Metaphorposes of Science Fiction

Darko Suvin

Defining the literary genre of Utopía

At the basis of all utopian debates, in its open or hidden dialogues, is a gesture of pointing,
a wide-eyed glance from here to there, a “traveling shot” moving from the authors everyday
lookout to the wondrous panorama of a far-off land. (p37)
Ejemplos de utopía llevadas a la realidad material: North America or the laicized Marxist
(or pseudo.marxist) experiments from Lenin to Castro and Mao.
Posibles utopías del pasado: Periclean Athens, Agbars India, Emperor Friedrichs Sicily,
The inca State, munzers mulhausen, jeffersonian U.S.A?
Para este trabajo, considera a la Utopía como un género literario.
Utopía as any orientation that transcendends reality and breaks the bounds of existing order,
as opposed to ideologu, which expresses the existing order, was introduced by Karl
Mannheim. (p 39)
“I propose that an acknowledgment that utopias are verbal artifacts before they are anything
else, and that the source of this concept is a literary genre an tis parameters, might be, if not
the first and the last, nonetheless a central point in todays debate of utopias” (p39)

Secciones del capítulo:

1 y 2: historical semantics of Utopía
3: los elementos de esas semánticas utópicas
4 y 5: genological context

1. Historical Semantics: Antediluvian

The first point and fundamental element of a literary definition of utopia is

that any utopia is a verbal construction. (p 40)

Otras definiciones en el diccionario de Oxford: una isla imaginaria, cualquier

territorio imaginario, un lugar ideal, un ideal imposible de mejoramiento social.
 All the above definitions, moreover, do not distinguish between various religious
ideal pictures of other worlds and utopias. This echoes the (once?) widely-held
unexamined premise that utopias are really lay variantes of paradise. (p. 42)

Aunque es provechoso mirar las estructuras míticas y religiosas en el género

utópico, “what is literally even more important, such a construct is located in this
world. Utopia is an other world immanent in the world of human endeavor,
dominion, and hypothetic possibilirt –and not transcendental in a religious sense. It
is a nonexistent country on the map of this glove, a this-wordly other world”
( p. 42)

Religion is, as Ruyer notes, counter utopian. It is directed either towards Heaven
(transcendence) or towards Middlesex ( bounded empirical environment) (…) the
telos of religion is, finally, eternity or timelessness, not history. (p. 43)

Primera definición que acepta el autor de Utopía: The imaginary community

( the term seems preferable to the ambigous world) in which human relations are
organized more perfectly than in the authors community can be accepted as a first
approximantion to identifying the thematic nucleus of the utopian genre. (p. 45)

2. Historical Semantics: Postdiluvian

Tres características que dividen a la utopía de otras formas de literatura:

1. Es ficcional
2. Describe un Estado o comunidad particular
3. Su tema es la estructura política de ese Estado ficcional

3. A proposed definition: Utopia as verbal construction

Definiciones de utopía expuestas hasta este momento: “A radically different and

historically alternative sociopolitical condition; an alternative locus; an imaginary
community in which relations are organized more perfectly than in the authors
community; the fictional or, more clearly, verbal construction character of any such
condition, location or community; the particular or individualized character of any
such construct as opposed to general and abstract utopian projects and programs. (p.
49)
Definición del autor: “Utopia is the verbal construction of a particular quiasihuman
community where sociopolitical institutions, norms, and individual relationships are
organized according to a more perfect principle than in the authors community, this
construction being based on estrangement arising out of an alternative historical
hypothesis. (p. 49)
 As Frye has pointed out, utopia belongs to a narrative form or tradition which
he calls anatomy (or Menippean satire) rather than a novel. The anatomy deals
less with illusionistic “people as such than with mental attitudes” and at its most
concentrate “presents us with vision of the world in terms of a single intelectual
pattern”.”
Usually the instalation of the new order must be explained- a contract theory, as
Frye observes, is implied in each utopia (king Utopus, the socialist revolution, gas
from a comet, etc. being the arbitrers or contract makers). The utopian contract is
necessarilu opposed to the dominant contract-myth in the authors society as the
more reverent “contract behind the contract”, a human potential which existing
society has alienated and failed to realize
Neither prophecy nor escapism, utopia is, as many critics have remarked, an “as if”,
an imaginative experiment or a methodical organ for the new.
If utopia is, then, philosopically, a method rather than a state, it cannot be
realized or not be realized –it can only be applied. (p. 52)
4. Comment: Utopia as Historical Estrangement

The basic diachronic way to define the context of a work of art is to insert it into the
tradition and system of its genre (meaning by that a socioaesthetic entity with a
specific inner life, yet in a constant osmosis with other literary genres, science,
philosophy, everyday socioeconomic life, and so on). Understanfin particular
utopias really presupposes a definition and delimitation of their literary genre (or, as
we shall see, subgenre), its inner processes, logic, and telos. What is, then, the
distinctive set of traits of the literary genre “utopia”, its differentia generica? (p. 53)

División en la prosa literaria entre generos naturalistas y géneros extrañados.

The literary mainstream of the individualistic age endeavors faithfully to reproduce

empirical textures, surfaces, and relationships vouched for by human senses and
common sense. Utopia, on the contrary, endeavors to illuminate mens relationships
to other men and to their surroundings by the classic device of a radically different
location for the postulated novel human relations of its fable; and I have proposed to
call literary genres which have such a different formal framework “estranged.” (p.
53)
Clave: one should insist on the crucial concept of a radically different location, of
an alternative formal framework functioning by explicit or implicit reference to the
authors empirical environment.Without this reference, nonutopian readers, having
no yardstick for comparison, could not understand the alternative novelty. (p 53)

The real function of estrangement is –and must be- the provision of a shocking and
distancing mirror above the all too familiar reality.
 Telos: propósito

Utopia explicates what satire implicates

Tradición de la Utopía: Lucians true histories and Mores utopia through Fourier,
Bellamy, Morris, Wells, and Zamyatin to modern SF.

The estranged literary genres comprise several which are differentiated from utopia
by not situating what Aristophanes calls their topos apragnom in the field of an
alternative historical hypothesis. The must relevant ones are, in ascending order,
myth, fantasy, folktale, Cockayne, and terrestrial Paradise. ( p. 55)

Diferencia entre mito y Utopía: “Myth is diametrically opposed to a historical

approach. Conceiving human relationships to be fixed and supernaturally
determined, myth claims to explain phenomena by identifying their eternal essence;
conceiving human relationships to be changeable and maternally determined,
history attempts to explain phenomena by identifying their problematic context.
From a historical point of view, myth itself is a historical phenomenon and problem,
an illusion when not a Fraud. (p. 55)

Folktale and fantasy, being morphological and ideological descendants of

fragmented mythology (…) Neither of them pretends to be historically oriented or
in historical time. (p 56)

5. Comment: Utopia as a more perfect Organized Community

All cognition can become the subject matter of an estranged verbal construction
dealing with a particular quasi-human community treated as an alternative history.
This cognitive estrangement is the basis of the literary genre of SF. Strictly and
precisely speaking, Utopia is not a genre but the sociopolitical subgenre of science
fiction. (p. 61)

SF is at the same time wider than and at least collaterally descended from utopia; it
is not a daughter, yet a niece of utopia. (p. 61)