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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Behind every Utopia there is always a territory, but a territory that “is not here”, a territory removed from immediate reality in space or in time. In time, when the Utopia invokes the past of an Age of Gold or a Paradise Lost “illo tempore,” but also when there is a gamble with the hope of a better world to be organized in the future. These are “ideal times” or “longed-for times,” past or future of which philosophers, writers or political men speak.
1 Pierluigi Giordani, Il futuro dell'utopia, Bologna, ‘1973: a study of spatial Utopias, especially urban, which maintains that there is no point today in speaking of Utopias located "nowhere." He dwells upon the social nature of the contemporary urban Utopia and analyzes the content and preoccupation of many apparently formal Utopias from the Renaissance to our day through a permanent confrontation between a "real city" and an "ideal city."
2 Jean-Louis Camolli, La Cecilia, dossier of a film, Paris, Daniel Co., 1976, p. 9.
3 Idem, anarchist song: "Ti lascio Italia, terra di ladri, Coi miei compagni vado in esilio, E tutti uniti a lavorare, E formerem la colonia social…"
4 Fred Polak, The Image of the Future, Leyden/New York, 1961, Vol. I, p. 446.
5 Salim Abou, "Mythe et réalité dans l'émigration," Paris, UNESCO, Cultures, Vol. VI, No. 2, 1980, p. 83.
6 Naim Kattan, L'immigrant de langue française et son intégration à la vie canadienne, Quebec, CIRB, Laval University.
7 Arturo Jauretche, La Sociedad de medio pelo argentina, Buenos Aires, 1974, p. 158.
8 Ernst Bloch, "Aportaciones a la historia de los orígenes del Tercer Reich," in Utopia, anthology edited by Arnhelm Neusüss, Barcelona, Barral Editores, 1970, p. 108.
9 Idem, p. 109.
10 John F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants, New York, Harper and Rowe, 1964, p. 4.
11 Mircea Eliade, La nostalgie des origines, Paris, Gallimard, 1971. Eliade maintains the eschatological sign of the process of colonization of the New World. See also Charles L. Sanford, The Quest for Paradise, Urbana, 1961; and George H. Williams, Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought, New York, 1962. These authors analyze the religious sentiment in this progressive march from East to West, begun "in the Sinai Desert."
12 David Riesman, "Some Observations on Community Plans and Utopia," The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 57, Dec. 1947, No. 2. Riesman studies Utopian thought in America and emphasizes the social function accomplished by progressive architects such as Charles Ascher, Catherine Bauer and Lewis Mumford, author of The Story of Utopia, London, 1923. Bibliography on Utopian architecture is enormous. It suffices to remember that almost all the Utopian novels of More include abundant urbanistic details, and all the social projects of "Utopian Socialism" are largely based on a functional architecture.
13 Colin Ward, Utopia, U. K., Penguin Education Book, 1974, p. 10.
14 Quoted by Salim Abou, op. cit., p. 78.
15 Magnus Morner, "La immigracion desde mediados del Siglo XIX: una nueva América Latina," Cultures, Paris UNESCO, 1978, Vol. 5, No. 3, p. 60.
16 Definition adopted by UNESCO after a consultation by experts on "cultural contributions by immigrants to Latin America and the Caribbean from the beginnings of the 19th century," held in Panama, Nov. 19-23, 1979: UNESCO CC-79/Conf. 619/7.
17 Mircea Eliade, Lo sagrado y lo profano, Madrid, Ed. Guadarrama, 1973, p. 25.
18 Of great interest are the works by Curt Nimuendaju, Alfred M6traux and Mircea Eliade on the migratory movements of the Tupi-Guaranies in Brazil in search of a "Paradise Lost," a search that apparently began before the arrival of the Portuguese and that only now has become of tragic urgency.
19 Arnhelm Neusüss, Utopie, Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, 1968. The work defines the concept of the "Utopian intention" as common to all the images that Utopia elaborates for the future, however different the content of the for mulations are. The Utopian intention is confirmed with greater precision in the negation of what is no longer wanted than in the positive determination of what is proposed. Using this concept of "Utopian intention" Neusiiss is able to combine into a single social critique such diverse ideas as have been manifested throughout the history of Utopia.
20 Idem, p. 25. "The struggle against Utopia is based not so much on the ideas for the better future it may bring but on the criticism all these images make of the existing reality. Thus, the Utopian is reflected more clearly where it is fought: in the controversy over what it claims to signify."
21 The definition accepted at the meeting of UNESCO cited in Note 16.
22 Salim Abou, op. cit.
23 The Catholic Church has played an important part in this spiritual patrimony, beginning with the Pastoralis Migratorum Cura of 1969 (Motu proprio, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, August 15, 1969).
24 Pierre George, Les migrations internationales, Paris, PUF, 1976, p. 11.
25 This is the definition Pierre George gives of an immigrant, much more restrictive than the one accepted by UNESCO.
26 La Documentación Catolica, No. 1816, Oct. 18, 1981. In his recent letter concerning the respect for the cultural identity of immigrants, Cardinal Casaroli dwells on the importance of this behavior of the immigrant in relation to the society in which he lives and to other groups of immigrants.
27 José Marti, Autores americanos aborigenes, in Obras completas, Havana, Vol. VIII, pp. 336-37.
28 Roger Bastide, Le rêve, la transe et la folie, Paris, 1972, p. 231.
29 Presencia de Bello en la integración cultural latino-americana, conference by Felipe Herrera given at UNESCO on Oct. 21, 1981 on the occasion of the celebration of the bicentennial of the birth of Andrés Bello.
30 Bulletin Comunidad, No. 26, Stockholm, 1981.
