Waking up to the US election result was depressing for many reasons, but the one I’ll talk about here is the stark contrast between the progressiveness I see in contemporary American utopias and the fact that in reality, more than 75 million Americans voted for Trump.
There are a wealth of contemporary utopian novels coming out of the US that are racially diverse, have casts of queer and trans people, and feature non-nuclear family units. Sexism and ableism are nonexistent. Characters have a strong sense of their ecological connections and act with consideration for the environment. I’m thinking about Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot series, Annalee Newitz’s Terraformers, N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth series, Nisi Shawl’s Everfair series, and Chana Porter’s The Seep. Just to give a few examples.
When reading these books, it feels so much like the right direction of travel. Yet, America just chose the opposite.
Is utopia just wishful thinking?
Trump was re-elected fair and square. Faced with this reality I wondered if utopia might be all the derogatory things people say about it after all. Is it no more than cloud cuckoo land, pie in the sky, fantasy, a nice dream?
According to scholar Bill Ashcroft, what distinguishes utopianism from ‘mere wishful thinking’ is its ability ‘to speak to the present social conditions that make utopia necessary’.1 With Trump’s re-election, there are certainly some present social conditions that need speaking to. So perhaps, conversely, the least utopian election outcome makes utopia more, not less, relevant right now.
Dystopian visions might appear apt to our circumstances, and The Handmaid’s Tale is zooming up the bestseller lists again. But they suggest that decline is inevitable and inescapable, and add to the feeling that we might as well just give up.
Ashcroft, as quoted above, is a big advocate of hope as an engine of social change. He states that ‘the struggle for justice can only proceed if it is driven by hopeful anticipation’.2 But what if the very circumstances that make utopia necessary mean that our hope has gone out of the window?
Utopia as hate
In ‘The Limits of Utopia‘, the author and activist China Miéville states:
We need utopia, but to try to think utopia, in this world, without rage, without fury, is an indulgence we can’t afford. In the face of what is done, we cannot think utopia without hate.”
This idea of utopia arising from hate appears oppositional to Ashcroft’s idea of utopia as hope. However, the truth is that utopia has always had a critical function. Part of the purpose of imagining a more perfect world is to highlight the differences between that and our own. Miéville just makes it clear that, in a world facing climate breakdown (and now terrifying leaders), we are not talking about subtle tweaks.
In his emphasis on the terrible point we start from, Miéville’s words carry a similar sentiment to Halberstam’s ‘unworlding’ (which I’ve written about previously). Building on the foundation of what currently exists is unthinkable. Utopia therefore needs to have a destructive element before it can begin to reimagine the world.
Both Ashcroft and Miéville hold that social change is required. But when our hopes are dashed, Miéville’s position allows motivation to be found in our disgust at the present.
Be energised
The fact that progressive views are more widely voiced is probably what caused some people to recoil and vote for traditional values (you know, like misogyny, transphobia and xenophobia). This shows that the work is just beginning. So whatever gives you energy, whether that’s hope, hate, or connecting with others around you (maybe through a utopian book group), then keep at it. Utopia and communicating that other ways are possible is more relevant than ever.
- Ashcroft, Utopianism in Postcolonial Literatures p.203
- Ibid, p.202
