Outer space as an utopia - term paper initial thoughts

I received a new laptop for Xmas. It is quite a nice looking creature but unfortunately it is currently formatted with Windows, without any of the Microsoft Office programs. As a result I am having to do any writing on here, until I get Ubuntu put on here (Linux ftw).
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My term paper for my Creativity and Utopias module will be examining outer space as an utopia. I'm going to try and commit some thoughts on the matter to writing, in the hope that some form of argument will begin to form which I can then use as the basis of my paper.

The word 'utopia' means 'no-place', and there can be no example more striking as this as outer space, a geographical area consisting of no place whatsoever. There is no up. From outer space, orbiting the Earth, nothing of human society is visible with the naked eye; borders, politics, war, economy; the influential aspects of the human condition are absent, as observed by the astronaut [insert name here]. More profoundly, he found that he was able to obscure the entire planet, and thus humankind, with just the outline of his thumb.

There is a profound romanticism to this. In space, the individual is raised to the level of a deity. Withdrawal from the world and the constraints of society provides the individual with a creative and critical space in which they may formulate their own utopia, in the eutopian sense. In literature to begin with, writers such as Thomas More had to invent a geographical location far removed enough from society so that they could engender and present ideas radical and challenging to their contemporary societies. Later, this geographical distance became a temporal one, explored by time travellers initially in the works of Bellamy and Wells before entire narratives became grounded from the onset in the future. Outer space is able to give a sense of both physical and temporal distance, where distance is in fact measured in time. (There was an essay I read that discusses this, perhaps the discussion between Adorno and Bloch? Need to re-read this)

The legend goes that when Yuri Gagarin was in space he said that he could not find any god up there. In a sense, man's first journey to the stars was a breaking of a fourth wall, a journey beyond the cloud of unknowing surrounding the Earth. Utopian narratives often involve journeying of some description, be it physical or mental, often both. Space travel also involves this, and in making this journey Gagarin was elevated to a state of divinity. He found no man behind the curtain and in doing so took his place. He escaped the static confines of life on Earth, the shuffling monotony of life with the lost ones of Beckett's cylinder.

In a book entitled Non-places, the anthropologist Marc Auge (with an accent over the 'e') looks at the non-places of supermodernity. Places such as supermarkets, airports, train carriages, automated telling machines, motorways, where history is solidified and static, a portrait on the wall or a commodity on the shelf rather than an integrated, interacting facet of the present. This is also outer-space. Auge writes that on entering a non-place the individual hangs up their individuality upon checking-in and then becomes a unit or part of a team/system of users. They are now customers or travellers, and a component of the non-place. This is also outer-space. In Pyke's documentary, Moonbug, the astronauts all share a core set of qualities, or astronaut attributes, without which you could not be an astronaut. These individuals were astronauts, part of the astronaut team. In space this was their role, and the identities were left back on Earth, ready to be picked up again upon their return. The most interesting part of the documentary was how different some of these people were; you had the right-wing astronaut doing his duty, flying up in order to beat the Commies, then you had the left-wing astronaut who went up carrying parchment copies of literature he felt to be important. This was them on Earth, up in outer-space they were two indistinguishable astronauts.

Although Auge's book describes non-places very similarly to no-places, he eventually states than non-places are not utopian as they are not 'organic'. The belief that the utopian is the organic is incorrect in my book however. Utopias are always manufactured. There is always a need for distance from the world in the creation of utopia which cannot be achieved by organic means. One does not naturally travel through time, one is static and always in the present. Life is always beset with a striving towards progress. This is the organic way. Utopias (in a eutopian sense) arrive at progress and eliminate striving. The traveller stumbles upon utopias rather than working towards them, in the manner that the methods for the creation of Jurassic Park, a example of a utopia as a non-place, are criticised by Dr. Ian Malcolm.

Another parallel to be drawn between the utopia and outer space is the return; the journey back to society, with its norms, values and social tyrannies from a space of unfettered existence. The astronauts were thrust from scientific obscurity to international celebrity and continuously thrust into social situations, rather like the Savage in Brave New World, in which they would have felt uncomfortable and incongruous. Gagarin took to alcohol and his marriage became strained, Aldrin and Armstrong became reclusive and shied away from celebrity. (This is slighty conjectual so I'll need to research this somewhat, curse the Ballardian conspiracy fever) Intrusion of the everyday into the utopian ideal never ends well. I shall closely examine the ending of Swift's Gulliver's Travels in order to interrogate/investigate this phenomena.

"He returns to his home in England, but he is unable to reconcile himself to living among Yahoos and becomes a recluse, remaining in his house, largely avoiding his family and his wife, and spending several hours a day speaking with the horses in his stables."

A list of examples of the tragedy that arises in film and literature when characters return from the non-place of utopia to their contemporary individuality is as broad as it is long. For the astronaut it is a complete role-reversal, a journey from one end of the microscope to the other. Creative works about this suggest that powerful physicality and material presence of place over non/no-place works to smother and suffocate immediately following re-entry. The vacuum is filled. Interestingly the effect of trying to breathe in the anti-vacuum of creativity is the same as the astronaut trying to breathe in outer space.

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So far these are my ideas on the subject. What is the point or the main thrust of this discussion? That outer space is a prime example of a utopia I suppose. The absence of place in space makes it a complete no place. Anthropologically speaking it could be described as a non-place, looking at the definitions provided by Auge in his book, backed up by Foucault's essay on heteroutopias and the discussion between Adorno and Bloch. Many parallels can also be drawn between literary utopias and travelling to outer space, as well as the return. I should most like to closely examine Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Bradbury's Kaleidoscope, a short story about a group of astronauts floating off into space following the destruction of their rocket. They are only able to communicate via radio as they drift off to their inevitable dooms, with Hollis, the closest thing to a main protagonist, heading back towards Earth. His fatal return through the atmosphere is observed by a mother and son who believe him to be a falling star and make a wish. Resocialisation is deadly when done too quickly, you could say.

To summarise briefly then, the term paper will be about how outer space is a utopia, and how the return from utopia to society is a traumatic. It will use utopian theory and literature to explore ideas surrounding outer space, then use ideas surrounding space to explore utopian theory and literature.

As far as the creative component to my paper goes, I shall be using two fragments I've written re: astronauts already, along with others depending on how many more words I will need to include. I will definitely need to write a fragment dealing with the astronaut's perceptions of the Earth as seen from space, perhaps in the form of a personal journal entry. There should possibly be something to indicate the origin of the astronaut's trauma which arises in the black-box recording, perhaps relating to an intrusion of the Earth within his utopia? Also something concerning his journeying up to space, documenting the 'checking-in' of identity as Auge would put it, would be illuminating but potentially could ruin the mystery I've already built up. I have planned to write a news report about the astronaut's crash but this might not be directly relevant. It could be, concerning society's response to the returning traveller, so we shall see how it comes out.