This is a link to my final blog project if anyone has any interest in looking at it.  I couldn`t figure out how to link it up any other way…

Delany`s Tales of Neveryon evokes complex questions about the relationships between language, knowledge, power, and desire.  Three moments and one thread stand out to me –although there are certainly many others that are equally significant in different ways–for their significance in thinking about utopia/utopianism:  the first is Gorgik`s double memory of vanishing slaves and clanking coins that occurs near the beginning of his tale but is inserted and then abandoned with a seamlessness that renders it uncanny; the second moment involves the mirror game Old Venn demonstrates to/with the children and its lessons about truth and perception; and the third is the fireside chance encounter and conversation between Raven and Norema and Gorgik and Small Sarg that occurs in the final tale.  The thread of story-telling is implicated in some capacity in each of these moments, and is also present in many other places throughout the text.  I`m not going to try here (though perhaps I will elsewhere) for an in-depth analysis of what is going on in each of these moments, but will just attempt to articulate some of the questions that they raise for me in terms of thinking about utopia and the utopian impulse, and the relationship of utopia to history and memory and to desire.

The narrative`s articulation of Gorgik`s double memory (involving the sight of dejected slaves and the nearby sound of coins clinking) seems to function to create a connection between money/wealth and subjection at the outset of the text, but this relationship is complicated by the mysterious disappearance of these shackled slaves on the child Gorgik`s re-entrance to the same room hours later.  The narrative`s staging of this almost dream-like memory, especially followed by Gorgik`s strange encounter with the (perhaps)- slave boy in the square, brings up questions for me about the representation of time and memory.  Where is this double memory situated in relation to Gorgik`s imagination, and how does it situate him?  How does it condition his ideals of freedom and desire?  Is the slave boy a double for Gorgik, or a symbol of his fate/future?  What is the significance of his ability to break his collar in terms of thinking about the psychic shackles that bind and what it means to imagine other ways of either escaping or negotiating these binds?  And then, how does this scene figure the relationship between the money system and desire?  I can say with near certainty that Samuel Delany`s vision of utopia would not be absent of desire—but do the operations of desire in some way necessitate/engender/rely upon(?) asymmetrical relations of power?

The scene by the fire in which Gorgik tells Raven and Norema about his and Small Sarg`s relationship also brings up similar questions.  Gorgik tells the women, “We are both free men.  For the boy the collar is symbolic—of our mutual affection and our mutual protection.  For myself, it is sexual—a necessary part in the pattern that allows both action and orgasm to manifest themselves within the single circle of desire” (238).  He denies that it carries any social meaning for them—except that is “shocks, offends, or deceives”—despite the fact that in many ways it functions in the world in which they live as the paradigmatic sign of power (in a different way than the rult does, I suppose).

So, this collar serves (also) as a sign of submission and subordination, but the dynamics of Gorgik and Small Sarg`s relationship subverts this sign, and reveals its ultimate meaninglessness.  Further, this subversion is enacted through Gorgik`s relaying of its intentionality to Raven and Norema, which may speak to the power of story-telling to create new forms of relationships (more on this in a moment).

But going back, I am also thinking about the operations of desire that Gorgik`s relationship to Young Sarg reveals.  Are these two men more “free” because of their open subversion of the sign of power (the collar), or does Gorgik`s need to wear it in order to initiate desire bespeak his continued subjection to this symbol?  His wearing of the collar during sex (sex that is on some level taboo) serves as a kind of abjection of self, which he needs in order to be stimulated; but at the same time as it offers him a certain freedom through sex and the body, it problematizes the notion of an inherently liberating desire.  Desire is intimately connected with utopia; both are engendered and sustained through the conditions of their impossibility.  One might even say that utopia/utopian thinking always emerges from desire (an insatiable/impossible longing for wholeness), though I`m not yet prepared to claim that this is true.  But then I come back to the question voiced above:  does desire always involve asymmetrical power relations, if not between subjects than between the subject and his/her means of expression?  And what is the relationship (represented here; or otherwise) between desire and love?

Skipping around, back to storytelling:  We might think of story-telling as itself embodying a utopic impulse, which seems to be an especially salient theme in the first few tales.  The act of telling a story is an inherently transformative—and on some levels, one might argue, subversive—act.  To tell a story is to create a bridge between realms of experience, and a gap where new meanings can arise; and it is also to alter the course of history, and in so doing, the present and future as well.  To tell a story is to (re)claim a kind of agency, which may also represent transformative possibilities for the subject.  I wonder, however, what the limits of storytelling are in terms of reimagining/rearticulating the world?  Story-telling in most any form involves a harnessing of creativity combined with a willingness to imagine things not as they are but as they could be—but how far can this take us?  What, indeed, is language`s potential to actualize a utopian space?  And how can we conceptualize this space?  Is this a different kind/mode of utopia entirely than more concrete visions of utopia?  Because utopia by definition cannot exist, must it always involve a linguistic dimension?  I had to return my library copy of Trouble on Triton, so I don`t have access to the Foucault quote Britt read at the end of last week`s class, but I found it very provocative in thinking about the relationship between language, form, and utopia; and it brought up questions that I would like to continue to think about.

I won`t talk about the mirror scene here because I`m afraid I may be rambling.  I apologize for any incoherence, which can be blamed on too much time spent writing at my computer today!  But I`d certainly be interested to hear others` thoughts on any of these questions/threads…

I came across this article recently in which the author discusses her experience in the ZEGG community located near Berlin, Germany.  One of the founding ideals of this intentional community was/is free love and the idea that it can help individuals overcome the fear and possessiveness  that too often accompany monogamous relationships.  I`m not going to say more now because I may write about it for my own project, but it is certainly an interesting read, especially when considered in the context of some of the things we`ve been talking about in this course.

Here is a short excerpt from the film:  [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn2rgP24pEc[/youtube]

And here you should be able to watch the film in its entirety (it is also on Netflix, but the quality of the Youtube version seems to be reasonably good):  [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgUU41D4T7g[/youtube]