Building a Bridge to Nowhere: Morris, the Education of Desire, and the Party of Utopia

Abstract

ABSTRACT Is a utopian text best understood as a blueprint for building a better society or as a catalyst for educating the desire of its readers? Since Miguel Abensour's interpretation of News from Nowhere, scholars have favored the latter view. This article contends, however, that the “catalytic” approach to utopian texts created an antinomy within utopian studies. When William Morris composed Nowhere, he was confronting a practical manifestation of the same antinomy. Consequently, studying Morris's utopia sheds valuable light on this methodological problem. This focus also reveals Nowhere's governing metaphor—the bridge—and suggests the significance of Morris's neglected contemporaneous lecture “How Shall We Live Then?” This article concludes that attention to the programmatic and rhetorical content of utopian texts is necessary to balance the dominant emphasis on utopia as an impulse and pedagogical process.