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Wheatley's Utopian Traces

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The philosopher Ernst Bloch proposed that every cultural object retains traces of utopian desire, wish-images for a better future. Taking his proposal very seriously, my research investigates these utopian traces in 18c Irish visual representations of the demesne or estate. How does the ideal manifest in these images and what ideals do they manifest? Today I will discuss this painting by Francis Wheatley in terms of its utopian register. What kind of wishful images for the future does it project for a viewer in 18c Ascendancy Ireland? How does it create—if it does—the space for utopian imagining to appear? What does this space look like and who occupies it? How is the potential subversiveness of this space neutralised? These are some of the questions I will address today. First I will give a brief definition of Utopia. Utopia refers to “no place”; it is a non-existent society described in detail and normally located in time and place. It is not Paradise, of divine …show more content…

Fredric Jameson argues that utopian space is “an imaginary enclave within real social space”, “[a] pocket of stasis within the ferment and rushing forces of social change” “within which Utopian fantasy can operate”. (2005: 15) That is, transitional political moments like revolutions allow for utopian enclaves to appear as the products of their unstable yet fertile social dynamics. These enclaves emerge outside of the space of pragmatic politics, as a corollary, imaginative space for constituting an emerging or possible community. The enclave is a space for “utopian figuration”, what Louis Marin uses to describe the emergence of figures unique to the particular community being imagined. Established through “utopian play” (Marin), these figures embody the imaginative possibilities of real social

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