Reading Group Notes
Utopia and Dystopia in Environmental History (September 21, 2016)
- In what ways can we look at this work as a primary source? When taught to undergrads, this book can be used as a window into the culture and politics of the 1970s. How can it also be looked at as a thought experiment about the steps that would need to be taken to solve the big issues of that era? To what extent can those two visions be intertwined?
- Although a fictional/fantastical story, what happens when we take it seriously? How can we use it as a source to better understand the environmental movement?
- How can we look at this book as fitting into the genre of the captivity narrative? How does the work use the idea of indigeneity, usually via the white gaze?
- How would a version of this novel written today be different? Callenbach is very anti-urban; would this still be the case in a novel written today? Do at lot of the claims in the novel seem odd to us now (and to what extent is that based on where we’re from)?
- Why does Callenbach write about gender in the way that he does? What message is he trying to get across about gender norms and roles? How can we connect this to ideas about masculinity and gender that emerged out of things like the primitivist movement?
- Why are there so many echoes of the Soviet Union, or broader socialist/communist ideals? How does it fit into ideas about communalism (which we can see in works like Ursula LeGuin’s work The Dispossessed)?
- There was a rise in utopian literature in the 1970s, which coincided with the publication of this work. How did these two trends (utopian works and environmental literature) influence each other?
- To what extent was this rise in utopian literature focused around English-language works? Or was it more transnational?
- How does Ecotopia function as a novel? Many have panned it as an art form, and it is certainly unorthodox stylistically (e.g., Callenbach uses no dialogue). How does it fit into the broader genre of novels with an ideological message (which goes back to Thomas More’s Utopia and beyond)? How does he use mundane details to further the plot?
- Callenbach’s worldview seems shaped by the idea that there is a nature that is independent from humankind, and that an area that has been shaped by man no longer fits into that framework of nature. How has that vision influenced this work, and how can we only understand this work within that frame?
- How have other works of environmental fiction brought in issues of gender, class and race in a way that Ecotopia does not do?
- In what ways do environmental movements, and novels like Ecotopia, fetishize poverty (because things like recycling happen more when everyone is poor)?
- How can we look at sustainability narratives, especially within the framework of understanding progress? Can sustainability and progress co-exist? Do they co-exist in Ecotopia?
- What acts as the motivating factor within novels like Ecotopia? Although there’s a governmental structure in Ecotopia, the idea of the conscience seems like a much stronger force.
- What role does culture shock play in the novel?
- What role does resistance play in the novel? To what extent would the government need to be authoritarian to create a country like Ecotopa? How does the interplay between authoritarianism and anarchism function?
- How does whiteness function in the novel? How can environmental progressiveness be a mask for racial regressiveness?
- When teaching the novel to undergrads, there’s a diversity of opinions. Those who have problematized the conservationist narrative note Callenbach’s problematics about race and gender, whereas others see it as a call to action. Students involved in STEM and vocational careers (e.g., business) love Callenbach’s focus on solutions.
- What is the role of details within the novel? There were several points which inspired closer inspection:
- What are the psychological ramifications of Ecotopia? How is mental health treated in the novel?
- How have the humanities and social sciences become very different within Ecotopia?
- How has our own world been shaped by the growing influence of technology and facts that we see in Ecotopia? How can we look at the creation of things like the UIUC Medical School’s reliance on biotechnology as part of this?