Smells and politics of Utopia

Bibliographic Data

ID3896017
AuthorsBabette Babich (0000-0002-4499-0718, Fordham University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume65
Issue2
Pages172-193
Publication date2024-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiogenes (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0392-1921 • E-ISSN: 1467-7695
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0392192124000063
OpenAlexW4393095896
LanguageEN
References cited27

Utopia is nominally a 'nowhere' that is also, as Thomas More tells us, a 'good' place. Although there are competing cognate notions, the Greek description looms large in most accounts of utopia. The details of this ideal are so specified that utopic literature consists in a catalogue (and critique) of specifications. This essay draws attention to the fragrance attributed to Lucian's 'Isles of the Blest' together with Ivan Illich's attention to 'atmosphere' and to the aura and the nose along with Nietzsche's emphasis on the sense of smell. Utopic suspicion is discussed as parallels are drawn with pragmatic critiques of utopia as inherently totalitarian along with the 'good life' in political theory and the programmatic default of techno-utopic fantasy. In the historical context of 'conspiracy' and the politics of living and breathing together in community, I conclude with Illich on pax and breath

Art · Art history · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Utopia · Law · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction · Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation