Utopia, counter-utopia

This article addresses the question of utopia through some reflections on the work of the Russian writer Andrei Platonov (1899–1951). Platonov’s work represents an inspirational series of investigations into the circumstances of utopia: not so much utopia as fantasy, nor utopia as actualized in failure, nor even dystopia, but what is here termed ‘actually existing utopia’. As such his work captures aspects of utopi-anism that may have been largely opaque to the investigations of either literary versions of the utopian imagination or utopian versions of social science. Platonov shows us an ‘anthropological ’ dimension inherent within the utopian impulse: that we are, so to speak, ‘utopological’ beings. And to this dimension of ourselves he applies a critical style that is not straightforwardly anti-utopian or dystopian but what is called here ‘counter-utopian’. Key words Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Andrei Platonov, subjectivity, utopia ‘What frightens me, comrade Chiklin, is the bewilderment in my heart. I don’t know what’s the matter. I keep thinking that somewhere a long way away there’s something special, something wonderful we’ll never get to, while all I ever do is feel sad.’ ‘We’ll get there in the end. What you should do, Voschev, as the saying goes, is keep your pecker up.’ ‘When will we get there, comrade Chiklin?’ ‘Just imagine we’re already there – nowadays it’s all the same to us anyway.