From Utopian Hopes to Practical Politics

A National Revolution in a Rural Village

Bibliographic Data

ID2108038
AuthorsRoert Roy Reed (The Ohio State University, corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume37
Issue4
Pages670-691
Publication date1995-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417500019915
OpenAlexW2116320514
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited28

To begin a revolution is very difficult. To sustain it is even more difficult. To win it is almost impossible. But once you have won, then your troubles really begin.Stephen Bann states that Utopia 'forms the concrete expression of a moment of possibility,which is however annihilated in the very process of being enunciated' (Bann 1993:1, emphasis added). He traces this characteristic to Sir Thomas More, whose neologismUtopiapuns on being both the Good Place (eutopia) and No Place (Outopia), and to the modern denial of this No Place, which he labels 'a ritual of double negation' (Bann 1993:1). The present essay focuses on one ethnographic instance of Utopia's annihilation by enunciation. I will demonstrate that, when the enunciation of Utopia requires the implementation of public policy, the process of creating the Good Place is undermined by the mundane demands of practical politics

Aesthetics · Denial · Linguistics · Negation · Neologism · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Utopia · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Philosophy

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