THE LACK OF A FUTURE:UTOPIAN ABSENCE AND LONGING IN TWENTIETH- AND TWENTY-FIRST- CENTURY AMERICAN FICTION

It is well-established that, in the United States in the twentieth century, it is difficult to conceive of utopia, due to a feeling that society is oppressive in a way that precludes any such thing. However, the question of the specific mechanics of utopia or lack thereof in this milieu has been neglected. I look at a number of novels that treat the question of utopia and ask what the specific contours are of this lack of utopian feeling, and in what ways utopia tries to manifest itself in spite of the difficulty of doing so. I also analyze the ways that political ways of thinking about utopia and purely personal ones intersect (or fail to do so). The particular novels are King Coal and The Coal War by Upton Sinclair, the three volumes of the U.S.A. Trilogy by John Dos Passos, The Public Burning by Robert Coover, and Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon.To do this, I make extensive use of the concept of “totality,” as used by Georg Lukacs, and “potentiality,” as used by Jose Esteban Muñoz. Briefly, I argue that authors tend to think about utopia in terms of the former, which means that, if totality does not seem to be possible, neither does utopia. However, even in situations that lack totalizing possibilities, potentiality can nonetheless manifest itself, sometimes in unexpected ways, and allow for a rejuvenated, albeit different, conception of utopia. This new version of utopia seems to rely more upon the personal than the political, but in fact, we can see the ways in which political feeling can inhere in the personal, thus helping to militate against despair. While this does not provide a perfect “solution” to the problem of the difficulties inherent in utopia, it does allow the concept to persist in a way that it previously could not, and in so doing prevents us from falling into political quietism.

Name thesis:degree_name

PHD

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

Grantor dc:publisher

Kent State University

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Moses, Geoffrey

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kevin, Floyd

• American Studies
• Gender
• History
• Labor Relations
• Literature
• Modern History
• Modern Literature
• Utopia
• Modernism
• Postmodernism
• Totality
• Potentiality

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1365784335

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:kent1365784335