Utopia is an island. It is surrounded by cliffs and storms, which are phenomena of nature. It is the natural limitation of itself. In the geological and geographical context, every utopia is a victim of natural conditions as soon as it is placed in reality. However, the boundaries and limitations that truly define it are not demands of the Earth. Utopia is, in reality, a victim of fantasy and thought. To think about this and to want to perceive it means crossing the boundaries of solidified existence. Utopia, therefore, signifies eccentricity. To want and to be capable of exhausting oneself. To be utopian means to go into the abyss. Into the abyss of uncertainty and desire. Of desire, because utopia is the appearance and presence of the erotic. Utopia and Eros are intertwined, and not merely because they were linked in this way by Herbert Marcuse in his 1955 book, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. But because the original meaning of the word Utopia, as a Non-Place, reveals the possibility of satisfying all desires and makes the sensible possible —everything dedicated to the senses. Marcuse recognized what is already inherent in the very concept of Utopia. A place of ecstasy and fulfillment. And also of obligation and suffering. Utopia derives from the Greek οὐ (not) + τόπος (place). But Antiquity did not convey the meaning of the utopian. It was the modern era and, with it, the political thought of Thomas More, dominated by science and technology in his masterpiece Utopia (1516), that gave its name to subsequent utopian projects. Hence the intimate connection between Utopia and Dystopia and the dialectical relationship that connects both sides of the utopian.
A Utopia, whatever it may be, is not a fixed determination. It is the place of possibility, which can always turn into its opposite. Therefore, it is risky to design a Utopia. Utopias are incendiary devices in the delirium of the discourses that dominate everyday life. They are escape routes that can immediately lead to dead ends. Whoever designs a Utopia is responsible for its success or failure. Paradise is not a Utopia. It is the closed-off expectation of a weary and hopeless civilization. Paradise is like Hell beyond the utopian, and only Utopia has the power and the possibility to shape the future and the continuous of life on Earth. Paradise and Hell are extraterrestrial places that may perhaps be reached, but which are completely uninteresting for a life bound to Earth. There are many, almost innumerable utopias, but few people dedicate themselves to Utopia.
Life itself — whether human, animal, plant, or mineral — prefers to remain on fixed paths and ceaselessly resists any possible change. It is the law of continuity that strangles and withers utopias. Anyone who wants to be utopian must throw themselves off their conventional path and seek a more-than-human existence, which has nothing to do with the gods or with God. God is not utopian. He is neither the defender nor the creator of the utopian. God merely wants to be, but does not want to become. The utopian, however, is the essence of becoming. So, how can Utopia be conceived and realized today? The world in which we live is coming to an end. Every day it is shaped by the end and oriented toward ending. This has to do with the prevailing doctrine that influences and determines all current political, economic, social, and private dimensions. These are the visions of monotheistic worlds that seek to maintain themselves through violence and power and to determine the entire existence of all other modes of existence.
Undoubtedly there are differences between the various orientations, but the monogamy of thought and its hatred of diversity and transgression—whatever form this may take—is the abyss of our present and the fate of an entire era. Only complete surrender to the utopian potential of beings, phenomena, humans, and more-than-humans can free the Earth from the bonds of physical and metaphysical monogamy. From a violent and destructive relationship that allows for no otherness and no change. Utopia, therefore, essentially means the desire and the possibility of change. It means nothing fixed, and never any final solution, but the desire and the will to open up and create. To be utopian means to be an archipelago. To carry the fire of trust from island to island, just as the Selk’nam did for thousands of years in Tierra del Fuego.
Dirk Michael Hennrich