Evantropia and Dysantropia: A Possible New Stage in the History of Utopias

Abstract

The term utopia was coined five centuries ago but to some extent the utopian imagination is something that every civilisation has embraced. A utopia is grosso modo a normative image of a society based on particular needs—and the possible solutions to those needs—from the point of view of a collective or individual subject. This subject is limited by his or her time-space coordinates: language, history and culture in general. Utopias usually replace each other and an idealistic dream in period T1 becomes a nightmare in T2 because needs and resources change in time and space. Such changes are unavoidable, so utopian subjects become aware of the limitations of static images. Therefore, utopian scholars have marked another meaning for the term which is a broader one (Cioranescu 1972: 21-22). Utopia, in such broader sense, is an approach to social problems based on a method using imagination to provide a model in actu—it would be more accurate to say in fictio—to convince contemporary fellow countrymen to apply some policies to fulfil their general needs.