ESSAY CEMETERY

"To see traces of the Utopian everywhere… is to naturalize it and imply that it is somehow rooted in human nature". Biologists in general and evolutionary scientists, in particular, would not hesitate to concede to this somewhat Freudian suggestion, posited by Jameson in his 2005 book Archaeologies of the future: the desire called Utopia and other science fictions . A frequently recited maxim in academic biological circles is that life is an extremely unfavorable energetic and dynamic state, as contrasted with death which is a state of easily self-perpetuating equilibrium. Similarly, the very rhetoric of Darwinian evolution implies that life inherently seeks better circumstances, with phrases such as "survival of the fittest" and "natural selection", in which the most enviable position belongs implicitly to the organism best suited to his or her or its surroundings. While Utopianism does seem to be a natural individual quality, idealism has not always been...

I: Varieties of the utopian There is a difference between the utopian form and the utopian wish. The utopian form is a text that deals thematically with utopia and the utopian wish or impulse is apparent in daily life in attempts to make the world a better place, as in politics. This genre begins in 1517 with Thomas More's political text Utopia and continues in Science Fiction and the historical novel. Works in these new genres seem to not stand on their own but to be a response to other works and create a whole network of associations. Jameson points out that visions of utopia encompass all areas of life, from politics to the individual to medicine and entertainment. Sometimes these visions are manifestations of unconscious wishes, but sometimes visions of utopia are self-aware. The impulse is covert while the form is systemic and overt. Both are apparent in politics for instance, as reforms can be gradual and implied or extreme and revolutionary.  This distinction between impulse...