A Night Spent in (Open) Utopia

I recently attended an event organized by the Contemporary Literature Series program of the English Department, held at 19 University Place. Started just a year ago, CLS aims at bringing contemporary authors to undergraduate classrooms.

The speaker at the reading was Stephen Duncombe who is an associate professor at Gallatin School and the Department of Media, Culture and Communications. He has authored, co-authored and edited six books including, Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy; Notes From Underground: Zines and the Politics of Underground Culture etc. At the reading, he talked about his more recent project called, (Open) Utopia. In Open Utopia (theopenutopia.org), Duncombe has created a digitalized English translation of Thomas More’s Utopia- available to be read online or downloaded. But it gets better; because Duncombe’s Open Utopia is interactive- it aims at turning the readers into writers. In the reading, Duncombe talked about how his interpretation of Moore’s Utopia- he viewed it as a prompt- for the readers to imagine their own versions of Utopia due to their dissatisfaction with Moore’s version of it. And so, one can post videos/ comments/ tweet on the website. One of the more interesting aspects of the site is Wikitopia where the readers can actually edit Moore’s Utopia/ re-imagine how they would want a Utopian government to function.

I enjoyed the reading a lot because it exposed me to something completely new- Stephen Duncombe, through Open Utopia created something that successfully combined writing with technology and used the increasing digitalization to its advantage. The realization that a writer pursuing a creative project, doesn’t have to limit himself to the traditional book, and can experiment and play around with the other works and technology, and create something that is different, was reassuring. It has definitely inspired me to push/or play with.  the boundaries where my own writing is concerned.

-Smriti Bansal