Abstract
Contemporary political philosophy has critically reflected on—if not denounced—the theoretical constructions and political enterprises that have been encouraged by modern Utopian tradition. This process of critical reflection has constantly signaled the tension between the emancipatory aspirations of that thought and its dystopian drift. Many authors have highlighted the problems that affect the constitution of those ideal cities. However, this article will be focused on the exclusive and excluding character of those ideal narratives, of those unblemished ideal spaces, of those happy spaces that are, in the end, nonspaces. This article will explain the meanings of the modern utopias taking into account the postmodern point of view that shows the exclusion the modern utopias provoke. At the margins of the ideal cities live all those beings that the utopias have vomited out and expelled from their perfect world: monsters, abnormals, infamous, pariahs, and countryless refugees. Those beings—so well described by Arendt and Foucault, among others—are those who are not part of any ideal city; they are the stones that the builders of the perfect cities have used to build them or have discarded them.
I have built this city for myself where I may exercise the dictatorship
Political philosophy, as a kind of practical knowledge, has evolved as a reflection that, starting from experience, returns to concrete reality with the goal of acting upon it. The manner in which it starts, and in which it returns to the daily existence of human beings in their political dimension, has varied greatly. A proof of this is the long history of political philosophy and the large number of proposals and interpretations of the
In this sense, it has been widely discussed whether or not a political philosophy is possible without Utopias 1 ; also, what role do those ideal projects play in everyday reality. Leaving aside the Desiderata aspect, we shall only analyze the political dimension of this issue and, more specifically, its inherent dystopic turn (cf. Harvey, 2000). To place special emphasis on this feature, we shall explore the classic Utopias (from More to Andreae)—in other words, some of the spatial utopias (cf. Harvey, 2000)—because, in these, one can clearly see that—in all societies organized according to spatial principles (not social or temporal ones)—not only does disciplinary power not disappear but also it actually reaches degrees that sometimes surpass those of cities that are neither ideal nor perfect.
Thus, in this article, we will focus on one of the most relevant problems in modern utopian tradition: its dystopian character. This characteristic has already been pointed out by other scholars who have explored this issue. This article will focus on one single aspect, which has been less explored by those scholarly works: The ideal city leaves out or consciously expels all those human beings who do not fit well in this world of light and harmony, in the same way that it uses other humans as means upon which to erect the buildings and pave the streets of this happy metropolis. That means that we will point out the exclusion and disciplinary power that are implied in the concept of Utopia. Both are features inherent in social dynamics, which a spatial utopia ignores because it believes that, by applying more order to spaces and institutions (including schools), it will successfully transform society. It, thus, overlooks the fact that social relations are—by definition—relations of power subject to the exclusion–inclusion dynamic as well as control and surveillance (disciplinary power), spiritual guidance (pastoral power), and risk assessment (biopower).
All these forms of power are present in utopias and are what give rise to their dystopian turn: Some belong to ideal cities and some do not. Those that do belong will have to fulfill certain conditions and will live a life subjected to enormous social control. However, the noncitizens will remain outside the gates. In other words, spatial utopias put into actual practice produce dual cities (cf. Davis, 2006; Harvey, 2000).
From this point of view, employing the philosophical categories proper to Arendt and Foucault (authors whose thought will not be presented in any great detail and of whom it is not said that they uphold similar political viewpoints), we will read part of this modern Utopian tradition, in which, in the distance, one can hear the grinding of teeth and the suppressed cries of the noncitizens, of those beings condemned to live at the margins of the cities, in those places of the nonhuman or those nonplaces of the human, depending on the point of view adopted (cf. Harvey, 1976).
To put it another way, this is not about finding out whether it is feasible to build such cities or whether their full-fledged inhabitants are happy and give their consent or not (a problem pinpointed by Popper). What we seek to do is show the exclusion, which every utopia inevitably generates and that, thus, constitutes a dystopia. Throughout this article, we will show that, in not a single case, do the classical utopias mange to overcome that antagonistic, in–out dynamic, an aspect which the utopian thinkers observed but did not consider to be a dystopian feature. 2 In this sense, it is important to emphasize that modern Utopian thought knows perfectly well what it is excluding, who it is stigmatizing, and why it is doing all this. Their great architects know the foundations on which they are erecting their utopian cities and they choose them as such to create their happy worlds.
Over the course of these pages, we will contrast, in various sections, modern utopian–dystopic discourse with those contemporary objections that directly point out the high cost that these builders–dictators of cities make others pay (i.e., those who are not apt for living in the city or appearing in political space; cf. Arendt, 2004). 3
Thus, this article distances itself from utopian studies, which delve into the form, content, and function of Utopias 4 and also from anti-Utopian invective, which, as with Popper, prohibits any and all discourse about the ideal city. 5 Following Cioran’s line of reasoning, 6 we will focus on the ambivalent nature of utopias, the dystopic opposite of those illusions which provide inspiration for the ideal city. And, this despite the fact that “Utopians, . . . always aim at the alleviation and elimination of the sources of exploitation and suffering, rather than at the composition of blueprints for bourgeois comfort” (Jameson, 2005, p. 12). As classic Utopias have already made plain, the remedies for this exploitation can only be applied to the detriment of those who will be deemed the “others” within the ideal city. Thus, the purpose of this work is to emphasize the ambivalent nature of utopias to reflect upon power, the city, and marginality.
Based on Foucault’s ideas, current interpretations of the relationship between power, the city, and social organization demonstrate that we live in a world characterized by exclusion and the creation of ghettoes located on the edge of the city, places whose inhabitants are second-rate citizens trapped in unhealthy living conditions without basic services (cf. Wacquant, 2007), shantytowns wracked by great social violence, and where the “surplus” population lives (cf. Beaud & Pialoux, 2003). They all constitute the new nonpolitical subjects in this era of globalization (cf. Sassen, 2006). This article is in keeping with the school of thought already established by these works and particularly focuses on the dystopic roots present in modern Utopias, given that designing perfect cities without taking into account the social and historical dimensions of its inhabitants gives rise to spaces of no hope (cf. Harvey, 2000).
Virtue, Vice, and the Classical Utopias
By coining the word “utopia,” More also gave birth to an ambiguity. On one hand, the prefix “oû,” which in Greek means “no,” denies the possibility that the city described in the book could exist anywhere. “Utopia” is, then, “no-place.” On the other hand, the prefix “eû” means “good,” and, thus, “utopia” can be understood as meaning “good place.” It is, then, a case of a “good place” that, nevertheless, cannot be found anywhere. But nonetheless, it plays a part.
This “no-place” serves as a contrast to More’s England, whose miseries he discusses in the first part of the work. Since then, the concept of utopia has played the function of a critique, a way to denounce oppression and reject slavery and other social injustices. Its mechanism, then, is the representation of an ideal, imaginary society that contrasts with real society. The critique of this society is performed with the mere description of an ideal city: “Contemplate the alternative to the city that you possess. Other men have organized themselves better than you, with means that are similar to yours.”
In the case of More, for example, the imaginary alternative to the England he lived in is a society in which there is no poverty because all productive forces have been mobilized, including those of women and children, private property has been eliminated, and mechanisms have been established to democratize the exercise of power. As a result, not only have the material conditions of the inhabitants of Utopia been guaranteed but also the conditions and opportunities for the development of certain vices have been eliminated. 7 As opposed to the state of things in England, in Utopia, there is no vanity, greed, or ambition, and matters of the State are not managed arbitrarily, as though they were just the expression of the interests of the one who governs. In addition, in Utopia, work has been humanized: The working day is 6 hr long, alternating with edifying leisure, especially a dedication to study 8 ; there is religious toleration, so there are no fanatics.
More’s Utopian ideas became a constant presence in later utopias: Their authors imagine certain conditions—optimal but not impossible, as Aristotle would say (cf. Aristotle, 1998, IV, 1323a)—in which political association is a happy enterprise, because the occasions and opportunities for vice have been eliminated. In their place, other conditions have been implanted, which inspire virtue and foster peace, understanding, and harmony. Two examples of later utopias inspired by More’s vision are those of
In the first, there is no property, and work is performed in common, so that there is no stinginess, greed, or laziness. In addition, sexual relations are regulated. These regulations are not just for promoting eugenics, as in Plato’s
In
Even so, the inhabitants of the Utopian worlds are not better than us. They are like us, with the single (but highly important) difference being that they live under institutions that prevent the arising of vicious dispositions. The first difficulty derives, then, from imagining these institutions, in describing their functioning and interaction, but without, in so doing, allowing the description of it to become a merely fantastic digression. The second difficulty, related to the former, is drawing the boundary that separates the vices that can be tolerated from those that cannot. Here, Andreae affirms: “[y]et it must be confessed that human flesh cannot be completely conquered anywhere” (Andreae, 2007, p. 164). And, because certain vices must be punished, there must be in
Compliance with these conditions seems to have guaranteed the viability of the ideal city and the happiness of its inhabitants. In this way, the great builder or architect of this utopia exercises power by means of his or her knowledge, enacting the laws that will make its inhabitants into optimal citizens and good human beings, even though this is purely and simply an exercise of tyranny (cf. Foucault, 1996).
From the Foucaultian point of view, these utopian cities have not achieved the emancipation sought after but rather are simply the expression of disciplinary power, of a power that produces reality in multiple forms and networks, from very different organizations and institutions. 10 This is so because, for the French philosopher, no human relationship is free from the network of powers, and no so-called liberation can be reached given that “machines of liberty” do not exist (in this case, ideal designs for happy cities; cf. Foucault, 2009, pp. 57-58). The French thinker not only emphasized that power circulates and functions but also that it is productive of the individual himself or herself, who is seen as the first effect of power (cf. Foucault, 2003c). In addition, it affects the consequences of the idea of subjects that are dangerous (because they are vice ridden) for society (cf. Castel, 1991); he further notes that in addition to the fears that initially arose united to the processes of urbanization (the arrival of a floating population, poor and marginal), a different kind of fear arises later: that which arises from production, especially affecting those workers who, despite being in contact with wealth, do not possess it (cf. Foucault, 2013, French edition). 11 These working subjects suffer from an absolute control of their time, body, and daily behavior, and are forced to be responsible for contingencies (unemployment, poor health, accidents) by buying insurance (cf. Ewald, 1991). That is, their entire existence is controlled (cf. Foucault, 2013). This is what classical utopias prescribe.
These disciplines give rise to the creation of a society that is built on the kidnapping of the time of those human beings that are subjected to production cycles and to punishment for the irregularity of a behavior, rather than the infraction of a law (cf. Foucault, 1995). Again, there reappears the necessity of developing a legal system, especially a criminal law. But this does not seek to be the planning of an ideal city, but rather the description of disciplines that historically have been and continue to be applied.
In addition, this disciplinary power has concretized, as the thinkers–tyrants–builders of utopias have dreamt, in biopolitical programs, which can become a Thanatos policy (cf. Vila Viñas, 2014). Normally, however, it materializes by way of a more “subtle” notion: human capital, both innate and acquired, which every individual must take charge of, optimizing its potential (cf. Foucault, 2008, pp. 267-289), a notion that appears in its more biological dimension as one of the pillars in
From a virtuous, happy society lacking vices, we have moved to a society that observes, encloses, punishes, and produces all individual and social violence (cf. Harvey, 1996). This is a utopia that exists, it has occurred, but it is not precisely a happy place: It is a great dystopian space in which human beings are subjected to an orthopedics along with constant control (cf. Harvey, 1996).
The Kingdom of Virtue and the Price of Perfection
Utopias are the reflection of certain aspirations to political emancipation: of the poor from the rich, of the women from the men, of the weak from the powerful, and so forth. This aspiration is what moves the utopians to imagine cities in which there is no longer any private property, where power is exercised in agreement with moral criteria. Finally, everything takes place according to the dictates of a mere political realism: Without property, there is no place for the urge to become rich; without marriage, there is no adultery; without an absolute monarchy, there is no tyranny, and so forth.
Readers may be able to sympathize with the political aspirations of a utopia, while doubting the efficacy or even the plausibility of the means that are proposed to bring it about. Could it not be, for example, that the abolition of private property or the establishment of community labor might be the occasion for the arising of other vices, such as laziness and negligence? 12 Might it not happen that with the suppression of games and other similar forms of enjoyment, a certain happiness and vivacity among the inhabitants might be lost as well? Could it not happen, finally, that the incessant, jealous pursuit of sexual purity, chastity, and so forth might end up promoting other forms of depravity? 13
But beyond the issue of whether the concrete measures proposed for each utopia to combat vice are counterproductive or not, it is always a good idea to ask oneself about the desirability and justice of those measures. Given that the narrator of the utopia has the right to imagine that the inhabitants of his ideal city are little better than us, he cannot claim that there will be no vice (if it were so, there would also be no need for writing utopias). And, when confronted with this difficulty, the utopias reveal, albeit involuntarily, their less friendly faces. This is despite the fact that the measures imagined or proposed to fight against vice and promote virtue would be humanitarian, from the point of view of their own historical context. Despite this humanitarian pretense, for the contemporary person, its more inhuman face is clear (cf. Berlin, 2002).
It is clear that the principal characteristic of utopias—which precisely has to do with the measures already indicated in the previous section—is their isolation: The utopian city is located in another space, remote, out of the way, and the protagonist of the tale stumbles upon the city. We do not know where
These notifications are not just a kind of dissuasive measure against the foreigner but are also a hint for the reader about the peculiarities of the island and, in particular, of the purity of the customs that rule over it. For these reasons, utopias are—as is well known—closed societies. As a result, utopian cities are understood to be cloistered spaces; they are not places for wandering around. That is, all are subjected to political and urbanistic models that arise prior to the second half of the 18th century and the first years of the 19th, when cities are opened, walls are torn down, and the problems of security are no longer united to territory, but rather to what circulates: goods, persons, diseases, and so forth. In the case of utopian cities, we have an isolated society that has adopted quarantine measures: dividing the city up on a grid, including its boroughs and common areas, vigilance and periodic reporting of the inhabitants and their state of health, total control of the daily habits of life; that is, “institutions of kidnapping,” which are combined with a plague regime: expulsion to the city’s margins of all those who are not accepted because they do not comply with the rules of normality (monsters, abnormal, infamous, pariahs, and refugees); and finally, the smallpox regime: control in the name of safety, to protect the population’s state of health and immunological compliance (cf. Foucault, 2007).
To provide only one example of how the principles delineated in classical utopias have taken shape and exercised influence over current political projects, we shall describe the case of Baltimore analyzed by Harvey as a paradigm of the dual-segregated city. 14 According to Harvey, like so many other ones in the United States, this city has been the target of different urban and social policies aimed at fighting poverty, crime, and insecurity since the late 1960s (coinciding with the assassination of Martin Luther King). In all the cases, the theory of the underclass was brought on board and two kinds of movements were promoted: on one hand, the bourgeois utopia or suburban sprawl, which led to the creation of private urban enclaves in the outskirts of the city, and, on the other, gentrification that—with the return of the bourgeois population back to the downtown area of the city—imposed policies involving segregation, police control, and rehousing the poor in villages in inner city settings, in other words, suburban privatopias and urban gated communities in inner city settings (cf. Harvey, 2000), in both cases, closed and isolated spaces.
The closure, in the utopian modern tradition, does not have to do just with the necessity of creating a common
From this point on, one might say that the city has a dystopian drift, not just because vigilance must be constant, but because of the nature of the infractions that must be punished and the type of punishment that must be inflicted. We find an example of all this in the following passage from So you see that nowhere is there any chance to loaf or any pretext for evading work; there are no wine-bars, or ale-houses, or brothels; no chances for corruption; no hiding places; no spots for secret meetings. Because they live in the full view of all, they are bound to be either working at their usual trades or enjoying their leisure in a respectable way. (More, 2006, p. 145)
16
The function of public streetlights in They do not allow the night to be dark, but brighten it up with lighted lanterns, the object being to provide for the safety of the city and to put a stop to useless wandering about, but also to render the night watches less unpleasant. (Andreae, 2007, p. 172)
17
This is, in fact, the idea of the Panopticon (cf. Bentham, 1995). The moralist orientation of ideal cities demands imposing a scrupulous watchfulness over a variety of activities: sexual life, opinions, the use of free time, working methods, and the conscience of the citizens.
18
That is, they possess all the traits of the disciplinary societies described in the previous section. These more general prohibitions are joined by a condemnation of idle chatter and, in the
Something similar occurs in
The exercise of disciplinary power—as Foucault noted, in reference to the historical situations of various European countries—is, in utopias, largely granted to civil society as a whole. The lack of proportion between the demands of mutual coexistence and the alleged frequency of penal punishments is surely one of the most unlikely—in the sense of unrealistic—traits of classical utopias. This intervention—supposedly extraordinary or residual—is explained by the deep support of their customs, the belief on the part of the citizens in the goodness and rectitude of their laws, and, finally, because of the consequent collaboration that all law-abiding citizens offer, in the inspection of, and obedience to, the laws. In
This conviction—which serves as a support for social control in the utopias—as well as the social uniformity that follows on it, is assumed to an absurd degree in
The fact that the efficacy of social control makes capital punishment rare would make the tale of utopia a sweet one, were it not for the obsession of the inhabitants with severely punishing certain piddling behaviors or proposing extreme punishments for infractions that real societies punish with lesser severity or which lack any other punishment than the reproach of society. Thus, for example, in
This peculiarity of criminal law is explained because the system of punishments in utopia tends to criminalize exactly the opposite infractions than their real counterparts. 21 For the time being, it is not necessary to punish infractions against property, because it does not exist, and when it does exist, it is not a primordial legal good. Following this logic, explains Andreae, that “the judges of the Christian City observe this custom especially, that they punish most severely those misdeeds which are directed straight against God, less severely those which injure men, and lightest of all those which harm only property” (Andreae, 2007, pp. 164-165).
But the most unsettling characteristic of the criminal law in these ideal cities—and in this regard, we must recognize that their creators did not know how to extricate themselves from the prejudices of their own times—is the undefined nature of the punishment associated with a given crime. In
When the punishment is not death, it will be admonitory, seeking to stigmatize the criminal (More, 2006). But sometimes, the mere drawing of attention to the delinquent is insufficient. On those occasions, it is appropriate to also make clear what crime the guilty person is being punished for. That is, punishments are applied, which—in contrast with those contained in the law codes that have arisen out of the work of the great political theorists, and from the Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic codes—do not separate legality from morality, crime from sin. This is why they involve ridicule and stigmatization—even expulsion from the society that considers itself to be under attack (cf. Foucault, 2003c). The logic that is applied in those utopian cities is that of normalization, not that of legality (cf. Donzelot, 1991). This means that disciplinary power did not only
Perfection at the Expense of Others: The Excluded and the Pariahs of the Ideal City
We can, however, concede that the criminal law of the classic utopias is not only more humanitarian than its real counterparts, its punishments are less severe and less gory. In addition, torture is neither part of the regular proceedings of trials nor used as a means of testing the accused person. From this point of view, the system of punishments of the different ideal cities are still utopian (ideal) compared with those of their own times.
Nevertheless, in addition to the system of punishments, in the various utopias we find groups of people that either do not participate in the utopia and are, thus, more or less a priori outside the city (the excluded), or those who are employed as means of constructing the utopias, and do not have the same rights as the other inhabitants (the pariahs). In this latter case, we are talking of the rights of individuals at whose expense the utopia prospers. In modern utopias, we find foreigners and atheists in the first category. In the second class, we encounter slaves, and, in the case of
Those excluded from the utopias are the people who are not admitted into the city. What the great utopian thinkers seem to not take into account is that every human community is constituted as a “we” that excludes a “you.” In that very act of noninclusion or explicit expulsion, the utopia ceases to appear a happy place, but rather as a place that accumulates at its margins human beings who, as Brecht said, cannot participate in the festival of life. The excluded are human beings who are as worthy, or even more worthy than the others, to inhabit that city that they have no access to. The cases are quite broad, and are susceptible to different classifications. 22 To follow our chosen presentation structure to the end, we will only pay attention to those pointed out by modern utopian thinkers. We will then proceed to discuss the contemporary reply.
The first type of people excluded from the utopias were foreigners. The foreigner could find himself or herself in different situations. As a visitor, stated More, the foreigner would be received with suspicion, because foreign elements could damage the utopian social order. If he or she were admitted, it would be with reservations and only after passing a number of tests. But there are other foreigners than just the visitor. They can also be citizens of other towns. Regarding these people, classical utopias describe an attitude that is more or less isolationist and instrumental. In the case of the
The foreigner can also be, in the case of the
The case of the native peoples who have been displaced can fall—depending on what the legitimate manners of acquisition of soil are—under the second category sketched out here, that is, pariahs. Utopias, such as existing political communities, are suspicious of this different human being, who is not one of our own, and who, as such, is an undesirable in the city. So, the foreigner, as defined by Simmel, “is not understood here as wanderer, the sense in which the term was used many times up to now, one who arrives today and leaves tomorrow, but as one who comes today and stays tomorrow” (Simmel, 2009, p. 601), but in staying, he or she becomes a pariah, a human being who is pointed out and treated differently.
There are many, too many, human beings who are found in this situation in real countries and who, more and more, face a xenophobic and racist social response: The foreigners, those who come from outside and are invading our land, our society, our world are dangerous (criminals, thieves, rapists); they are poor people who become an economic burden for the real and native residents, and take jobs away from citizens, who are those who have the right to everything (cf. Foucault, 2003c; Procacci, 1991). 24
The social mechanism of the utopias is, in sum, the same as that of all real communities: Either they integrate the other foreigners, obligating them to take on the way of life of the island, or else, they expel them, to institutions designed to receive them, normalize them, isolate them from the rest of the population either internally (mental institutions, hospitals, prisons, internment, or detention camps; cf. Foucault, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1995, 1998, 2003a, 2003b) or externally (to the no-man’s land of present-day refugee camps, to the extermination camps of other times; cf. Arendt, 1994, 2004). Only when the story is told from the point of view of the people who are not inhabitants of the light city does it show the other face of the place made for happiness.
When the other, the expelled person, is the one who tells his or her tale, the shadows are more than obvious: A new class of human beings has been created, a group of people who are confined in concentration camps by their enemies and in internment camps by their friends, and have to forget their past (Arendt, 1994). Arendt, on a number of occasions—basing herself on her own experience as an internal foreigner (a Jew in Nazi Germany), a foreign enemy (a German refugee in France during the Second World War), or as just a foreigner (stateless for many years)—emphasizes the perplexity of the law. One might suppose that human rights are natural, but in the precise moment in which people lose their citizenship, they lose all the protection of the law, because there is now nobody in the entire world (including international law, which was then nearly nonexistent; it is now better developed but remains equally incapable of acting in the face of the grave humanitarian crisis suffered by refugees) that could guarantee them (cf. Arendt, 2004). 25
The atheists are the second category of persons expelled from utopian cities. Although all classical utopias proposed some form of tolerance, in all of them, the touchstone of that tolerance was atheism (More, 2006). The positions of the classical utopias coincide and can be summed up citing the opinion that Locke would later maintain: All beliefs can be tolerated except for atheism. Utopus, for example, left all individuals free to believe what they wanted, but the only exception was a solemn and strict law against anyone who should sink so far below the dignity of human nature as to think that the soul perishes with the body, or that the universe is ruled by blind chance, not divine providence. (More, 2006, pp. 223-225)
The reason for this prohibition is, ultimately, the same offered by Locke: The atheist has no reason to act morally and, thus, has no reason for obeying social norms. Atheists are, therefore, especially repudiated, and should be seen as enemies of the State (cf. More, 2006). For contemporary thinkers, this is just one more motive for exclusion, but in a secularized and globalized world, it is not usually the trait that provokes the greatest rejection, except among certain fundamentalist political projects, where political and religious power combine to adopt the form of a theocracy.
The final dystopian category is that of people who are not full citizens. Pariahs are those groups or persons who live in ideal cities, and in real communities, but they are second-class citizens. They are undesirable beings whose existence is merely tolerated, provided they keep within certain limits (physical or geographical, moral, professional, etc.). They are people who do not have the same civil or social rights as others do.
The works of utopian thinkers also classify those people who should not exist in ideal cities. Servants and slaves are the first. Perhaps, the greatest progress in classical utopias regarding slavery is their lack of any institution such as what Aristotle called “slavery by nature” (Aristotle, 1998, I, pp. 2-7). Certainly, there is slavery in nearly all classical utopias, but it is something imposed by convention.
26
Normally, these slaves had been captured during war, but there are also those who are guilty of some crime, and who are given the harshest labor. In
Work in the utopian republics has been humanized and has become less onerous for its inhabitants, who have easier workdays. Nevertheless, this progress has been possible, to a large degree, thanks to the fact that slaves are forced to perform the most thankless and/or degrading work.
One need not be suspicious to recognize in these affirmations a profound dystopia that lives in the heart of the utopias, just as in real societies. There are countless human beings who work as slaves or as semislaves at the service of a global economic market, whose goods are only enjoyed by a certain number of privileged people, who want to shut their eyes to reality. They believe themselves to be living in an ideal society in which, by law, there is no slavery, and everybody obtains what he or she deserves according to the fruit of his or her labor and his or her effort. Those are anarcho–capitalist songs that, in the ears of the excluded people, are the songs of the swan that dies from exhaustion (cf. Davis, 2006). This occurs, however, always at the margins of ideal cities (in the shacks, in depressed sectors, at the other side of the world, in underdeveloped countries, in other places). This is the other face of the utopia–reality offered up by ideal cities built with spatial criteria, which generate dual, segregated, and fragmented spaces where a major portion of the inhabitants are considered noninhabitants or inhabitants of places-not-fit-to-be-inhabited (Davis, 2006; Harvey, 1976, 1996, 2000, 2005).
The sterile woman is another symbol of the pariah who inhabits the utopias. For example, in
The Solars are subjected to an obsessive control over hygiene and sexual relations, a control which has, for men, the compensation of having sex with sterile women. Although it is prohibited for men to have sexual relations before 21 years of age, some are authorized “to have intercourse with barren pregnant women so as to avoid illicit usages” (Campanella, 1981, p. 53).
The sterile woman in
Even so, the sterile woman has a compensation: She is the only woman in
In conclusion, our reflection on utopias has shown that the ambiguity of the term has become real in a way contrary to what was expected: “Eû” has turned out to not exist, because some of the measures that have been proposed have not precisely made them into happy places. In contrast, “oû” has turned out to be a nonplace that exists and has taken the form of those institutions and spaces in which the human has been treated as nonhuman. The utopias, as places dreamed of with humanitarian aims, and with the objective of playing a critical role in the face of existent cities, have become real places inhabited by thousands of human beings who are not Utopians, Solars, or Atlantans, but people who live terrible lives at the margins of ideal cities. That is to say, what was once the measure for criticism is today criticized as being dystopian.
The classic utopias are proposals for social reform, which were designed without taking into account the close relationship between the city and its inhabitants: The city
Thus, when it is pointed out that the city (its spatial planning) is what defines the citizen, then dystopias are inevitably generated. First because those designs seek to eliminate anomie and alterity or otherness from the city–society, which is both impossible and undesirable. Second because not only does this exclude part of the population but also keeps other social groups within the category of semicitizens as well as subjecting all the citizens to disciplinary, pastoral, and biopolitical control that they have internalized. And, finally, they seek to stabilize the social order and prevent any historical process from introducing social changes. For example, “in Bacon’s
If we are to learn a lesson from the modern utopias, it is this: Social reality is much more complex than what the Utopian thinkers first believed, that is, that the city is defined by its social relationships.
Therefore, any idea that attempts to avoid the dystopic turn of spatial utopias must at some point face the fact that the right to being part of a city is far different from living in a remote corner of a walled/isolated city defended from anomie and the rabble outside.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Programa de I+D+i orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad) through the grant “Mapa de Riesgo Social” (Reference: CSO2013-42576-R) and by Chile’s Research Program: proyecto Fondecyt number. 1160982 “Crítica y recepción de las utopías y del utopismo en el liberalismo libertario y en el liberalismo socialdemócrata del siglo XX: Popper, Hayek, Nozick y Rawls.”