The Utopian World Championship

Aisling O' Beirn: ASKING DIRECTIONS TO UTOPIA

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Summary

Different models of Utopia have been proposed, discussed and tried down the centuries. These ranged from the physical and spiritual to the Spartan and authoritarian. There have also been endeavors at liberal and communal models and even plans for an elite ‘laissez-faire’ economic system on an idyllic island. Descriptions of utopian scenarios outline possibilities for physical spaces and ideological, conceptual constructs. Many models were built on the presumption that one could directly reference and even regenerate a once golden and idyllic age, whether or not it truly existed. This suggests the possibility of visions for the future being constructed on idealisations (and perhaps misrepresentations) of the past.

Conflicting Utopian proposals result in a contradictory situation where one person’s Utopia may well be another’s anathema. There is no consensus on what Utopia is, except perhaps that it is contested. Non the less Utopian ideals have impacted upon society. Given these problems is there a point to presenting another model that will invariably be loaded with personal value judgements and therefore be contested?

Utopia, formally defined as ‘no place’ has been hugely influential in Western thought yet despite the definition people continue to propose Utopian scenarios. ‘No Place’ presents the possibility of creating an idyllic place. Utopia therefore could be read as a term that defines a model for creating a physical, ideological or social construct.

This definition not only begs the question of how it might manifest, but also of how one might get there, highlights the need to examine the situation in terms of ‘way finding’. Utopia therefore poses a navigational problem where navigation is employed as a strategy to question and critique ones environment both physically and politically.

Rather than seeking impossible consensus I propose using this model of navigation to discuss Utopia as a contested local. This paper will focus on cartography as a tool of navigation. I will draw a parallel between cartography and Utopia as something more than tools for charting physical and ideological scenarios. This will take the form of a series of questions that attempt to examine some of the problems posed by mapping and Utopia building.

These questions will be formulated by considering cartography as a conceptual methodology used by navigators and Utopians alike. My hope is that this may provide a helpful framework for looking at other political constructs.

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One could argue that a conformal projection of European origin such as Mercators, constitutes a sort of myth making devise, positing Europe as the sociopolitical and cultural centre of the world. With regard to the political and cultural backdrop of European colonialism it is easy to see how this document was to become to many eyes the archetypal Eurocentric map. (6) If the map can be read as a myth making devise which allows the navigator to chart a route to a new life and society (Utopia?), does this then imply that Utopia becomes a type of myth itself, where ‘glossing over’ occurs?

In 1973 the Peters World Projection was published. It is an area accurate map, which publicly confronted the problems inherent in the Mercator map and became a well-known best seller worldwide. This publication was not insignificant. It claimed to be the first map to correctly represent actual size and area surface rather than shape. It dealt with such anomalies as Greenland with a landmass of .8 million Sq. Miles appearing as big as Africa (landmass 11.6 million sq. miles), or even bigger than China (landmass 3.7 million sq. miles), as in the standard Mercator map.(7)In doing this the Peters Map not only exposed some formal mathematical problems regarding how to represent the surface area of a 3D globe on a 2D piece of paper, it highlighted some of the politics and shortcomings of Western cartography’s representations of the globe. It demonstrated that cartography and mapping become much more than physical tools with which to navigate physical space. They also have the potential to be read as ideological tools with implications for Utopian propositions.

If a map that became so synonymous with colonialism transpires to be such a contested document does that then imply that the colonial outcomes of its use are themselves contested Utopian projects?

The Peters map and the publicity surrounding it is unabashedly political. The act of citing Mercators map (8) (one might say as a type of colonial nemesis) exposed both maps as politically loaded, editorial documents. It becomes apparent that maps are assigned with the value judgements of their makers, but it also indicates that cartographers work to a brief (which of course can also be politically loaded), and that any given map will present a finite amount of information. Maps, in detailing or highlighting one set of information will invariably omit other particulars. Maps are editorial documents.

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