Utopianism in the Work of Zygmunt Bauman - Sociologi - Aalborg ...

of the human predicament that sociology must necessarily mirror especially in
times when utopian visions appear to be lost.
Liquid Modern Utopias, Dystopias and Heterotopias
Where most modern utopias, or what Marin (1992) and Hetherington (2002)
termed ‘utopics’, were deliberately made flesh and blood and into concrete
physical expressions and embodiments through architectural, urbanistic or geo-
graphical planning of the elusive utopian ideas (cf. Baczko 1989), which often
turned into so-called ‘subtopias’, utopia in the liquid modernity of today has
altogether lost its solid spatial dimension and physical grounding. They are now
instead utopias without a topos – deprived of their previously constitutive to-
pographical features. 9 They have to a great extent become exterritorial like so
many other former solid and territorially located features of social life:
The Utopias of yore stand condemned in the new global elite’s Weltanschauung
and life philosophy. Their two most crucial attributes – territoriality and finality –
disqualify past Utopias and bar in advance all future attempts to re-enter the line
of thinking they once followed […] ‘Utopia’ – in its original meaning of a place
that does not exist – has become, within the logic of the globalized world, a con-
tradiction in terms. The ‘nowhere’ (the ‘forever nowhere’, the ‘thus-far nowhere’
and the ‘nowhere-as-yet’ alike) is no longer a place. The ‘U’ of ‘Utopia’ bereaved
by the topos, is left homeless and floating, no longer hoping to strike roots, to ‘re-
embed’ […] The utopian model of a ‘better future’ is out of the question (Bauman
2002a:236-239). 10
Instead of allowing utopias to become places nowhere to be found or entirely
bereaved of spatial and temporal dimensions, Bauman (1998b:98) echoing the
words of Fernando Ainsa suggests that we ought to work towards creating a
‘pan-topia’ – the space of everywhere. This is more easily preached than prac-
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