Where are you right now? And where are you right now without actually being there? The features of the physical location you are currently in might form an opposite image of the reality you are experiencing – but which one is more real? Although our website is not advanced enough to put a tracking cookie on you, most likely the site you visited before was and did so; do the network operators of that site know where you are or where you have been? 

 

In understanding and shaping who we are, we typically spend a lot of time thinking about how a good place would look like: how would (i.e. should) people behave, what kinds of nature or leisure activities would be available, and how would I fit into that place? Similarly, we philosophize about what is possible for us, which by extension begs the question of what is not here. These spotlights come together in the ambiguous concept of ‘utopia’.

 

This term was coined a little over 500 years ago by Thomas More, as the name for an imaginary island. At the time a neologism, utopia could have two meanings, derived from Greek. Where the word topos (place) is fairly clear, the prefix could stem from ou(k) – not –, or from eu – good. Utopia is therefore either (or both) a no-place, namely a place that does not exist, or/and a good place. 

 

Interestingly, the etymology of the word utopia necessitates that utopia is a place. This spatiality is reflected in many utopian works of literature. To tell a utopian story is, essentially, to create an imaginary place, to which people can travel in their minds while still being aware of the place they physically inhabit. 

 

Several classical utopian narratives involve an elaborate description of the spatial dimension of their story. Plato, for instance, let the character of Critias layout the complete city planning of Atlantis, a mythical city of great fortune and wealth that got lost in the sea. Provided with numerical dimensions, the description inspired cartographers to draw an actual map of Atlantis. When looking at this map, Critias’s descriptions are surely discernible: “From the sea to the middle of the island a plain stretched out over the entire width, which was, allegedly, the most beautiful and fertile of all. In the middle of the isle, close to the plain, at a distance of roughly five stades, was a hill.” 

 

Similarly to the elaborate description of geographical structures, utopian narratives tend to involve a blueprint of a certain societal structure. Utopian stories can in this sense be seen as a literary form for questioning the present organizational structure of society by comparing it to an ‘ideal’ and distant version. This method and purpose are present in both Plato’s Atlantis and More’s Utopia. To underline this function, the utopian place is traditionally an isolated one, located far away from known lands. Ideally then, the spatial planning of the imaginary place functions as a literary element contributing to the story and to the function it serves. 

 

Utopia therefore refers to an imagined, non-existent place, which the inventor creates to posit a tension between realistic criticism and dreamlike imagination, between critical reflection and hope for the future. 

 

A crucial aspect of understanding who we are is to find out where we are, just as much as shaping ourselves cannot be done without a roadmap of where we are going. Modern technology has provided us with new types of spatiality that make it harder to pinpoint where we are, while hopeful narratives can have real-world consequences in steering our behavior in a significant way. We are all constantly in need of a conception of a good place and a no-place to grapple with and shape our reality, which places us on the road to our own utopia. Would that have been a proper answer to the questions we posed at the beginning?

 

Visiting this digital place might guide you in the inevitable travel to your utopia. We have created two detailed perspectives on the concept of ‘utopia’, which are hopefully of help in understanding the mechanics of utopias that we all cherish. The first project provides a multidimensional and interdisciplinary view of the historical case of El Dorado: a shiny city of gold that many sought to reach - but that never existed. A contemporary form of utopia is located in the virtual space of Instagram, through which the second project will guide you. We hope you will enjoy our efforts and will engage in co-creating this platform, through the tools we have made available. After all, you are here now, just as we are, in this shared, digital space that we can shape into a good, no-place to our liking. What could possibly go wrong? 

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PS: for more detailed explanation of utopia as a concept you may want to consult the following sources:

Vieira, Fatima. ‘‘The Concept of Utopia’’. The Cambridge Companion to Literature, pp. 223-258.

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This Website

This website is a part of a larger research of students from the University of Utrecht who all will be introduced below. As part of the Humanities Honours program, they researched narrative spaces. This began with Paola Monachesi, the mentor of this project, who invited the students to study narrative spaces and guided them along the way. This website presents the outcomes of the researches. It will take you on a journey regarding utopias by using different audio-visual resources.

 

The page El Dorado contains an overview of literature reviews regarding El Dorado which form the theoretical framework of the research. These reviews will provide information on the myth of El Dorado and its role. Also, a map containing several marks can be found. This map allows you to follow a journey through the utopian space of El Dorado. This audial journey constructed by podcasts is represented by Walker Swindel, Irina Morozova, Theordoor de Bakker and Dominique de Wilde.

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The page Instagram contains literature reviews regarding Instagram, which serve as a theoretical framework for the created zine. In the zine, you can follow the main character Dora Dole on her journey to Instagram fame. The zine is created by David ten Cate, Jasmijn ter Haar, Angèle Jaspers and Anne Visser.

 

On the forum you are able to add to the discussion on utopias and narrative spaces from your own perspective. Let this website inspire you and help you form your own personal opinion.

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About Us

 

Theodoor de Bakker

I am Theodoor de Bakker, I am Dutch and currently majoring in International Relations in Historical Perspective and Political History, with extra attention for political philosophy. In my research, I mainly focus on the weird, the small, the exceptions in History. In examining the 1930’s for example, there is nothing I find more interesting than the Vatican, as a state with zero political power, but considerable moral sway over the entire world. In general, the role microstates (Vatican City, Andorra, Monaco etc.) and neutral countries played in international relations I find incredibly fascinating, as they often get the least amount of attention from academic historians in spite of giving an interesting take on history. 

I noticed that for my usual research, I tend to focus on modern Europe (1850-2000), so I took this podcast project as an opportunity to expand my horizons to a historical subject which is more distanced from me both geographically and temporally, and yet whose impact can still be felt today: El Dorado. In the series I explore how the myth of El Dorado affected historical international relations. What I find extremely interesting is that the myth of El Dorado has had such a strong impact on the course of history, that it is reflected in the territorial configuration of modern day South America. This just goes to show that El Dorado was not just some abstract idea, but it was a utopia that motivated people to action, and sometimes war. It was very much part of the colonial reality, despite not being real.

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David ten Cate

Hello dear reader! I'm David, a Dutch student with a BA in History (International Relations in a Historical Perspective) and someone currently majoring in Media Studies (New Media and Digital Culture), both at Utrecht University. My primary interest in the field of Media Studies is how capitalist media shape and dominate our everyday lives, an approach often referred to as media or technological determinism. I would consider myself an anti-social media user, since I intentionally avoid any corporate social media (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat) because I believe these to disrupt the natural and rational flow of life. This background was one of my major inspirations for contributing to the production of an aesthetic product, the Zine of this website. Other fields of interest include political communication, aesthetic theory and critical theory, all of which have shaped my unconditional love for all things academic. 

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Jasmijn ter Haar

My name is Jasmijn ter Haar. I am a dutch Liberal Arts and Sciences student with a major in arts and society. I am especially interested in the way art relates to social issues. Furthermore, I love working on creative projects such as videos or magazines. In my literature review for this project, I have written about the role of the visual in presenting a narrative on Instagram. I then used this knowledge and my creativity to create the story about Dora Dole's journey to Instagram fame with my group members. 

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Angèle Jaspers

My name is Angèle Jaspers and I am a Liberal Arts and Sciences student, majoring in philosophy. A main topic of interest for me is how ideas about human nature and the human condition relate to social, political and economic issues. With a background in philosophy I hoped to uncover some linkages of our project to philosophical debates, situating the topic of utopian narratives in a larger context. Besides this, I am interested in visual art and design, especially graphic design. I tried to use my enthusiasm about graphic design to create a zine in which shape and content complement each other.

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Irina Morozova

My name is Irina Morozova. I come from Moscow, Russia. Currently I an doing major in Literary Studies with the specialization in World Literature. I am actually very much interested in how the spaces are constructed be the text and how do they function in the literary world. The term ‘chronotope’ (‘timespace’) is of a particular interest for me. In a literary text, temporal and spatial dimension always work in a combination and it is existing for me to analyze the ways in which this union functions. I see this project as a way to get a deeper knowledge about the role of space dimension in the narrative and as an opportunity to to get a broader perspective of how the space created by the narrative can go beyond and actually affect the way people imagine the world in reality. In this light, it has been very interesting to work with my colleagues who focus more on the historical and political aspects of El Dorado myth. Moreover, I am fascinated by utopia as a genre and this project is an opportunity to delve into one of the powerful utopias and to analyze the role that space and its particular characteristics have for an utopian narrative. Finally, since El Dorado has multiple allusions to in literature of different time periods, such kind of research creates a big scope that remains focused despite the broadness of the literary material. It is existing in terms of how one and the same mat if was capable to live through the centuries and to get various dimensions in the manner it is being interpreted.

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Walker Swindel

My name is Walker Swindell and I am a South African student at Utrecht University studying a Bachelors Degree in History. My specialization is in military and political history yet for this project I have decided to go out of my comfort zone and write about economic history. In particular I wanted to bring an international approach to the subject of El Dorado along with a materialist approach to understanding the myth. My podcasts will cover the history of Spanish colonization, as well as the economic activities that accompanied the conquests and settlement of South America. My podcasts will also cover the harsh reality of the Spanish economic activity of the era, most notably the horrendous mining conditions the native Amerindians found themselves in. This naturally heralded a storm of criticism. Critiques that will form the basis of my episodes. Finally I will discuss the psychology behind the myth, drawing parallels between the present and the past. I hope that this historical perspective will shed some light on how Utopias can inspire real world actions and how those ideas have never really left us.

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Anne Visser

Hi, I am Anne Visser, a Dutch student of English Language and Culture at Utrecht University. Instead of studying Shakespeare and the other great names of English literature, I chose to go down the path of sociolinguistics. Over the past two years, I have spent most of my time studying accents, dialects and World Englishes, especially the way in which these are linked to the identity of individual speakers. I find it particularly interesting how people from all over the world, native speakers and non-native speakers alike, use English to portray themselves on social media. My interest in this aspect of digital life writing was sparked by Rupi Kaur's poetry detailing taboo topics of her culture, and one too many late nights scrolling Instagram. For this research project, I dove into the construction of autobiographical personas and how they differ from the historical person. Although this is discrepancy is inherent to autobiography as a genre, the dynamics of social media has changed it into a whole new practice, where deletion, glorification performativity regularly outshine the truth of lived experience.

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Dominique de Wilde

I am Dominique de Wilde and I am currently studying Media and Culture with the specialization comparative media studies at Utrecht University. I was born and raised in the Netherlands where my appeal to media began to take it's shape. I am highly interested in the relation between media and society and the philosophical thoughts that go around regarding this relation. Here with media I do not merely refer to film, television or social media, but to the broad definition of media as a means of mass communication. In this project I wil be concerned with the transformation of the myth and it's meaning in current society. Here my interests in ancient cultures becomes nourished as I researched the origin of the myth which lays with the Muisca. I also perform a mediastudies-specific analysis of two popular media products to analyze the meaning of the myth in current society. I used my quality of critical thinking to draw ideas on how the myth eventually transformed. This requires thinking not only from one but from several perspectives. I hope my way of thinking will provide this project with some interesting yet critical ideas about utopia's and narrative spaces in general.​

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