The Scream of Nomadic Utopianism

The cold weather defeated the Bookmobile's aged engine today, so I spent a good few hours in the study at Nottingham Contemporary instead. They have an excellent collection of books and it's a space I've promised myself I'll make more use of over the next few months.

While there I was flicking through Utopias from the Whitechapel Gallery's 'Documents of Contemporary Art' series (which I highly recommend) and came across an extract from Fredric Jameson's Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, a text I rather struggled my way through when I first embarked on my PhD in utopianism. It piqued my interest, though, because it engages with an issue I've been grappling with in my thesis recently- and which is of relevance to the utopia I'm writing for the Bookmobile Project. Here's the quote that drew me in...

[I]t is a mistake to approach Utopias with positive expectations, as though they offered visions of happy worlds, spaces of fulfillment and cooperation...Indeed, the attempt to establish positive criteria of the desirable society characterizes liberal political theory from Locke to Rawls, rather than the diagnostic interventions of the Utopians, which, like those of the great revolutionaries, always aim at the alleviation and elimination of the sources of exploitation and suffering, rather than at the composition of blueprints for bourgeois comfort. The confusion arises from the formal properties of these texts, which also seem to offer blueprints: these are however maps and plans to be read negatively, as what is to be accomplished after the demolitions and the removals, and in the absence of all those lesser evils the liberals believed to be inherent in human nature.

It seems a little counter-intuitive at first. Utopias are negative? Surely the whole point of a utopia is to offer a positive vision of what is to be done; to provide a riposte to those who say "you're always moaning, but how would your world look?"? In a sense, that was my motivation in writing a utopia ('The Island') for this project: I think that this country is being governed in an increasingly hierarchical manner- but I don't think that the Labour Party or the institutional left has any real answers. Rather than just moan about this state of affairs I want to try and create a space (albeit a fictional one) that might have some suggestions; might distribute political power in a nonhierarchical manner. But in hoping that people approach my utopia with positivity- in asking them to believe in it- am I falling into a liberal trap?

I'd like to think I'm not, but I also think I know the point that Jameson is trying to make.

I certainly don't want to offer The Island as the be all and end all of political development: it may well be a place of co-operation, happiness and fulfillment, but it will also be a space of upheaval, sorrow, pain and suffering*. I don't want it to be read as a 'blueprint' that can be followed to bring about 'the good life'. It is a space of suggestions, not a space of answers. Suggestions will always bring forth new questions. They will not be adequate forever.

* * * *

I believe in what I call 'nomadic utopianism', which rejects transcendent schema in favour of prefigurative, immanent modes of becoming and which believes that a utopia is a society constantly being remade by those who inhabit it, rather than a static state of perfection. The nomadic utopia is not based on eternal principles ('justice', 'fairness', etc); but on fleeing from a hierarchical present. It draws its power from what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari would call 'lines-of flight'.

Nomadic utopianism, then, is negative. It is a fleeing from hierarchy, not a move to a pre-determined utopia (such a philosophy I call State Utopianism, but that is for another time). It is in fleeing that nomadic utopianism creates something positive; shapes its utopia. This utopia may, however, see the return of hierarchy, and so the negative utopianism must never be allowed to dissipate into positive celebrations.

However noble our aims, whenever we put the flag in the ground and say 'here we are, this is the site of victory- this is our utopia' (as [neo]liberals have done) we betray that utopia and condemn it to hierarchy and dystopia.

Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed details this powerfully, I think, and I am also fond of Tom Moylan's message to those living in a the 'utopian' society of Whileaway in the Joanna Russ story of the same name. He tells them to

be historically vigilant...do not lock in the utopian achievement, do not remove the social utopia from the processes of time. Don’t cut a deal with the false utopian devil of your own collective imagination as it dreams of the end of history; and don’t cover up the deal by changing the colony from that of a place-in-process to one of eternal delight, literally allowing time to while away…[do] not…let the process of learning and change end, [do] not…risk a situation- brought about by either internal or external forces- that might “take away the meaning” of life.

* * * *

This is all a little confusing, though. A negativity that creates something positive? That doesn't seem to make much sense. It is perfectly possible to do clever things with the meaning of words and reference Adorno's negative dialectics here- but I think a more useful concept comes from the work of John Holloway. Inspired by the Zapatistas (whose claim that 'we make the road by walking' is a fine example of nomadic utopianism), he writes of social change coming from calls 'the scream'.

The scream, he notes, begins as a scream of negativity, of dissonance, of intensely felt pain at the horrors of the current order. It is a response that is felt physically and emotionally as much (and perhaps more than) it is thought. It is the scream that traces lines of flight, the scream that is utopianism. And just as Bakunin wrote that 'the urge to destroy is also a creative urge', this scream resonates as it is articulated begins to create a utopia. As Holloway writes, the scream is 'a refusal to be contained, an overflowing, a going beyond the pale, beyond the bounds of polite society'.

* * * *

Utopia must keep screaming. It must always fill itself to the brim with a utopianism that seeks to go further. It must always go beyond. I hope that I can capture some of this urgency in 'The Island', and by opening it to the public to engage in, I hope the text will remain open and evolving forever (more of this soon): always failing, always screaming, always trying to go beyond...

*I don't want to fall into the trap of saying 'because these are what make us human', but I think that they are sometimes inevitable consequences of freedom (a lesson that all the great dystopias teach us. And the story of man's fall from Paradise, for that matter).

Heterotopics: Getting the Public Involved

In my previous post I introduced the project I'll be undertaking as the Bookmobile's writer-in-residence. To briefly recap, I'll be writing an imagined folk history for a utopian community that emerges on the 'Eastside' development site (also known as 'The Island') between Sneinton and London Road in Nottingham, imaging the day-to-day occurrences in this 'anarchist' autonomous zone.

Or at least that was the plan. And it still is, but it's no longer the whole plan. For whilst working in the Bookmobile on Saturday I had an idea I'm really quite excited about.

The seeds had actually been sown earlier in the day when I read the chapter on Nottingham in Owen Hatherley's* A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, a book which ruthlessly dismantles New Labour's architectural legacy. In light of my criticisms of the neoliberal development plans put forward for the tract of land I'll be writing about, the subtitle of this chapter- 'The Banality of Aspiration' seemed strangely appropriate. I also thought of Hatherley's observations of a similarly derelict piece of wasteland in Bradford (itself the subject of hopeless redevelopment plans). Here,

[t]he planned shopping district has been indefinitely shelved, turned into a municipal park, albeit a temporary and slightly shabby one. It would be very tempting to claim this as a small victory, an example of failure transformed into something worthwhile. Yet its first appearance in the national press occurred when the English Defence League staged a "static demonstration" there in August – a first sign of the horrible weeds that might be growing out of the ruins.

My utopia, I thought, was an attempt to imagine a different kind of weed that might grow in the crack.

My train of thought then naturally progressed on to consider what Owen himself might make of my plans. He's a writer and thinker I admire greatly, and I'm thrilled by his criticisms of Blairism's architectural legacy (which, of course, can be used as a metaphor for the whole New Labour project). I don't, however, fully agree with his solution. Whilst I'm a huge fan of the aesthetics of the brutalist architecture he adores, I'm too much of an anarchist to fully get behind his paternal, state-centric socialism. I didn't imagine my utopian plans for Eastside containing any brutalist blocks, or even any of the smaller scale resident-controlled cul-de-sacs he has also advocated.

But do my misapprehensions mean they shouldn't be allowed on my utopia? Why not? These misapprehensions could just as easily be misconceptions, after all. And besides, I like to look at such architecture, and many people like to live in them. Not everyone wants to be in one of the self-built houses that I'd envisaged springing up (of the kind eulogised by Colin Ward, Dennis Hardy and John Turner), and that I myself am so fond of (like many things in my life, this can perhaps be traced back to the Titfield Thunderbolt, but that's perhaps for another time...).

At this moment I realised I was quite scared. I didn't want the responsibility of writing this utopia on my own. I am, after all, totally against the hierarchical, blueprinted nature of the traditional utopian text (or the common reception of the traditional utopian text, at least) in which the author plays God. I've previously mentioned Albert Meister's the so-called utopia of the centre beaubourg as offering a possible solution to this problem, but even this is troubling: what can't live in the imagination of the author can't live in that author's utopia. And I'm not sure my imagination is up to the task.

My decision, then, was to invite people to co-produce this utopia with me. Initially, I thought I would invite specific people to contribute and help develop the utopia. I hastily began typing a list of who I wanted to contribute. Owen was on there, as were a number of other people whose work inspires me. In no time at all, I had twenty-five names: feminists, music theorists, anarchists, artists, popular educators, Marxists: implicit or explicit utopians all, and all people I'd want with me in a utopian community.

This still wasn't enough though. These people were hand-picked by me. I don't agree with all of them, but they are people whose politics I generally feel safe with. There was no-one there who was going to push my utopia into troublesome areas. It was too safe, too cozy. My concept of 'nomadic utopianism' does not allow for such things: that way authoritarianism and perfection creep in round the back door, and hierarchies emerge to suck the life from your utopia. I want to create what Foucault might call a 'heterotopia'; I want to test the limits of disensus.

I made the decision, then, that this utopia is to be constructed by the public. I will still invite certain people to contribute, but there will be an open invite too. These contributions won't have to be textual: people could, if they wanted, produce artifacts from the utopia (pieces of jewelry, paintings, music....).

This presents certain logistical problems which I'm working on with YH485, but I'm optimistic they can be overcome. The current plan is for me to write the text as originally planned and then invite interventions. I guess this still makes it more 'my' utopia than anyone else's, but hopefully 'The Island' will be pulled far from where I imagined it might go. And of course if you come and see me in the Bookmobile while I'm writing, you might be able to get your contribution in earlier.

*Co-incidentally, Owen's got an essay on Warsaw in YH485's new paper, Inside.

Bookmobile at NTU 28/10/2010

Beginnings...

I have, for two years, studied utopianism.

I have read countless works of utopian literature; countless books of utopian theory. I see utopias in music, in maths, in film, in TV; in the tightly packed houses on commuter estates; and in the past, present and future of Nottingham- the city I call home. I consider my practices as an improvising musician and a critical educator to be utopian. I consider the detailed plans my 6 year old self drew up for a monorail system in my home village of Codsall, South Staffordshire to be utopian. I consider myself to be a utopian.

Yet I have never written a utopia.

* * * *

It is a cold, wet Saturday in October 2010. I am sat in a 1985 VW Camper van outside One Thoresby Street in the Sneinton area of Nottingham. As home to a number of artists' collectives, One Thoresby Street is one of the venues for Sideshow, the 'fringe' festival for the British Art Show 7. So too is the camper van. It belongs to the YH485 Press, and has been converted into a travelling library- the Bookmobile- for the duration of Sideshow. It will travel around the various venues, offering books, company and food. Each Saturday, in the car park of One Thoresby Street, it will also offer me. I am its writer in residence, charged with producing an original piece of writing across six Saturdays.

Soon, I'll have written a utopia.

* * * *

When you enter One Thoresby Street and climb the stairs on the east side, you get a fabulous view of 'The Island' at 'Eastside': a wasteland once occupied by railway warehouses and once full of 'development potential'. In the six years I have been in Nottingham it has been the subject of a number of regeneration bids. Luxury flats. Office spaces. 'A mixed use city quarter'. 'Due for completion in 2008'. They come, they go; no-one buys the t-shirt.

The Island is an intriguing space. It's full of spectres, and I'm fascinated by spectres. The ghosts from the past are there for all to see in the hulking shell of T.C. Hine's Great Northern Railway warehouse. Here, Nottingham was an important industrial power with innovative architecture. Not so much now, and The Island is also haunted by the spectres of a capitalist utopia that's never arrived- those regeneration bids whose fancy, CGI'd blueprints sporadically adorn the pages of the Evening Post and remain just a google search away from you now. If you know where to look you can see physical traces of this alternative present too: the high quality of tarmac on the roads that traverse The Island, ready for the wheels of a prospective investor's Lexus, and a tatty For Sale sign which adorns an anonymous industrial building on a road approaching the space. 'Gateway to Eastside', it proclaims, baring the name of a local property entrepreneur (and one time 'Secret Millionaire' on Channel Four) who was declared bankrupt in September 2009 with debts of £30million (his demise also spelled the end for Ilkeston Town Football Club, whose Chairman he became in May 2008, prompting the Ilkeston Advertiser to claim that there would be an 'exciting future' for the club).

But what I'm concerned with here is the ghost that's yet to come. What future haunts us when we look at this site? What kind of city do we want Nottingham to be?

To that, I must answer 'a utopian one'.

* * * *

It is, then, my intention to use my time as Bookmobile's writer in residence to create a utopia for 'The Island': colouring in its spaces with a vision of 'the good life'. True to my political convictions, this will be non-hierarchical, open to difference-in-itself, and in constant recognition of the need for further change. It will not be a blueprinted utopia claiming perfection forever, but what I call a 'nomadic utopia': remaining utopian only to the extent that it remains open to the future.

Perhaps this is not a true utopia; it is a 'so called utopia' of the kind detailed in Albert Meister's novel the so-called utopia of the centre beaubourg, a book I encourage you all to read (although it is hard to find and I do not have a copy myself. Maybe my housemate will be kind enough to lend his copy to Bookmobile); though it will certainly fulfill the utopian criteria of being a flight of fancy (impossible fancy, some might say), as necessity dictates I will gloss over some of the more tedious and difficult issues that would be presented were anyone to attempt to enact my vision. And it is certainly not to be read as a once-and-for-all pronoucement on how life should be lived: I would be rather worried if people thought that I'd come up with all the answers. It may, however, serve to remind people that our way of living isn't the only way of living, and that the futures of 'development potential realisation' and 'mixed use city quarters' aren't the only futures open to us.

David Bell- Bookmobile Writer in Residence