While sexuality and romance have played a significant role in many late nineteenth-and early twentieth century utopian novels, these aspects have often escaped scholarly attention. This thesis examines the deployment of (a)sexuality in The Great Romance by The Inhabitant (1881), Looking Backward: 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy (1888), News from Nowhere by William Morris (1890), A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells (1905) and Her/and by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915). By drawing upon feminist conceptions of utopia offered by Gayle Rubin, Jennifer Burwell and Anne Fausto Sterling, this thesis reveals the complex theories of gender and sexuality articulated within these early utopian texts. As issues such as jealousy and sexual violence are confronted within utopia, ideas about the socially constructed nature of sexuality emerge

We live in an age of rapid change. The advance of science and technology, throughout history, has culminated in periods of transition when social values have had to adapt to a changed environment. Such times have proved fertile ground for the expansion of the imagination. Utopian literature offers a vast archive of information concerning the relationship between scientific and technological progress and social change. Alterations in the most basic machinery of society inspired utopian authors to write of distant and future worlds which had achieved a state of harmony and plenty. The dilemmas which writers faced were particular to their era, but there also emerged certain universal themes and questions: What is the best organisation of society? What tools would be adequate to the task? What does it mean to be human? The dividing line on these issues revolves around two opposed beliefs. Some perceived the power inherent in technology to effect the greatest improvement in the human condition. Others were convinced that the organisation of the social order must come first so as to create an environment sympathetic to perceived human needs. There are, necessarily, contradictions in such a division. They can be seen plainly in More's Utopia itself. More wanted to see new science and technique developed. But he also condemned the social consequences which inevitably flowed from the process of discovery. These consequences led More to create a utopia based on social reorganisation. In the main, the utopias of Francis Bacon, Edward Bellamy and the later H. G. Wells accepted science, while the work of William Morris, Aldous Huxley and Kurt Vonnegut rejected science in preference for a different social order. More's Utopia and Bacon's New Atlantis were written at a time when feudal, agriciTfural society wasbeeing transformed by new discoveries and techniques. In a later age, Bellamy's Looking Backward and Morris's News From Nowhere offer contrary responses to society at the height of the Industrial evolution. These four authors serve as a prelude to the main area of the thesis which centres on the twentieth century. Wells, though his first novel appeared in 1895, produced the vast bulk of his work in the current century. Huxley acts as an appropriate balance to Wells and also exemplifies the shift from utopia to dystopia. The last section of the thesis deals with the work of Kurt Vonnegut and includes an interview with that author. The twentieth century has seen the proliferation of dystopias, portraits of the disastrous consequences of the headlong pursuit of science and technology, unallied to human values. Huxley and Vonnegut crystallised the fears of a modern generation: that we create a soulless, mechanised, urban nightmare. The contemporary fascination with science in literature is merely an extension of a process with a long tradition and underlying theme. The advance of science and technology created the physical and intellectual environment for utopian authors which determined the form and content of their visions.

Commercial gestational surrogacy, also called contract pregnancy, involves privately contracting a biogenetically curated pregnancy using IVF. It distinguishes itself from what is commonly considered 'natural' in procreation, in that the human fetuses it produces are formally entered into a legal unit other than the family of the gestator. My work here contends that this practice is best thought, not in isolation, but in the context of social reproduction more generally and as a central component of future geographies of fetal manufacture that would treat (all) pregnancy as work. This project demands, for me, a critical revisiting of theoretic texts like Mary O'Brien's The Politics of Reproduction (O'Brien 1981). But, in my reading, O'Brien's race-blind gynocentrism doomed her to miss the ensemble of practices - forms of surrogacy among them - that have already long been engaged in the sublation of reproductive labour she professes (yet defers until after the revolution). In geography as in O'Brien, the political horizon of reproductive justice theorised by Black and/or Marxist feminists since the 1970s (Davis 1981; Ross et al. 2016), has been neglected. In assembling materials for a future rewriting of "The Politics of Reproduction" in the context of geography -a trans-inclusive uterine geography- I draw on this canon of reproductive justice first. I question the assumption that there can ever be an absence of surrogacy (i.e. an absence of assistance, co-production, or "sym-poesis" (Haraway 2016)) in babymaking. Thus I explore the synthetic substance of surrogacy synthetically, using a lens I call 'gestational labour': a conceptual hybrid of the postwork perspective on care (Weeks 2011; Federici 1975), the Marxist-feminist concept 'clinical labour' (Cooper and Waldby 2014) and cyborgicity (Haraway 1991). Deploying 'gestational labour' together with a commitment to solidarity vis-à-vis surrogates, I analyse recent events, pro- and anti-surrogacy discourses (both clinical-capitalist and activist), and trends in critical literature that illuminate an immanent 'uterine geography' (or fail to). I aim to demonstrate that the technophobic anticommodification critique of surrogacy's detractors is ultimately as insufficient as the class-blind ('philanthrocapitalist') feminism of surrogacy's sales representatives. My point is that so-called natural forms of the family are themselves already 'technologies of reproductive assistance' differently mediated in the market. Our task is unfortunately neither a matter of simply saying 'stop', nor of pretending that the satisfaction people feel in "mutually advantageous exploitation" (Panitch 2013), on such an unequal playing-field, is somehow 'enough'.Surrogate gestators sometimes show us glimpses of 'mothering against motherhood'. They expose gestation as a cyborg form of labour-power, which is to say, collective human activity always already mixed up with 'technologies' on the one hand and strange more-than-human organisms on the other. Pitting surrogacy against surrogacy, I propose keeping our understanding of what surrogacy could mean radically open. On this basis, I point readers and potential future collaborators towards new kinds of sym-poetic geographical practice: surrogacies - or, engagements with reproductive politics in the broadest sense - which I think our historic moment urgently requires.

We live in an age of rapid change. The advance of science and technology, throughout history, has culminated in periods of transition when social values have had to adapt to a changed environment. Such times have proved fertile ground for the expansion of the imagination. Utopian literature offers a vast archive of information concerning the relationship between scientific and technological progress and social change. Alterations in the most basic machinery of society inspired utopian authors to write of distant and future worlds which had achieved a state of harmony and plenty. The dilemmas which writers faced were particular to their era, but there also emerged certain universal themes and questions: What is the best organisation of society? What tools would be adequate to the task? What does it mean to be human? The dividing line on these issues revolves around two opposed beliefs. Some perceived the power inherent in technology to effect the greatest improvement in the human condition. Others were convinced that the organisation of the social order must come first so as to create an environment sympathetic to perceived human needs. There are, necessarily, contradictions in such a division. They can be seen plainly in More's Utopia itself. More wanted to see new science and technique developed. But he also condemned the social consequences which inevitably flowed from the process of discovery. These consequences led More to create a utopia based on social reorganisation. In the main, the utopias of Francis Bacon, Edward Bellamy and the later H. G. Wells accepted science, while the work of William Morris, Aldous Huxley and Kurt Vonnegut rejected science in preference for a different social order. More's Utopia and Bacon's New Atlantis were written at a time when feudal, agriciTfural society wasbeeing transformed by new discoveries and techniques. In a later age, Bellamy's Looking Backward and Morris's News From Nowhere offer contrary responses to society at the height of the Industrial evolution. These four authors serve as a prelude to the main area of the thesis which centres on the twentieth century. Wells, though his first novel appeared in 1895, produced the vast bulk of his work in the current century. Huxley acts as an appropriate balance to Wells and also exemplifies the shift from utopia to dystopia. The last section of the thesis deals with the work of Kurt Vonnegut and includes an interview with that author. The twentieth century has seen the proliferation of dystopias, portraits of the disastrous consequences of the headlong pursuit of science and technology, unallied to human values. Huxley and Vonnegut crystallised the fears of a modern generation: that we create a soulless, mechanised, urban nightmare. The contemporary fascination with science in literature is merely an extension of a process with a long tradition and underlying theme. The advance of science and technology created the physical and intellectual environment for utopian authors which determined the form and content of their visions.

Utopian literature has typically viewed the body as a pitfall on the path to social perfectibility, and utopian planners envision societies where the troublesome body is distanced as much as possible from utopia's guiding force-Reason. However, after two world wars, the failure of communism, and a century of corrupt "utopian" projects like Hitler's social engineering, dystopian societies justified on the grounds of "rational planning" fail to convince us, and the body has risen as the new locus for identity and agency, a point of stability in a dangerous and unstable environment. In this dissertation, I argue that utopian literature in the late twentieth century has identified the body as key to imagining new alternatives and re-connecting with an increasingly jeopardized sense of immediate, embodied experience. Protagonists in utopian literature looking to escape dehumanizing and bureaucratic worlds find their loophole in the sensual rush of adrenaline and instinct and the jarring rejuvenation of nerve and muscle, experiences which are much more immediately real and trustworthy than the tenuous dictates of institutions that tumble easily into absurdity and terror. Survival necessitates a raw and transformed identity that transgresses the tightly regimented boundaries of civilization and embraces the tumultuous chaos of the fringes and countercultures. Here, utopia thrives. I ground this study in theoretical and sociological texts which recognize the centrality of the body in society and the dynamic potentiality of utopian thinking, and then examine how these developments unfold in utopian literature since the mid twentieth century. The body as utopia surfaces in a variety of ways: as the longing for movement in Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano; as the creation of alternative spaces defined by embodiment in Angela Carter's Heroes and Villains and Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club; as the exuberant immersion in the modified body in Chuck Palahniuk's Rant; and as the search for perfection in a detached and corporate world in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. I conclude with an assessment of utopia in the twenty-first century, referring to Cormac McCarthy's The Road as a barometer of the grim state of utopian possibility as we head into the next century.

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Texts like the World examines Nicole Brossards Picture Theory and Mauve Desert and Dionne Brands No Language is Neutral and A Map to the Door of No Return in order to demonstrate how these authors figure place in ways that are representative of utopian discourse. To do so, I draw primarily on two disciplinary perspectives: cultural geography and utopian studies. I turn to postmodern cultural geography, in particular to the work of Doreen Massey but also to works by Canadian cultural geographers Derek Gregory and Jane Jacobs, in order to examine Brossards and Brands understanding of space, time, and place. In general, postmodern cultural geographers argue that such conceptions of a socially-constructed, multiple, non-totalizable, dynamic space-time cannot be represented, or they call for some as-yet-unknown way to represent it. I turn to utopian studies to demonstrate how these authors deploy utopian discourse in order to figure such a geographical imagination. Rather than to studies of utopia as a literary genre, I draw on theories that posit utopia as a discourse in various dialectical relationships with ideology. In particular, I draw on the work of Fredric Jameson who argues that utopian discourse arises in the transitional moments between two modes of production. Through its unintentional narrative discontinuities and continual play and production, utopia figures the experience of existing within the moments inevitable contradictions, including contradictory constructions of place. Expanding on Jameson, I modify his theory of utopian discourse so that it figures the contradictions arising spatially as well as temporally. In other words, the contradictions of utopian discourse can be intentionally employed to figure the experience of existing among and within multiple co-exiting constructions of space, time, and place. Jameson argues that utopian discourse figures a world that cannot be known abstractly, and in Brands and Brossards texts, such a world is postmodern cultural geographys space-time dynamic that counters hegemonic constructions of space, time, and place. / English

This thesis is an exploration of the images which define revolution's meaning. It suggests a possible shifting of emphasis from the scientific imaginary which centres on identifying the correct way to totalising revolution, towards a post-structuralist-anarchistic imaginary which privileges prefigurative radicalisations of social relations in the here and now. It looks specifically at how the field of post-structuralism intertwines with historically anarchist concepts to generate an horizon of social change animated by experimental and open-ended transformations. While the thesis offers positive characterisations of the types of contemporary movements, tactics and principles which embody the change from closed to open utopianism, it is chiefly a commentary on the role of theory in depicting the complexity of relations on the ground and the danger of proposing one totalising pathway from one state of society to another. It asks the reader to consider, given the achievements of movements and given the insights of post-structuralism, whether it is still worthwhile to proclaim certainty when sketching the possibilities for transcendence toward emancipation, an aim, which in itself, is always under construction. I engage this by firstly establishing a practical foundation for the critique of endpoints in theory by exploring the horizontal and prefigurative nature of a few autonomous movements today. Secondly I propose the contemporary theory of post-structuralist anarchism as concomitant with conclusions about transformation made in the first chapter. Finally I recommend a few initial concepts to start debate about the way forward from old objectivist models of transformation. The uncertainties of daily life, crumbling of economic powers and rapid pace of change in the twenty-first century have opened up fantastic spaces for innovative thought. Reconsidering old consensus around what constitutes a desirable image of revolution is of considerable importance given today's burgeoning bottom-up political energy and the global debate surrounding the possibilities for bottom-up revolutionisation of society. I submit that theories which portray stories of permanent, pure and natural end-points to revolution are deficient justifications for radical action.

New technologies, such as virtual reality, often draw to itself myths from other fields of interest and discourses. One such myth that has attached itself to virtual reality is the notion that virtual reality can provide a utopia for the mind, or true self, if the body can be cast off. It is this discarding of the body that my thesis aims to investigate in terms of Girardian sacrifice. Girard?s notion of sacrifice is built upon the observation of various cultures throughout history. It stands to reason that in our contemporary, digitally influenced, society, sacrifice, in some form, still persists. I argue that the body, when viewed as disposable, through the use of virtual reality, exhibits the same traits as the selected sacrificial victim. As the myth of a utopia for the mind, or true self, exists prior to the advent of virtual reality, traces of it, as well as the sacrifice I argue it entails, can be found in other texts as well. One such a text is The Chrysalids (Wyndham 1955). This text presents the reader with characters which I argue represent both the mind and body separately. The Chrysalids culminates in the characters representing the mind leaving for a utopian city whilst the character who, I argue, is most strongly associated with the body, Sophie Wender, is killed. It is also argued here in that the notion of abandoning the body is simply a myth since the inability to abandon the body is also discussed in terms of phenomenology, pointing out that the body can ultimately not be completely removed from the making of meaning. This phenomenological acknowledgement of the body, along with a critique The Chrysalids and cyber-utopia?s view of the body, forms the basis of my practical body of work. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Visual Arts / MA / Unrestricted

The general aim of this licentiate thesis is to analyze the framework in which long-term goals are set and subsequently achieved. It is often claimed that goals should be realistic, meaning that they should be adjusted to known abilities. This thesis will argue that this might be very difficult in areas related to sustainable development and climate change adaptation, and that goals that are, to an acceptable degree, unrealistic, can have important functions. Essay I discusses long-term goal setting. When there is a great temporal discrepancy between the point in time of setting and achieving a goal, many uncertainties have to be considered. The surrounding world and the agent’s abilities and values might change. This is an ontological uncertainty. We often form beliefs regarding how abilities and values might change, but this belief is always uncertain. This is an epistemological uncertainty. A form of goal called cautiously utopian goals is proposed, which incorporate such uncertainties, but enables goal setting with long time-frames. Essay II discusses the issue of goals intended to reduce great risks. We cannot expect an agent to do something that lies beyond this agent’s abilities, as exemplified in the principle ‘ought implies can’. Adjusting goals to what we currently, with a high degree of certainty know could be done is difficult. If not including an estimation of how abilities can change, important performance-enhancing functions of goals might be lost. It is argued that very ambitious goals should be set. This is partly due to the great magnitude and likelihood of unwanted consequences and partly due to the difficulty of delineating what lies in agents’ capacity to manage complex risks. Essay III discusses a decision-facilitating tool Sustainability Analysis to be used by Swedish municipal planners. One sub-part of the tool, Goal Conflict Analysis, can be used to identify how the consequences of a planned adaptation measure will affect other long-term municipal goals. Identified goal conflicts can then be used in order to determine whether the conflicts are acceptable, or whether a different adaptation measure should be worked out. The paper discusses a workshop in a Swedish municipality in which the tool has been tested. / <p>QC 20140505</p>