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Spain: Review of Publications on Utopia

2017; Penn State University Press; Volume: 28; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/utopianstudies.28.3.0613

2154-9648

Joana Caetano,

Social Sciences and Policies

The years 2016 and 2017 have been particularly prolific in the field of utopian studies. Spain alone has seen thirty items published since 2016 that were indexed as “utopian” by the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the database from which this article draws its data.1 As we will see, the concept of utopia has inspired researchers and artists from different areas in their production of knowledge and art, as well as in expanding the debate about the philosophical, economic, political, and social issues of contemporary society to the general public. The idea of utopia has also inspired contemporary Spanish poets, namely, Iosu Moracho, who published La Utopia tiene los Pies Descalzos (Utopia Is Barefoot, 2016), and José Miguel Martin, whose Perdón por la Utopia (Apologies for Utopia, 2016) is a complexly styled collection of personal and social poems that combines classic and modern poetry.In this review, I will identify and discuss a selection of these sources and assess the impact the five hundredth anniversary of the publication of Thomas More's Utopia has had in this geographic context. To make the available information more appealing to the reader, instead of simply listing the titles, I have clustered the publications into subgroups, as follows: Primary Sources: Publications, Translations, and ReeditionsPublications on Literature, Education, and PhilosophyPublications on History, Politics, and Social ActivismPublications on Political and Economic AlternativesPublications on Architecture and the ArtsFor 2016, I cataloged at least three new editions of More's Utopia in Spanish, one of which is particularly interesting due to its introduction by Felipe Aguado Hernández, titled “Utopía y Educación” (Utopia and Education, 2016), as a celebration of the five hundred years of the publication of Utopia. The translation Utopía: Con textos de Ursula K. Le Guin (Utopia: With Texts by Ursula K. Le Guin), with an introduction by China Miéville, was also published in 2016.In 2017, the scholar Francisco L. Lisi published “La república” de Platón y la Utopía (Últimas lecciones en la Carlos III de Madrid) (Plato's “Republic” and Utopia [Last Lectures at the Carlos III University of Madrid]). In this academic publication, Lisi demonstrates how, although its author conceived it as an achievable political program, the state described in the Republic had a wide influence on the history of utopia and Western political thought. This work defines the notion of “utopia” through its historical development and its influence on contemporary political thought. A detailed analysis of the dialogue, with special emphasis placed on the unity of form and content, emphasizes the programmatic significance of the work and the concept of justice it defends.In the field of literature and culture, I highlight the essay collection Hermenéutica, Educación y Sociedad: En los albores de la Utopía (Hermeneutics, Education, and Society: At the Dawn of Utopia, 2017), edited by Elena Jiménez García, Ricardo de la Fuente Ballesteros, and Francisco J. F. Carrera. It offers an overview of More's masterpiece and fuels the debate on how utopianism matters today. In the first chapters, Irene Valero-Oteo gives a brief introduction to Utopia and elaborates on the basic concepts of utopia, liberal utopia, political utopia, and socialist utopia. Manuel Bermúdez Vázquez depicts the evolution of the idea from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century and acknowledges the difficulties in finding a “canonical” definition of the concept. The remaining chapters approach the topic from various perspectives and apply it to numerous fields (culture, music, and education, among others).In the field of education, it is worth mentioning Matilde Benavent Sancho's dissertation “Educación bilingüe ¿Realidad o Utopía?” (Bilingual Education. Reality or Utopia?), now available for public access. The text elaborates on the need to provide bilingual education, through programs such as Content and Language Integrated Learning, due to the growing internationalization of information and the labor market. Sancho maps the different circumstances of bilingual education in Canada, the United States, and three E.U. countries; analyzes the linguistic policies implemented in the autonomous communities of Spain; and tries to anticipate their evolution.From a philosophical viewpoint, there are two publications—one translation and one collection of essays—that are of great interest. Upon reading the first, En Busca de la Utopia: Memorias, Novelas y Ensaios Políticos Seleccionados por el Autor (In Search of Utopia: Memories, Novels, and Political Essays Selected by the Author, 2016), the reader becomes aware of Arthur Koestler's acute understanding of the political, philosophical, and scientific outlook of twentieth-century Europe. The book is a good example of how the views of an intellectual forced into exile and his standpoint as the other can elucidate society in regard to its endemic problems. Meanwhile, the second, La Utopía de los Libros: Politica y filosofia en Miguel Abensour (The Utopia of Books: Politics and Philosophy in Miguel Abensour, 2016), edited by Scheherezade P. Cañadas and José Luis V. Berlanga, dedicates twelve chapters to the study of Abensour's writings through the lenses of other major philosophers (the classics, Spinoza, and Marx, among others), where concepts and values such as freedom, myth, radicalism, resistance, power, and violence are weighed against the political and historical context in which they were examined.Several books in the fields of history, politics, and social activism have been published in Spain with the utopian intent of mobilizing readers and motivating social change. In Contra el Populismo: Cartografia de un totalitarismo postmoderno (Against Populism: Cartography of a Postmodern Totalitarianism, 2017), José María Lassalle denounces the growing “grim shudder” of populism in the Western world, arguing that what was first seen as a joke has become a mobilizing force in times of elections, undermining democracy, its merit, and its legitimacy. According to Lassalle, it is fundamental to find strategies to fight against populism, its advocates, and the wave of intolerance it promotes.From a historical perspective, three publications stand out due to their extensive analyses of the history and impact of revolutionary movements, parties, and/or leaders on the Spanish territory. In the biography Vivir la Anarquia, Vivir la Utopia: José Peirats y la historia del anarcosindicalismo español (Living Anarchy, Living the Utopia: José Peirats and the History of Spanish Anarcho-syndicalism, 2016), Chris Ealham narrates and intertwines the details of José Peirats's life with the backdrop of Spain's labor movement. Peirats was a bricklayer member of the National Work Confederacy and a cultural agitator who gave a voice to his fellow anonymous workmates. Josepa Cucó I Giner, on the other hand, in Dela Utopía Revolucionària a l'Activisme Social: El movement comunista, revolta i Cristina Piris (From the Revolutionary Utopia to Social Activism: The Communist Movement, Revolt, and Cristina Piris, 2016), brings the example of a female member of the communist movement to the fore and examines the evolution of this ancient political formation, a revolutionary leftist party that emerged during the Franco regime and which has transmuted into a group of civic-political organizations aiming to influence society. Although these entities may be distinct, they share a common historical consciousness and identity, a way of doing and thinking about society in which leftist nationalism and feminism play an important part. Javier Flores Fernández-Viagas's La Izquierda: Utopía, praxis y colapso. Historia y evolución (The Left: Utopia, Praxis, and Collapse. History and Evolution, 2017) offers an overview of the history of left-wing parties in Spain and deconstructs their “utopian” views. As the author claims, “The history of the Left is the history of its utopias and its subsequent adaptation to a new historical time in which these disappeared. Humanism promoted the utopian ideology, which had its political expression in the revolutionary movements that marked contemporary history. The twentieth century saw the confrontation of utopian totalitarianism and, from 1945 onward, the social and political rejection of war, violence, utopia, and, by extension, ideologies.”2 This essay by Fernández-Viagas shows how the distinction between utopia and dystopia is far too tenuous to be reckoned.“Crisis” is one of those recurrent topics of political and economic debate that comes up almost daily in the media. As one of contemporary society's greatest problems, it has unsurprisingly become one of the most discussed issues in the field of utopian studies as well.Cooperación: Verdades, Mentiras y Vivencias de una ¿Utopía? (Cooperation: Truths, Lies, and Experiences of a Utopia?2016) by José Luis Paulin, for instance, denounces the bitter reality that the notion of “cooperation” holds and conceals. From a personal perspective, Paulin himself claims that his intention is “to shake apologies, to question apparent realities and to demystify,”3 instigating people and organizations to make a real change. According to my sources, the author is donating the book's revenue to Equipo de Salud de la RASD de Mundubat Fundazioa for refugees from Saharaui in Ausserd.Still on the topic of cooperation, but now from a sociological perspective, in Un Columpio en el Desierto: Lecciones y Paradojas sobre Cooperación, Desarrollo y Utopía (A Swing in the Desert: Lessons and Paradoxes on Cooperation, Development, and Utopia, 2016), María Ángeles López Romero enumerates several instances of prejudice, hardship, and strife faced by underprivileged groups (such as women and blind people) living in different countries and identifies social problems that these groups face, namely, poverty and difficult access to education. Since the scope of the subjects she deals with is too vast to be properly investigated, the author analyzes them on a superficial level. However, the fundamental issue here is precisely to identify problems in order to discuss solutions, because we should not believe in the impossibility of “ending poverty, illiteracy, and hunger.”4Félix Placer Ugarte's Contra el Capitalismo: Signos de Lucha y Esperanza (Against Capitalism: Signs of Struggle and Hope, 2016), published by Editorial Nueva Utopía, is a “theological essay” that dwells on current issues such as crisis, globalization, and an inhumane economy. Building on the premise that capitalist globalization has created an unprecedentedly unjust economic system, the author identifies and analyzes initiatives that try to undermine it through resistance and the creation of means to implement a new economy based on values such as ethics, ecology, and justice. Although the essay's hypothesis is of great interest, the writing is heavily marked by the author's religious viewpoint.Following the same correlation of religion, economy, and social issues, in Reiniciando el Sistema: De la utopía a la realidad según la fe en un programa metafísico de investigación (Rebooting the System: From Utopia to Reality According to Faith in a Metaphysical Research Program, 2016), Wolf Hett Goula proposes revisiting the theories of influential philosophers, such as Karl Popper's “metaphysical program of inquiry” and Max Weber's explanation of the influence of religion in economy, so that we may “recover those ideas derived from one of the many interpretations of Christian theology: to believe in the existence of a Supreme Being to whom we will be accountable.”5As for policies concerning energy and the environment, La Utopía del Uranio: Política energética, extracción y exploración del uranio en México (Uranium Utopia: Energy Policy, Extraction, and Exploration of Uranium in Mexico, 2016), coordinated by Federico Lazarín Miranda and Hugo Pichardo Hernández, brings input from the humanities and social sciences to the controversial discussion on the extraction of uranium, reminding the reader that science and economics should not be blind to their social and ecological implications.The recently published (June 2017) translation of Utopia for Realists (Utopía para Realistas) by Rutger Bregman is also worth mentioning, as it will hopefully fuel debate on the role of the state in granting citizens money to cover their basic needs. This book elaborates on the thesis that a universal basic income and reduced working hours are the way forward for a more just society, based upon ideals such as dignity and equality in the workplace. As Will Hutton claims in his review of the book in the Guardian, Bregman's “compelling proposition” is “utopian,” and, he adds, “it is utopian visions that have driven humanity forwards.”6Over the past two years, at least three exhibitions were dedicated to utopia, and the resulting catalogs are available for consultation. Un arte para el regimen: Ruína y utopía en el sueño de exaltación nacional (An Art for the Regime: Ruin and Utopia in the Dream of National Exaltation) was the temporary name of room 403 of the Reina Sofía museum, where several paintings from the dictatorship period by renowned Spanish artists (Salvador Dalí, José Caballero, and Amando de Ossorio, among others) were displayed for the last two years. The exhibitions hosted in this room were curated by Erlea Maneros Zabala, an artist who aims to promote a combination of art and theatricality. Also worth mentioning is Collection 1 of the museum entitled La irrupción del siglo XX: Utopías y conflictos (1900–1945) (The Eruption of the Twentieth Century: Utopias and Conflicts [1900–1945]). The concept behind the collection begins with works from the end of the nineteenth century that lay bare the latent conflicts between a dominant modernity understood as progress and its multiple discontents, being an ideology in constant opposition on both social and political fronts and cultural and artistic fronts. The collection progressively evolves to the vanguard in its reinvention of the subject, the public, and the artistic medium and becomes a symptom of the new twentieth century. The selection's highpoint is Picasso's Guernica.Utopía del Espacio y del Hombre (Utopia of Space and Man, 2016), by José C. Ribes Camarasa, is an invitation for the spectator/reader to reflect on utopia, possible realities, and truths and on the symbiosis of space and human beings.The most interesting exhibition, however, 1.000 m2 de deseo: Arquitectura y sexualidad (One Thousand Square Miles of Desire: Architecture and Sexuality, 2016), promoted by the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona, brought the most controversial topic of our society, pornography, to the domain of public discussion, aligning it with the well-respected arts of architecture and literature. The exhibition invited the public to reflect on the role of desire in human relations and on projecting the city model that should inspire us in building the twenty-first century. It was a multidisciplinary exhibition that hosted a variety of works, from paintings, building models, and sculptures to artistic installations and videos. Some of the works are indeed shocking: meant to question societal paradigms and ancestral prejudices, namely, the fact that many women are still subjected to male desire, while men have total freedom to pursue their desires, the exhibition reminded visitors of the abuses that quite often go unpunished. As the organizers explained, “Only through a firm exercise of equality can we see desire in fullness, as defended by, for example, the utopias that claim the free and open enjoyment of desire, proposals that occupy a prominent place in this exhibition.”7 The exhibition was organized into three subtopics to question, illustrate, contest, and provoke the public to perceive the body as a (personal and social) space of resistance, freedom, and self-expression: (1) “Utopias sexuales” (Sexual Utopias), (2) “Refugios libertinos” (Libertine Refuges), and (3) “Sexografias” (Sexographies).The appropriation of the concept of utopia and its misuse may prove to be its weakness. By revising the list of publications associated in some way with utopia, we come to understand that utopia is a word that is exploited and applied in a pejorative sense to indicate the fruitless (even useless) pursuit of something. This is no doubt a worrying fact for utopian studies researchers, but it is also something beyond our control. Let us then look at the bright side: the permeability of the concept. The hybridity of utopia is perhaps its major strength. For years we have witnessed the use of the term become common in the most varied areas of research and in the media, and it can in fact mobilize people to make changes in society.As we have seen in the examples discussed above, the majority of the publications propose and motivate some sort of utopian change: they raise awareness about social or economic problems and/or propose strategies to solve them. We even saw a specific case of an author encouraging solidarity and cooperation by donating his revenue to a humanitarian cause. Most of the publications listed are nonacademic and directed toward the general public, a fact that is relevant to the study of the Spanish editorial market and to understanding how utopia is perceived by the general reader. One final aspect worth highlighting is the receptivity that art galleries and museums have shown toward making works and compositions that question paradigms and inspire the projection of alternative futures accessible to the public, rendering visible the “utopian function of art” that Ernst Bloch extensively described.