The book was a private joke

November 21, 2024 12:27 AM

To my mind, this is the ultimate “realist utopian” image. If somebody says the word “Utopia” to you, you should think of an adult woman smuggling the severed head of her father away from an execution. from Utopian Realism, a speech by Bruce Sterling
posted by chavenet (20 comments total)

Metafilter: This fork is a tool in my hand. Why isn’t it my personal fork? Why doesn’t this fork have more of my own values?
posted by away for regrooving at 12:43 AM on November 21, 2024 [7 favorites]

Thanks, chavenet, this was a great read—though it ended on a somewhat inconclusive note. I read More's Utopia as a student and appreciated some of the extra context Sterling has provided here. Good to learn a bit more about Calder, as well. And by chance I was reading about Savoy right before reading this... been fascinated by it since wandering around Carouge years ago, though I've never made it to Turin.

Sterling's thoughts on tourism intrigue me because I've been mulling over some thoughts on the phenomenon since my first city break in years in July (in your home patch, as it happens). This made me think of the Time Out market in Cais do Sodré:

if you want to build a Utopia — realistically — you should build one for tourists. ... I’m thinking some large Turinese building like a derelict factory. Empty — like the Cavallerizza. Or the former “OGR,” the dead train repair yard. Some derelict space turned into a big utopian box.

Turin should totally rebuild the tower that Napoleon knocked down! How many visitors to Venice nowadays even realise that the current St Mark’s Campanile is only actually a century old?
posted by rory at 2:10 AM on November 21, 2024 [6 favorites]

It’s definitely a rambling article without any definitive conclusions, but interesting.
posted by rikschell at 7:24 AM on November 21, 2024 [4 favorites]

Great read, and the discussion of personal utopias as venues for expressing that which is singular about you helped me better understand a foundational element of the ethics that Felix Guattari sets out in Schizoanalytic Cartographies, which I just started reading. By studying the processes of subjectification, Guattari believes that we can construct new machines that produce more liberatory subjectivities, ones that embrace the singular and open up the possibility of new types of collective action. He writes,

“My wish is that all those who remain attached to the idea of social progress - for whom the social has not become a trap, a 'semblance' - turn seriously towards these questions of the production of subjectivity. 'The subjectivity of power does not fall out of the sky; it is not inscribed in the chromosomes that the divisions of knowledge and of labour must necessarily lead to the atrocious segregations that humanity experiences today. The unconscious figures of power and knowledge are not universals. They are attached to reference myths that are deeply anchored in the psyche, but which can be inflected towards liberating pathways. Today, subjectivily remains massively controlled by apparatuses of power and knowledge which place technical, scientific and artistic innovations at the service of the most retrograde figures of sociality. And, yet, other modalities of subjective production - those that are processual and singularizing - are conceivable. Tomorrow, these alternative forms of existential reappropriation and of self-valorization may become the reason for living of human collectives and individuals who refuse to give themselves uap to the deathly entropy characteristic of the period through which we are passing.”

posted by Richard Saunders at 7:30 AM on November 21, 2024 [3 favorites]

METAFILTER: definitely a rambling article without any definitive conclusions, but interesting.
posted by philip-random at 10:07 AM on November 21, 2024 [7 favorites]

A thing that was drilled into me several times in school is that "Utopia" literally means "No place," and that the word is supposed to mean that More understood that what he was proposing would never work in practice.

But what I didn't know (and let's throw Utopia onto the list of classics that I should get around to reading at some point) is that the whole thing is framed as the travelogue of a sailor who refuses to be rooted down in a single place; a person who rejects civic and religious attachments and is happy to be in almost any urban place. It's a little at odds with the concept of a personal utopia, a single place that fully represents a person, that Sterling seems to be getting at with Calder and his wife. But I think it does get at the notion of why tourism can feel hollow: a city without citizens is nothing, while some aspect of your personhood is defined by where you are.
posted by thecaddy at 10:23 AM on November 21, 2024 [3 favorites]

I am eye rolling at the extremely common feeling of tourists for other tourists, viz. "no u".

But I’m half charmed by the argument that there is no realized Utopia except a happy marriage. Half, because it’s not clear that this is a Utopia for more than half the people in it.
posted by clew at 10:46 AM on November 21, 2024 [1 favorite]

Well that was a fun read. I have no idea what Sterling was building towards, really - he goes in circles and roundabouts, though I do like his concept of the Tourist Utopia, please build one down my block for me to use- but what a fun ramble getting there.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:00 AM on November 21, 2024 [1 favorite]

Sterling is a very pleasant dude, who is good buddies with William Gibson (young me was very impressed when I saw Sterling in the front row of a Gibson book reading in Seattle). I wouldn't expect Sterling to have a well-mapped explanation or plan for anything, but he sees lots of very interesting details and connections between things, with an eye towards media and design in particular. https://brucesterling.tumblr.com
posted by cult_url_bias at 11:06 AM on November 21, 2024 [4 favorites]

Most tourists, they don’t really want thrills or excitement. They are tourists to escape the everyday trauma of their miserable lives. They’re not moving toward the attractions. They’re running away from their dystopian suffering.

What a depressing way to think about travel.
posted by nickmark at 11:56 AM on November 21, 2024 [3 favorites]

though I've never made it to Turin

I was in Turn a decade ago and sent Mssr Sterling a solicitation...

REH: Bruce, you're a dood, can we hang out while I happen to be in Turin?
BS: Oh? Sure, why not, when are you going to be here?
REH: Right now!
BS:
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 1:05 PM on November 21, 2024 [2 favorites]

I need closure on that anecdote!
posted by rory at 1:15 PM on November 21, 2024 [1 favorite]

Reminder that urls aren’t automatically turned into links, but can easily be made linkable (thus contributing to site accessibility) by using the “link” button in the quick-access edit buttons immediately below the comment input window. (The link button is the one on the far right of the row of buttons just under the comment box.) Linking urls properly ourselves saves mod time for actual site moderation, too!
posted by eviemath at 3:10 PM on November 21, 2024 [1 favorite]

Is Utopia a satire? I'd like to hear your views.

I've had difficulty understanding Sir/Saint Thomas More's book. Everyone on internet discussions I'd visited are like "hey it's just a satire!" but it didn't really seem witty or ironic when I read it, it seemed like a remake of Plato's odd idealist world (and a preview of Marx). Sure, it's unreal compared to 16th century Monarchist Europe, and that aspect is kinda funny, but not haha funny.

I'm also skeptical about Thomas More, often held up as a role model for sticking to your beliefs, but he could be pretty judgemental in his way.
posted by ovvl at 5:02 PM on November 21, 2024 [2 favorites]

Utopia is a very entertaining and funny work. I did not understand enough of the context and society in which it was written to note whether the satires of so many topics were approval or criticism, or which was mixed with what. Plenty of it could be in a modern stand-up comedy routine, you know how the men and women of Utopia are like this and like that, but I remember feeling hilarious levels of jealousy at some societal/political points and thinking, Wow that would be pretty nice! But this author knows it would likely never happen, even though it would be oddly human if we lived as the Utopians did in such-and-such a respect. And that's where the friction of the humor comes from.
posted by panhopticon at 8:52 PM on November 21, 2024 [1 favorite]

Is it weird that I have an urge to make an insane wooden toaster covered in live wires now?
posted by surlyben at 9:27 PM on November 21, 2024 [3 favorites]

Downloaded the article, because I have been using some of Sterling's writing with my EFL students. Will digest and go forward...
posted by aldus_manutius at 3:33 AM on November 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

Someone else might just say, "our marriage is a utopia" and leave it at that.
I am happy that Bruce Sterling also brings in the severed head, italian utopians, the lonely disconnected pseudo-utopia of tourism, and how a real utopia might build on that.
posted by otherchaz at 4:49 AM on November 22, 2024 [1 favorite]

I need closure on that anecdote!

I didn't get another communique. My sense is that he was probably traveling or otherwise committed. He's one of my modern pillars tho. I think he has a good lens on the intersection of culture, politics and technology and he has a humane approach to covering a topic.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 5:27 AM on November 22, 2024 [2 favorites]

> He had a different value system. To him this is is not junk. To him, this is a struggle for understanding. Here he’s making forks. Why?
posted by duende at 8:04 PM on November 22, 2024 [1 favorite]