The View From The Masthead Journey Through Dystopia Towards an Open-Ended Utopia

İngilizce olarak yayına hazırlanan kitapta; Bülent Somay, Ütopyayı hem bir tema hem de özel bir edebiyat türü olarak ele alıyor. Türü felsefe ve edebiyat olduğu kadar siyasi bir önerme de olan Ütopyayı mevcut şeylerin düzenine karşı bir önerme olarak değerlendiren kitap, sadece hikâyenin değil tüm evrenin kurgusal olduğu Ütopyalarda olanaklı ve alternatif yaşam biçimlerine yer açmaya çalışıyor. Yeni bilim kurgu ve ütopya örneklerinin ele alındığı ve derinlenmesine tartışıldığı bu kitapta yazar; ütopyanın, açık uçlu hiç bitmeyen bir devrim süreci olduğunu söylüyor.

Bülent Somay takes ‘Utopia’ as a theme (as well as a specific genre) occurring throughout history under a variety of literary forms and different contents. According to him, Utopia can not be limited to literature. Utopian fiction is not merely philosophical speculation, nor is it actual history. It carries the intentions of the former in most cases, but it goes deeper than that: utopian fiction lies at the midpoint of a triangle whose corners are philosophy, politics, and literature. Every utopia is a political proposition, philosophical speculation, and literary creation at the same time. In utopian fiction it is not only the persons or the plot that is fictive, it is a whole universe. The reality, as we know it, disappears to make room for an alternative possible universe which stands for the actual negation of the existing order of things.


   Bülent Somay offers a journey without an end, that is, a journey through dystopia towards an open-ended utopia. He discusses not only well-known examples of the genre but also new utopian science fiction. In that journey, utopia is located in the endless process of self-deconstruction, or what Trotsky would have called a ‘permanent revolution’. Permanence in revolution is the only guarantee against the lure of the ever-unreachable object of desire, the primordinal lack. Since this lack is structural, the desire for wholeness or completion will never be satisfied. The problem is, we never had completion: there never was a ‘Golden Age’, except in our imaginations.