T h e U t o p i a c o r n e r
"I consider the concept of utopia worse than useless."
--Jose Saramago, Nobel Prize-winning author, at the 2005 World Social Forum
"Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer, it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I'll never reach it. So what's the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking."
--Eduardo Galeano, who debated Saramago on this question at the 2005 WSF
"Without utopia, life would be nothing more than a rehearsal for death."
--Farabundo Marti, Central American indigenous leader of the 1930s
"Fix your eyes always on utopia/on that lost paradise/always present and always distant/ Powerful magnet/unrecognized strength, denied, attacked/by the anti-humans"
--Julia Esquivel, Guatemalan poet
"That is the fundamental act of faith of my life: that there will be a tomorrow worth living."
--Athol Fugard, South African playwright
How to Find Nowhere: step by step instructions
An exercize in envisioning the ideal society as HOME.
"We know that utopia means nowhere. As Sir Thomas More, who popularized the use of the term 400 years ago, was aware, the paradox of the truly good society is that it exists nowhere. But I have been there, repeatedly, in my imagination, and the exercise of entering that world, moving around in it, and discovering its specific qualities: sights, sounds and smells, has always been a powerful one. It clarifies, sharpens and deepens my understanding of why, in a more abstract way, I believe the things I do. And it is surprisingly simple. " read it here
Jeremy Adam Smith contemplates utopia and families: "Now we live in the future - the first decade of the 21st Century - in a world as exploitative, anxious, and wartorn as anything in dystopian science fiction. No one is "smiling and relaxed," unless they're on a psychotherapeutic drug. Few in post 9-11 America talk about utopia, except in the most derisive tones. The "family" - as an idea and as a unit in which most of us live - is a battleground, and yet we all find ourselves in the same trench facing an enemy who looks exactly like we do." read it here
Laurie Corzett wants you to join her in collectively creating utopian fiction.
www.utopianfict.gather.com
Recommended Reading : (from a utopian fiction reading group)
News from Nowhere, by William Morris
Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy
Erewhon, by Samuel Butler
Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Ecotopia, by Ernest Callenbach
The Kin of Ata Are Waiting For You, by Dorothy Bryant
The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy
The Fifth Sacred Thing, by Starhawk
send us your recommendations and reviews! whatif@igc.org
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