Mapping Utopias: A voyage to placelessness

Law and Critique

Volumn 12, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 135-157

  Philippopoulos Mihalopoulos, Andreas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Body; Cartography; Critical theory; Geography; Husserl; Negation; Phenomenology; Space place; Utopia

Indexed keywords

EID: 34247749835     PISSN: 09578536     EISSN: 15728617     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1017948214997     Document Type: Article

References (80)

1. F. E. Manuel and F. P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979).
2. And its editor, since, according to F.E. Manuel and F.P. Manuel, French Utopias: An Anthology of Ideal Societies (New York: Free Press, 1966), 4, every Utopia is at least a folie à deux.
3. B. Goodwin and K. Taylor, The Politics of Utopia: A Study in Theory and Practice (London: Hutchinson, 1982), 16, original emphasis.
4. L. Lowenthal, "The Utopian Motif is Suspended", in M. Jay, ed., An Unmastered Past: The Autobiographical Reflections of Leo Lowenthal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987),
5. as quoted in J. Whitebook, Perversion and Utopia: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Critical Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 81.
6. Whitebook, supra n. 4, at 75.
7. J. Baudrillard, Simulations, P. Foss, P. Patton, and P. Beitchman, trans. (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983), 2.
8. F. Moretti, Atlas of the European Novel: 1800-1900 (London: Verso, 1998), 3.
9. E. Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, F. Kersten, trans. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983), 113, original emphasis.
10. E. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, D. Cairns, trans. (The Hague: Martin Nijhoff, 1973), 35.
11. Husserl, supra n. 8, at 110, original emphasis.
12. Husserl, supra n. 8, at 199.
13. Husserl, supra n. 9.
14. J. Kockelmans, Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue UP, 1994), 121.
15. Husserl, supra n. 9.
16. See M. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962),
17. where the body is also exhibiting what Merleay-Ponty calls 'motor intentionality', which is comparable to Husserl's 'kinaesthesia' as it appears in Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, F. Kersten, trans. (The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1983).
18. D. Bell, Husser (London: Routledge, 1990), 221.
19. "The living body as the centre of orientation", as quoted in Bell, supra n. 16, at 210,
20. from E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reiner Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, M. Biemel (ed.), 1954.
21. Bell, supra n. 16, at 210.
22. The other principle being of course the voyage as a means of reaching Utopia; take for example Campanella's "Sun City", More's island of Utopia, Bacon's "New Atlantis" amongst others; but not only Renaissance produced utopian travels: see, for example, Corneille's El Dorado in "Le Cid", or even Swift's "Gulliver". A travel has always been the trajectory towards the unknown, the discovery of a new world, no doubt inspired by the great geographic discoveries of the era.
23. Manuel and Manuel, supra n. 1.
24. I. Calvino, Le Città Invisibili (Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1993), 44.
25. On the graces and exigencies of the solipsistic impasse as the consequence of the phenomenological isolation of the observer, see A. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, "The Silence of the Sirens: Environmental Risk and the Precautionary Principle", Law and Critique 10(2) (1999), 175-197.
26. Calvino, supra n. 21, at 25.
27. For example, Constantinople in Byzantine maps, Europe in European maps, North America in US maps. See D. Cosgrove, ed., Mappings (London: Reaktion Books, 1999).
28. Z. Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998).
29. Bauman, supra n. 25, at 38.
30. B. Baczko, as quoted in Bauman, supra n. 25, at 39.
31. Classic examples of which would be A. Huxley's A Brave New World, G. Orwell's 1984 or Y. Zamyatin's We, all of them political allegories of future worlds launching a critique of existing forms of absolutism.
32. P. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, G. Taylor, ed. (New York: Columbia UP, 1986), 16.
33. Others have attempted this very persuasively; see e.g., Whitebook, supra n. 4; B. de Sousa Santos, Toward a New Common Sense: Law, Science and Politics in the Paradigmatic Transition (New York: Routledge, 1995);
34. K. Kumar and S. Bann, Utopias and the Millennium (London: Reaktion Books, 1993);
35. K. Kumar, Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986);
36. for a feminist reading see S. Benhabib, Critique, Norm and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory (New York: Columbia UP, 1986);
37. J. Cauville and M. Zupancic, eds., Reécriture des Mythes: L' Utopie au Feminin (Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997);
38. F. Bartkowski, Feminist Utopias (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989);
39. C. Douzinas, "Human Rights and Postmodern Utopia", Law and Critique 11(2) (2000), 219-240.
40. In Negation and Utopia: The German Volksstück from Raimund to Kroetz (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), Calvin Jones shows lucidly and convincingly how Utopia and negation can appear in the most unexpected of genres, that of the German popular theatrical play. The fact that the traditionalism of the Volksstück makes it one of the least likely candidates to be associated with criticism of social structures, is another manifestation of the possibility of affinity between critical negation and Utopian.
41. There is a clear resonance of autopoiesis here: N. Luhmann in The Differentiation of Society (NY: Columbia UP, 1982),
42. refers to the thematisation of society. The armour of the phenomenological "I" could be described as its autopoiesis, or in other words its systemic properties that enable it to develop in an intentional way without losing its 'purity'. An autopoietic system has no contact with its environment apart from the contact allowed by the system's binary code. See N. Luhmann, Social Systems (Stanford, California: Stanford UP, 1995).
43. For a comprehensive and accessible summary of some of Luhmann's basic ideas, see W.T. Murphy, "Modern Times: Niklas Luhmann on Law, Politics and Social Theory", The Modern Law Review 47 (1984), 602-620.
44. R. Bernet, I. Kern, and E. Marbach, An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern UP, 1993), 75.
45. Once again, the temptation to observe the parallels between N. Luhmann's Autopoiesis and Husserlian Egology is strong. Along these lines, one could almost venture a comparison between the Luhmannian binary code, the watchdog on the boundaries of the system that differentiates between the system and its environment, and intentionality, which enables but also cuts any communicational link between the Transcendental ego and the Natural world. See supra, n. 32.
46. And it is also thematised, as I show, in the next section.
47. The only form of interdependence is for the perpetuation of the dualism between the "I" and the environment: the latter needs the former in order to be brought forth, just like the former needs the latter in order to define itself negatively (I am not my environment, hence I am I). See H. Maturana and F. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: the Realization of the Living (Dordecht, Holland: Reidel Publishing, 1972), for the basic principles of Autopoiesis and also for the ability of the observer to bring forth her environment.
48. The tautology avoids fatuity because of the splitting of the ego into two: the Natural and the Transcendental ego. See E. Husserl, The Paris Lectures, P. Koestenbaum, trans. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1985), 16.
49. As G. Pratt writes in "Grids of Difference: Place and Identity Formation", in R. Fincher and J. Jacobs, eds., Cities of Difference (London: The Guildford Press, 1998), 26,
50. "we have multiple and sometimes contradictory subject positions and are sometimes torn between identification, often moving between identifications in different situations and places". See also M. Low, "Representation Unbound: Globalization and Democracy", in Cox, K, ed., Spaces of Globalization: Reasserting the Power of the Local (London: The Guildford Press, 1997).
51. Ricoeur, see supra n. 29, at 311.
52. Moretti, see supra n. 7.
53. A. Scafi, "Mapping Eden", in Cosgrove, supra n. 24, at 67.
54. A source of inspiration: I. Calvino, "Blood, Sea", in Time and the Hunter, W. Weaver, trans. (London: Picador, 1993).
55. See Bernet et al., supra n. 33, at 59.
56. E. Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, D. Carr, trans. (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1970), 155.
57. Husserl, supra n. 9.
58. Husserl, supra n. 44.
59. See next section, on the return to the Natural attitude as a result of unbracketing.
60. Bell, supra n. 16, at 222.
61. As part of a tripartite structure comprising the ego, the cogito and the cogitatum, Husserl, supra n. 44, at 171.
62. See Bell, supra n. 16, who renames the kinaesthesia of the Husserlian Leib as 'motility', at 209.
63. Ibid., at 213.
64. On the spatial relationship of "Here" and "There" see P. Ricoeur, Husserl: An Analysis of his Phenomenology, E. Ballard and L. Embree, trans. (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1976), and Bell, supra n. 16.
65. Or, as N. Luhmann writes "observing systems in the double sense of the English -ing form. We ourselves may be observing systems observing observing systems." "Closure and Structural Coupling", Cardozo Law Review 13 (1992), 1419-1442, at 1420.
66. Or, to be more precise, analogical "apperceptions", which is Husserl's translation of empathy into phenomenology. See Husserl, supra n. 44.
67. Husserl, supra n. 9.
68. Husserl, supra n. 44, at 172.
69. Husserl, supra n. 8, at 132.
70. Husserl, supra n. 8, at 113, my emphasis. The a priori character of the Lebenswelt seems to annul the objective of the intersubjective 'we', and this is the main point of contention by Husserl's commentators of intersubjectivity: see, for example, Ricoeur, supra n. 52; J. Derrida, Translator's Introduction to E. Husserl, L'Origine de la Géometrie, J. Derrida, trans. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962);
71. C. Macam, Four Phenomenological Philosophers (London: Routledge, 1993).
72. One of the main criticisms to Husserl's intersubjectivity is its impossibility in view of the lack of a universally objective subject that could constitute a universally valid objectivity of the world. See Q. Lauer, The Triumph of Subjectivity (NY: Fordham UP, 1958).
73. Husserl, supra n. 8, at 51.
74. W. Benjamin, One-Way Street and Other Writings (London: Verso, 1985).
75. G. Gilloch, Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), 2.
76. Gilloch, supra n. 62.
77. Benjamin, supra n. 61, at 171.
78. P. Carter, "Dark with Excess of Bright: Mapping the Coastlines of Knowledge", in Cosgrove, supra n. 24.
79. Benjamin, supra n. 61, at 169-170.
80. T. Bernhard, Wittgenstein's Nephew (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).