"Notes on Nowhere "was first published in 1997. Minnesota
Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable
books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the
original University of Minnesota Press editions.
The term utopia implies both "good place" and "nowhere." Since
Sir Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1516, debates about utopian models
of society have sought to understand the implications of these
somewhat contradictory definitions. In Notes on Nowhere, author
Jennifer Burwell uses a cross section of contemporary feminist
science fiction to examine the political and literary meaning of
utopian writing and utopian thought.
Burwell provides close readings of the science fiction novels of
five feminist writers-Marge Piercy, Sally Gearhart, Joanna Russ,
Octavia Butler, and Monique Wittig-and poses questions central to
utopian writing: Do these texts promote a tradition in which
narratives of the ideal society have been used to hide rather than
reveal violence, oppression, and social divisions? Can a feminist
critical utopia offer a departure from this tradition by using
utopian narratives to expose contradiction and struggle as central
aspects of the utopian impulse? What implications do these
questions have for those who wish to retain the utopian impulse for
emancipatory political uses?
As one way of answering these questions, Burwell compares two
"figures" that inform utopian writing and social theory. The first
is the traditional abstract "revolutionary" subject who contradicts
existing conditions and who points us to the ideal body politic.
The second, "resistant," subject is partial, concrete, and produced
by conditions rather than operating outside of them. In analyzing
contemporary changes in the subject's relationship to social space,
Burwell draws from and revises "standpoint approaches" that tie
visions of social transformation to a group's position within
existing conditions.
By exploring the dilemmas, antagonisms, and resolutions within
the critical literary feminist utopia, Burwell creates connections
to a similar set of problems and resolutions characterizing
"nonliterary" discourses of social transformation such as feminism,
gay and lesbian studies, and Marxism. Notes on Nowhere makes an
original, significant, and persuasive contribution to our
understanding of the political and literary dimensions of the
utopian impulse in literature and social theory.
Jennifer Burwell teaches in the Department of English at
Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
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