Conversations on Utopia

Bibliographic Information published by the
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at
http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the
Library of Congress.

This book is published with the financial support of the Department of
Philosophy "Piero Martinetti", University of Milan

Cover illustration by Silvia Mercalli

ISBN 978-3-631-82033-9 (Print)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-82939-4 (E-PDF)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-82940-0 (EPUB)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-82941-7 (MOBI)

DOI 10.3726/b17312

© Peter Lang GmbH

Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

Berlin 2020

All rights reserved.

Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any
utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to
prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions,
translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in
electronic retrieval systems.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

www.peterlang.com

About the author

The Editors

Miriam Bait is an assistant professor and senior lecturer in English language and translation at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Milan, Italy, where she teaches language and communication-related courses.

Claudia Gualtieri is an assistant professor and senior lecturer in English literature. She teaches Anglophone cultures, postcolonial studies and cultural studies at the Department of Language Mediation and Intercultural Communication, University of Milan.

About the book

Miriam Bait / Claudia Gualtieri (eds.)

Conversations on Utopia

This book offers an interdisciplinary conversation on utopia clustered around cultural and communication practises in terms of political and ethical projects. It sheds light on cultural and discursive aspects characterising the polysemous concept of utopia conceived as an ongoing process that is put into practice in the present. Against this backdrop, the book raises questions for intellectual work, seeks out an enlightening breach in academic field boundaries, invites a revision of the forms of knowledge production, and encourages pedagogical actions for the development of critical thinking.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Permission to reprint David Herd’s essay “Calling for an end to indefinite detention: the spatial politics of Refugee Tales” was granted by From the European South 5, 2019, pp. 15–25, http://europeansouth.postcolonialitalia.it/journal/2019-5/2_Herd.pdf. The French version of Lina Prosa’s “Comment et pourquoi donner de l’espace à l’utopie en période de naufrage?” was published on Revue Droit Littérature 1, 2017, pp. 97–105.

Foreword

Miriam Bait/Claudia Gualtieri

Introduction

Lawrence Grossberg

In Search of Optimism

In Theory

Lina Prosa

How and Why to Make Space for Utopia in Times of Shipwreck: The Responsibility of the Playwright

Paul Carter

Utopian Projections: Urban Spells against the Fury of Exile

Gino Zaccaria

The Light-Utopia of Cézanne (Errantry into the Sun)

Cultural Practices

David Herd

Calling for an End to Indefinite Detention: The Spatial Politics of Refugee Tales

Charlotte Bridgham

‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’: Humanitarian Missions in the Mediterranean

Raffaella Baccolini

Contested Memories and Acts of Counter-Commemoration as Temporary Utopian Spaces

Heterotopian Spaces of Feminist Self-Enunciation in Anita Desai’s Writings

Reginaldo Cerolini/Lucia Cupertino/Pina Piccolo

Resetting the Compass from North to the Souths: Utopian and Dystopian Terrains Surveyed by La Macchina Sognante

Communication Practices

Gina Poncini

Happiness, Spirituality and Sustainable Development

Marina Brambilla, Valentina Crestani

Gender-inclusive Language as Utopia? German and Italian in Comparison

Raffaella Folgieri

Augmented Communication through 3D Virtual Reality

Sabrina Francesconi

Travelling across ‘Intensities of Blue beyond very bright Blue’: The Language of Dystopian Journeys

Notes on Contributors

Foreword

The collection of essays Conversations on Utopia. Cultural and Communication Practices marks the third and final production of a research unit within the University of Milan’s interdisciplinary, interdepartmental, and international research project “Alla ricerca dell’isola che non c’è” [In Search of Neverland]. Building on previous research, publications, and workshops, this collection aims at developing a conversation around the notion of utopia as a political and ethical project that begins in the present and is put into practice in the form of “doing”/making utopia possible. The multiplicity of possible definitions and approaches that may be adopted when trying to frame the concept of utopia offers the inspiration for a debate about a notion that has long attracted political and cultural interest across epochs, whenever a model of society was being imagined for the future. Our discussion continues to investigate the function of utopia in inspiring daily actions that may trace paths of inclusive exemplary practices for change, while also crossing thematic borders in order to contaminate the subject areas through an interdisciplinary dialogue that may (utopically) be useful for the present and the future.

The first volume representing stage I of the interdisciplinary project – Utopian Discourses Across Cultures. Scenarios in Effective Communication to Citizens and Corporations (Bait/Brambilla/Crestani, eds., 2016) – offers an overview on the different perspectives from which the polysemous notion of utopia is ‘realised’ in communication situations as verbal and non-verbal processes involving various aspects of a linguistically and culturally defined community. Society consists of a system in which internal and external relations and regulations are analysed and determined according to cultural, economic, and educational parameters. The complexity of society could lead to the emergence of dystopian situations in a system that aspires to be based on utopian ideals, but in which these ideals often remain abstract – or become their opposite.

The second collection, Utopia in the Present. Cultural Politics and Change (Gualtieri, ed., 2018) – representing stage II of the interdisciplinary project – explores the possibility of change embedded in contextual localised actions in the present. The volume takes the lead from Thomas More’s notion of Utopia, but transforms and adapts it according to the global, intercultural, and postcolonial present, which is, however, interpreted through the lens of the ‘local’.