BOOK TALK: Ecotopia | Oktoberdans 2016

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Ideas about utopia are often documented through literature, in the shape of a novel that gives a detailed and specific description of an imaginary society, with emphasis on how everyday life has been changed for the better. The novel explains how the alleged society is organised, why and how social structures and mechanisms are working. Most known utopias attaches great importance to abolish inequality and injustice, and to cultivate cooperation and fellowship.

Utopia as a literary genre was established with Thomas More’s Utopia in 1516. The term contains an ambiguity that still defines the genre. ‘Topos’ in Greek is translated ‘place’, the prefix ‘ou’ to ‘no’ or ‘not"’ while ‘eu’ means ‘good’ or ‘ideal’. A utopia may thus be both a non-existent place and a good place.

Among the most famous and influential utopias is Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888), a technocratic and socialist utopia. Ernest Callenbach gives a detailed description of a complete environmental and down-to-earth society and way of life in Ecotopia (1975) while Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time from 1976 is a key feminist utopia. (snl.no).

During Oktoberdans 2016, we wish to investigate these three examples, highlighted by Store Norske Leksikon (The Extended Norwegian Encyclopaedia, administrated by the 9 norwegian universities) as three worthy representatives of the genre.

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