the Road: Cultural Poetics in an “Other” America. Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton U. Press.
Virilio, Paul (1997). Open Skies. Trans. Julie Rose, New York: Verso Press.
Walter, E.V. (1988). Placeways: A Theory of the Human Environment. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Wander, P. & Jenkins, S. (1972). “Rhetoric, Society, and the Critical Response.” Quarterly J. of Speech 58, pp441-450.
Wander, Philip (1983). “The Ideological Turn in Modern Criticism.” Central States Speech Journal 34, pp1 - 18.
Wichelns, H. (1925/62). “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” Studies in Rhetoric and Public Speaking in Honor of James Albert
Winans. New York: Russell & Russell, pps. 181 - 216.
Zizek, Slavoj (1997). “The Supposed Subjects of Ideology,” Critical Inquiry 39, 2, pp 39-59.
A FOOTNOTE ON UTOPIA AND IDEOLOGY
12 February 2009
by Kevin Douglas Kuswa
12 February 2009
by Kevin Douglas Kuswa
| Exploring the nexus between ideologies and utopias means asking: utopia for whom? |
Copyright 2009 Shared Sacrifice Media
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