Practicing Utopia

            On February 26, I attended a women’s conference called Practicing Utopia: Feminism and Activism in Institutional Contexts held by the Columbia Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality. At the conference, professional women discussed their ideas on what a feminist utopian society would look like, and how they act to achieve it. The speaker who interested me the most was Jean Howard. She is a George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, and her talk focused on how she works within her community at Columbia to reach her own idea of utopia. She began by mentioning Thomas More’s novel Utopia. His society is riddled with vast income inequality, justice for the rich, enclosures to drive off the poor, and general greed and corruption. Howard argued that this is not the sort of utopia modern society should look to create. Although she did not directly define utopia, she said that the idea of utopia is an invitation to thought and then action. It begins with an idea and from there must become something tangible. The ability to make an abstract thought, like gender equality, concrete is in itself utopia; being able to create change where it is needed is a paradisaical notion. She mentioned how in her own life, it is difficult to be intentionally involved in transformative politics as a result of the bindings that come with her place at the university. Yet, Howard said that it is simple to unintentionally make a change. For example, she may be unable to directly speak out against Columbia’s policies but she can skip meetings or events in protest, as even small steps like this recalibrate the power structure within an institution. In her everyday life she works toward finding a feminist utopia where a woman need not fear her gender will inhibit her career, such as a pregnancy announcement harming her chances of earning fellowships. Howard focused on the ideas that incremental change leads to radical change and that this change must be collectively made as opposed to handed down from a single person.

            The speech reflected on the idea that the formation of greater equality will not be achieved in grand leaps, as we have seen in works we have read this semester. Looking from John Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer to Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, progress can be seen. In Manhattan Transfer female characters such as Ellie felt trapped by their gender as it limited the power they had over their lives. Dos Passos understood the struggles of women, so his novel reflected society’s mistreatment of them in the 1920s. Thus, his characters were complex women still entrapped by their time period and position in society. In The Crying of Lot 49, women are still not equal to men, but Oedipa is uncovering the conspiracy on her own accord and with her own intelligence; she is the driving force behind the plot and she is more respected than the women in Manhattan Transfer. Yet, Oedipa is still an oversexualized character who needs the help of several men and in the end cannot handle the pressure and breaks. Pynchon creates a helpless female in order to reflect the way women were portrayed in his 1960s world, while at the same time showing a woman’s need to escape this archetype. So, while progress is made, it is made slower than the ideal.

            The event taught me about the collective work needed to create even these small changes. It is easy to get frustrated by the seeming lack of progress made in modern society, but ­­Howard’s talk helped me see the importance of small happenings and recognize the triumph in them. Now, within the course, I can see that a character as flawed as Oedipa can still be a step forward. Also, I can recognize that this progress has been achieved through the joint effort of many; whether they be outright activists or simply regular members of society who recognize its problems. For example, the feminist movement which surrounded the events of The Crying of Lot 49 was the shared effort of thousands of women and allies, and would have contributed to Pynchon’s understanding of what a woman is capable of and how she can function in a man’s role. When passionate people work together to enact positive change, utopia gets just a little bit closer.