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Article: Escaping a dystopian present: compensatory and anticipatory utopias in Bruce Chatwin's The Viceroy of Ouidah and The Songlines.(Essays)
- Article from:
- Utopian Studies
- Article date:
- March 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Society for Utopian Studies. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines (1987) and The Viceroy of Ouidah (1980) in terms of their representation of and engagement with forms of utopian thinking. Whilst there is also scope for discussing In Patagonia (1977) in terms of utopia, I have chosen these texts because they each present a different aspect of Chatwin's utopian theorising and In Patagonia shares characteristics with each of these texts. I suggest that Chatwin's texts display a preoccupation with utopian thought, both compensatory--offering a form of individual escape or alternative to the present set of social arrangements imagined as dystopian; and anticipatory--imagining a time in ...
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