The Textual Afterlives of Utopia

This article examines the textual afterlives of Utopia in China and Taiwan by surveying titles published between 2016 and the first half of 2017. We are dealing with a massive array of titles pertinent to Utopia(nism) related to multiple disciplines. Indeed, not only has the sixteenth-century neologism Utopia become “a term of common parlance” that has taken on its own life,1 but the concept of Utopia representing the ideal (and the search for it) has also been extensively adapted and appropriated.2 Since any articulation expressing a particular ideal can be considered “utopian” in its own right, it is not my intention to take into account all the titles that border on the articulation of or the desire for an ideal.3 I limit the scope of my investigation to books with the word utopia appearing either in the title or in the abstract or under subject headings in library catalogs and databases. I exclude the translations (be they reissues or new ones) of utopian classics such as Nineteen Eighty-Four, We, and Brave New World, as well as translations of critiques such as Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia, among others.4 I also exclude essay collections from symposia and conferences as well as M.A. theses and Ph.D. dissertations. Those titles that do not fall into these excluded groups, then, shall offer a brief overview of thematic categories and demonstrate how the idea of Utopia is maintaining its textual legacy.The results of cross-referencing various databases and library catalogs render a simple result: since 2016, thirteen books on this subject were published in China, and three books were published in Taiwan.5 To begin with the list from Taiwan, the first book located is about the dislocation of Tibetans and their search for a free Tibet. Written by Wenhui Yin, 謎途:流亡路上的烏托邦 (Puzzling Routes: The Utopia on the Way of Exile) implicitly conveys loaded sentiments that are only relatable to exiled Tibetans. The second one was published in June 2016, entitled 自由文化地球國 (The Earth Nation of Free Culture).6 The author Guomin Zeng attempts to express his ideals by resorting to philosophical theories and the socioeconomic system, arriving at his ultimate aspirations: a Republic of Free Culture, a Free Cultural Area, a Passion-Based Economy, and a Global Republic of Free Culture.7 While the previous two books focus on the present and the future, the third one, authored by Guoqing He, looks back to the past. Challenging the common view that the Emperor Wanli of the Ming dynasty caused China to experience a “dark age,” in 萬曆駕到:多元、開放、創意的文化盛世 (The Royal Arrival of [Emperor] Wanli: The Cultural Heyday of the Dynamic, Receptive, and Creative), Guoqing He offers a different historical standpoint by illustrating how the cultural pinnacle of Ming China had in fact been analogized with the Renaissance by the sixteenth-century European missionaries who set foot in China. “The missionaries were amazed that Utopia did exist in the world,” writes the author.8 Thus, these three Utopia-related titles published in Taiwan in 2016 can be viewed as their authors' utopian visions, factual or otherwise, ranging from the past to the future. Guoqing He's book is a reestablishment of Ming China as being a Utopia when viewed culturally and artistically; Wenhui Yin, voicing her concern for the Tibetans, builds an imaginary Utopia for the exiled through her piece of reported literature; and Guomin Zeng's work, expanded from the utopian novel he wrote ten years back, goes into the future with practical solutions to attaining his ideal.While the three books published in Taiwan are the authors' reflections of their ideal vision, the thirteen titles published in China cover a wider range of disciplines. The two published in 2017 deal with the utopian spirit of ethical values and the critique of a writer considered utopian. The first book, titled 乌托邦精神的伦理价值 (The Ethical Values of Utopian Spirits), was the outcome of a project called “Chinese Traditional Utopian Thinking and Its Archival Research,” funded by Huaqiao University in 2016. The second book looks into Andrei Platonov's writing during the 1920s and 1930s, focusing on the artistic expression of utopianism and the pursuit of individual survival.The other eleven books touch upon the topics of utopianism, utopian novels, Marxism, nostalgia for homelands, aesthetics, gender issues, and travel. There are overlaps, and the two most frequently covered topics are utopianism and critiques of the author's works.9 These titles suggest a relatively serious or audience-specific appropriation of Utopia. For instance, Jie Wang's work 寻找乌托邦:现代美学的危机与重建 (Searching for Utopia: Crisis and Reconstruction of Modern Aesthetics) reflects Wang's critique of modern aesthetics and anthropology. On the other hand, Kongzhi Zhang's 总体性与乌托邦:人本主义马克思主义的总体范畴 (Totality and Utopia: A Perspective of Humanitarian Marxism)10 is explicitly meant for a readership with pre-existing knowledge about Marxism.The only book that is directed toward a general readership is travel-related. However, unlike Gulliver's Travels, in which the author's vision is concealed in a travelogue, this book is explicitly a traveler's guide. Instead of an uninterrupted narrative, it is composed of multiple entries suggesting tourist attractions as well as giving tips normally unknown to visitors. The book is entitled 跨国界乌托邦:理工男 100 天环游北美 (Crossing-Boundary Utopia: A Polytechnic Boy's 100 Days Around North America). For informed readers, the extent to which Utopia is being appropriated here may appear to be far-fetched. Even if we can agree that it confirms J. C. Davis's assertion that Utopia “has taken on a life of its own,”11 This case in particular is an unexamined misappropriation and is beyond the range of common parlance.12So far, a brief overview of the Utopia-specific books has been provided. I will take a short detour here to reflect on another level of Utopia's textual afterlives in the art and entertainment industry. A love song titled “Utopia” was released by a Taiwanese singer, Hebe Tien,13 and a large-scale concert tour called “Utopia 2.0” by another Taiwanese singer, A-Mei, has been going on since 2016.14 Besides the music industry, results from the Hong Kong Academic Library Link indicate two film holdings that were released last year in Hong Kong. One is a Japanese sci-fi film called 和諧, or Harmony, satirizing a Utopia built in the name of defying chaos but based in fact upon a hypocrisy. The other holding is titled 同流合烏, officially rendered as Utopians. A play on words is exhibited in this title. It originates from the idiomatic phrase 同流合污, which signifies the act of wallowing in a mire with someone.15 However, the last character, 烏, found in the film title, is an intentional typo, an adaptation of the Mandarin rendition of Utopia, 烏托邦.16 The pejorative denotation and wordplay in the title embody the director's deliberate move, begging and daring readers to search for their own Utopia, their own truth. While no Utopia-related video productions were released in Taiwan, there was a documentary on Taiwan's human geography in 2016. Titled The Postcards from Formosa, the three-disc documentary contains a section called “The Last Utopia: The Ivalino Tribe and the Traditional Underground Houses on Orchid Island.” Without appropriation or wordplay, it reveals a bitter yearning for the long-lost times when aborigines were able to enjoy their land without modern intervention.This detour shows that the appropriation, or, rather, the formal variation, of Utopia is not strictly textual. However, we cannot disregard the fact that lyrics, titles of films, posters, and any other promotional materials are composed of textual elements, in which Utopia, or烏托邦, is printed in black and white. This article looks into the textual afterlives of Utopia in multiple manners. It reflects upon how this idea has been appropriated, as well as how its life span has been prolonged and it has flourished in a dynamic fashion. The appropriation of Utopia has traveled everywhere: from relatively abstruse philosophical works, to critiques on aesthetics, to fictional narratives, to such “light” texts as drawing books. It also manifests itself in artistic events, video recordings, and many more nonprint media objects, which deserves another essay-length discussion.In Taiwan, the relatively smaller number of titles published since 2016 were brought out by commercially run publishing houses, whereas those in China were released primarily through university-affiliated publishers. However, this does not pinpoint an advocacy of Utopia to any specific demographic in either country, as there are other elements that need to be factored in: for instance, the relatively low percentage of academic publishers in Taiwan and the events, exhibitions, and other partially textual afterlives that need to be accounted for before a conclusive observation can be drawn. The seemingly small number of publications should not downplay the fact that the idea of Utopia has been perpetuated for more than five centuries, transcending the boundaries of cultures, languages, and time. In its abiding fashion, Utopia has metamorphosed into various disciplines, and this survey of its textual afterlives ought to be the beginning of a wider search for and identification of Utopia's legacy

Archaeology · Art · Art history · China · Literature · Utopia · History · Translation Studies and Practices