Louis Marin -Utopiques: Jeux D’Espaces

Ch. 6., The Town: text space and space in the text

Possible trial forms for the map of Utopia

Utopia: The island contains fifty-four city-states, all spacious and magnificent, identical in language, tradition, customs, and laws. They are all similar in layout and everywhere … similar even in appearance … . Amaurotum … being the very centre of the country … is considered … as the capital.

From this we can generate the following:-

Encompassing land = island Encompassing land=island_____________________________________________ and __________________________________________

Encompassed sea = gulf Encompassing sea = ocean

The island’s form constitutes a heterogeneous space in which homogeneous elements are, to some degree, in conflict with a centre – but this regulates their homogeneity!

Multiplicity (= cities) Identity (= spatial elements) _______________________________________ ~ ______________________________________________

Uniqueness (= capital city) Difference (= the centre)

Homogeneity (land // sea) ~ _______________________________

Complexity (land υ sea)

N.B.

The tilda (~) as used here and on the previous slide should have the bottom half of an equals sign underneath it, but this set of symbols does not allow me to show it. It means approximately equal. The double stroke (//) means or, and the union sign (U) means combined, or simply and.

The central square and the Utopian circles. The one on the left is the one used as illustration in the first editions of Utopia, the other two show possibilities existing in the text.

Two possible maps of utopia based on the text.

Marin writes that the square constitutes the clearest signal of homogeneous space in its repetitive regularity and its lack of any privileged directionality. Yet in Utopia, it occupies a privileged central position that joins together the farthest inland point with the central maritime location – paradoxically, it is both at the centre and at the edge of the island. Secondly, we find that the square is a city – a city different from its surrounding space and differentiated within itself, i.e., the spatial regularity and uniformity of the square is compromised by an internal order, albeit this also consists of square sub-divisions.

Plan of Utopia’s town, Amaurote.

bridge

Anhydre, the river

District I District II

District III District IV

Fortified curtain wall enclosing the town

secondary river

In fact we have to deal with three spatial narratives: the city relative to its surroundings, the city as container of geographical sub-divisions, and the city as space of political locations. The Syphogrant’s lodges are places of power, even though they appear as one dwelling amongst identical others in a row. Strictly speaking, each district is an economic space, since in the middle of each quarter there is said to be a market – a geographically enclosed space constituting an open economic space that is said not to be the same as the communal garden. Marin is interested in the way More’s text, by referencing differing aspect of social life, effectively generates three ‘superimposed’ discourse, and therefore three connected spaces.

Plan of a town quarter and of a road

Lodges of the Syphogrants

Road

of th

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Syp

hog

ran

ts

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Economic space: The quarter’s communal garden – cultivated nature – grapes, fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

Social space: The distinctions between the countryside and the city are here transformed into their equivalents for the quarter.

Political space: Marin describes the streets as part of political space, because of the Syphogrants.

Diagram of the political order of representation within Utopia.

Street

= topographic relation

Quarter

= Relation in political discourse

= Relation of delegation

Key

District Syphogrant

Candidate Tranibor

Governor

Articulation of topographic and discursive systems in Utopia

Syphogrant

Street dining area = consumption

Political discourse Economic topography

Tranibor

Governor or candidate for governorship

Garden of the square = production

District market = exchange - distribution

Incongruity

The three networks are superimposed without coinciding, and each link of each network has a spatial centre and a name (signifier or topic). The quarter has the communal garden at its centre. Its function is production, providing goods that can be consumed and which have aesthetic value (flowers). The street has the Syphogrant’s house as its centre of political power, and in this place the community Dining Hall operates as a centre of consumption. Finally, the quarter has its central market – the place of economic exchange – its function, like any market, is to act as a focus for the collection, exchange, and distribution of goods. Marin stresses that these ‘spaces’ are not centred in the same way. The marketplace cannot be inscribed on the map, even though it has a textual location; the garden is locatable in both map and text, while political power is different again.

Marin provides the following explanation for this: