The Governing of Life in Early Seventeenth-Century Utopias

Bibliographic Data

ID3970918
AuthorsSara Lindholm (0000-0002-1353-3063, University of Jyväskylä, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume30
Issue2
Pages169-186
Publication date2025-02-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe European Legacy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1084-8770 • E-ISSN: 1470-1316
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10848770.2024.2439678
OpenAlexW4405379234
LanguageEN
References cited20

Early modern utopian literature includes an overlooked theme that explains many of the throughlines within the genre. This common theme is the biopolitical control of the population, which implies a form of governance that optimizes life through the regulation of sex, reproduction, health, food, hygiene, habitation, and “race.” In this article I examine four early seventeenth-century utopias—Campanella’s City of the Sun, Andreae’s Christianopolis, Burton’s “Utopia of mine owne,” and Bacon’s New Atlantis—and suggest that exposing this theme can lead to a deeper understanding of both early modern utopian literature and the much debated history of biopolitics, which Foucault understood as a uniquely modern phenomenon

Aesthetics · Art history · Biology · Biopower · Eugenics · Political science · Politics · Population · Reproduction · Sociology · Utopia · Decadence, Literature, and Society · Demography · Gender Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Philosophy · Ecology

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