Memory and Utopian Agency in Utopian/Dystopian Literature: Memory of the Future

In his book Memory and Utopian Agency in Utopian/Dystopian Literature: Memory of the Future, Carter F. Hanson seeks to examine the role of individual and collective memory in utopian and dystopian fiction. While the genre tends to be oriented toward possible futures, both better and worse than our real-world present, these narratives are often simultaneously preoccupied with the past. Acknowledging this prevalent fixation, Hanson’s book operates as a critical examination of “how memory operates as a form of agency” (xiv) in utopian and dystopian literature and ultimately makes the case that there is indeed a formative relationship between memory and the utopian imagination.Memory and Utopian Agency in Utopian/Dystopian Literature is organized into an introduction and four substantive chapters, which, in chronological order, perform a series of close readings focused on popular utopian and dystopian fiction. Though on the shorter end, Hanson’s book surveys the theories of key scholars in the fields of utopian and memory studies while also providing detailed analyses of his primary texts, which include Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974), Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), Lois Lowry’s The Giver (1993), M. T. Anderson’s Feed (2002), and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy: Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), and MaddAddam (2013). Using these narratives as case studies to examine the role of memory within literary utopias and dystopias, Hanson offers a highly engaging analysis of this thematic thread, which has arguably existed in one form or another since the advent of the genre. However, the book lacks a clear conclusion chapter and instead closes with a brief conclusion statement at the end of the fourth chapter.In his introduction Hanson, drawing on key scholars in the field, surveys the ever-elusive concepts of both utopia and memory. Shortly after, he indicates that his goal in this book is to “examine the emergence of memory as a matter of concern in modern utopian/dystopian narrative” and to perform “a sequence of close textual readings of late twentieth- and early twenty-first century texts” (13). Ultimately, for Hanson, utopian and dystopian literatures demonstrate that memory is a necessary element in the process of building a world better than our own.Chapter 1 primarily examines the growing awareness of the cultural aspects of memory and considers how memory, especially collective memory, is shared, transmitted, and represented in utopian and dystopian texts. Here, Hanson begins by comparing two formative texts in the utopian genre: Thomas More’s Utopia and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000–1887. In his analysis of Utopia Hanson aptly notes that the isolated and undiscovered nature of More’s fictional island demonstrates that “memory was no preoccupation at the genre’s outset” (14). In fact, More’s fictional society only functions because the island’s inhabitants, unlike the readers, are not burdened by a knowledge of the past. While the island of Utopia is supposedly separate from the rest of the world and thus ahistorical, the text—in fact, the whole utopian genre—is deeply influenced by the historical vantage point from which it was written. Utopia responds to prevalent sixteenth-century social issues and offers a space in which alternatives that are supposedly separate from, while being simultaneously influenced by, the burdens of the past can be imagined. Nonetheless, memory, especially collective memory, maintains significant “constructive power . . . in the imagined social world of the Utopians due to its ritual nature” (14). Indeed, on this fictional island, only certain behaviors are allowed, thus upholding the reputation of their society as being the most effective, especially when compared to other parts of the world. As a result, “ritual behaviors” are “sanctioned” according to whether they are perceived as reasonable (16). The Utopians’ daily routines, whether related to “mode of dress, labor, leisure, or religious worship” (16), are all ritualized and thus related to the maintenance of the community’s collective memory.Hanson then moves to an examination of Bellamy’s Looking Backward, which, unlike More’s text, is located not in an undiscovered geographical location but instead in Boston, Massachusetts, 113 years into the future. This difference, Hanson argues, is one of the primary reasons that the plot of Bellamy’s novel engages directly with history and memory in ways that More’s does not. In fact, Looking Backward “defamiliarizes” the author’s real-world present “by depicting it as memory,” which enables Bellamy’s readers to gain “the critical vantage point from which to perceive a moral and systemic wretchedness within the present” (31). Within the novel, too much focus on memory is also represented as being problematic for the citizens of Boston in the year 2000, because it presents a barrier to progress and thus causes society to stagnate.The first chapter finishes by considering texts produced after the dystopian turn of the twentieth century when literary “visions turned dark” (40), specifically George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Hanson argues that if “Looking Backward attempts to address the modern anxiety of there being too much memory, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four examines the dystopian ramifications of too little memory” (41). In this novel limited access to memory, cultural heritage, and history enables totalitarianism to flourish, because knowledge of the past reveals the extent of the present’s horrors. Without an awareness that a better world is possible, society struggles to imagine anything different from the present. However, Hanson further complicates this analysis of Orwell by indicating that even those characters with access to memories of the past, which are only nostalgically, “selectively,” and “romantically remembered,” cannot imagine better futures because “the conviction that the past provides the best possible social model” limits the potential of “collective change” (60). The themes demonstrated in this first chapter recur throughout Hanson’s analysis. Certainly, much utopian and dystopian literature focuses on the risks and benefits of historical and cultural knowledge while also emphasizing the power and limits of memory when considering utopian futures.Chapter 2 delves into critical utopias characteristic of the 1970s, focusing on Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time. Like many of their contemporaries, both Le Guin and Piercy were inspired by the utopian thinking and dreams of revolution that were percolating at the time they were writing. Hanson claims that both novels demonstrate that “struggling for the future necessarily involves attempting to harness the past in productive ways,” but the authors disagree on “which modalities of memory best achieve” their utopian goals (67–68). Le Guin’s narrative is more critical of collective memory as a utopian project because of its tendency to hinder society’s progress. To demonstrate this skepticism, Hanson points to the limiting nature of collective memory. In The Dispossessed the historical oppression that Anarresti’s ancestors experienced at the hands of Urras inspires the planet to enact reactionary isolationist policies and prevents the community from evolving. By contrast, Piercy’s novel posits that the rituals embedded in the practice of collective memory propel and maintain utopian thinking. Hanson rightly notes that the utopian future in Woman on the Edge of Time “draws much of its strength and communal ethos from ritualized memory practices that enable rather than cripple utopian development” (87). Both individual and collective memory serve important roles in inspiring revolutionary action. While visiting the future utopian community Mattapoisett, the protagonist’s memories of her own life feed her desire for the present to be different than it is. Collective memory also serves as a vital means of contributing to “the continued development of utopia,” deterring historical stagnation and ensuring utopia is not dependent on “centralized power” (92). Conceptions of time, history, and memory are closely tied to personal and community identity, so while Hanson’s examination of memory’s role in Piercy’s text is intriguing, I feel it would have benefitted from further engagement with the intersecting modes of oppression experienced by the protagonist. Nonetheless, this chapter offers a deeply engaging analysis of critical utopian representations of the “implications and challenges of collective remembering” (102) in the process of building utopian communities.Chapter 3 is centered on the consequences of cultural amnesia in Lois Lowry’s The Giver and M. T. Anderson’s Feed. Both these novels, which are representative of turn-of-the-century dystopian fiction marketed toward children and young adults, “address the timely question of the loss of collective memory” and “posit memory in the form of historical consciousness as a source of utopian hope,” albeit in different ways (108). Hanson argues that The Giver is focused on a community undergoing a memory crisis similar to the real-world present, where “memory, historical awareness, and hope can be harnessed to bring about resistance and significant social change” (109). By contrast, Anderson’s novel, which is directed at an older readership than Lowry’s, pertains to a deeply concerning amnesia caused by technologically advanced consumer culture. The present and future are coopted by consumption, and the past is archived in such a way that it becomes forgotten. While the protagonist’s “gradually awakening sense of historicity and experiential memory” presents the potential for change, Hanson asserts that ultimately, “Feed offers no fully formed utopian trajectory or redemptive hope” (140). Both The Giver and Feed, despite their differences, serve as dire warnings about the loss of historicity, and they present memory as a means of restoration and, thus, a locus of utopian hope.The final chapter examines traumatic memory in the three novels that make up Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam series: Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam. In this section, Hanson claims that in much of the Western world, “the confluence of trauma and risk forms the new topos of contemporary dystopian fiction” (147). While these novels serve as examples to illustrate this idea, I think Hanson’s claim of the near-universality of this shift in the genre would be further supported by works from other authors. Nonetheless, Hanson’s examination of the way memory is weaved through the past and present of Atwood’s trilogy is highly compelling. In these novels, memory serves as the vehicle by which the pre-apocalyptic dystopian past and post-apocalyptic and eventually proto-utopian present are shown to the reader. Moreover, despite the fact that the characters’ memories are greatly impacted by trauma, whether their own or that of their predecessors, the utopian hope of these novels hinges on their “working through of traumatic memory that moves beyond aporia into healing” (163). Memory thus remains a powerful force that “is foundational to culture and society, and thus to utopian change” (179). It is at this point that Hanson offers the very brief, though powerful, concluding remark that no matter how humanity progresses, “memory will function as its lodestar and be a precondition for utopian dreaming” (179).Overall, Memory and Utopian Agency in Utopian/Dystopian Literature: Memory of the Future by Carter F. Hanson is clearly written, demonstrates the author’s expertise on the topic, and involves substantial engagement with both his primary texts and key scholars in the field. Though I feel that the end leaves a bit to be desired in terms of tying the analysis together, Hanson’s book undoubtedly contributes to the fields of utopian studies, memory studies, and literary studies and has the potential to spur fruitful conversations regarding the role and function of memory in utopian and dystopian fiction. For indeed, much of utopian dreaming is dependent on a critical examination of the conditions of our past and present to determine how to build a better future.