“To live utopia means constructing the representation which will speak its impossibility and simultaneously indicate it as that which it excludes. It is the empty space bordering and framing representation. This is the space of blessedness in representation, the permanent instant of happiness, all in one moment loss, limit and the neutral.” —Marin, Utopics, xxvi
This zine is inspired by my engagement with Louis Marin’s book Utopics: Spatial Play (1984), which is in turn a reading of Thomas More’s book Utopia (1516).
Over 20 pages, I draw on five presocratic philosophers (Anaximander, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, and Leucippus and Democritus), five twentieth century philosophers (Simondon, Deleuze and Guattari, Laruelle, and Badiou), and then weave the threads of their thought together with Marin’s thought of utopia. The outcome is less tapestry, and more patchwork. Marin is a challenging read, and I found this short zine to be exceptionally challenging to write.
There is no game in this zine. These pages are the opening of a factory, a welcoming of other readers to join me in the assembly of machines for thought with which me might begin to play, and play anew.
If philosophy is your style, I have written at much greater length and with much more precision and clarity on most of the thinkers to whom I here refer. The particular intensity of thought that I am following throughout the zine begins with my essay “Being and Motion.”
As per usual, this zine is in A5 format, and should be easily printable if you select “booklet” in the print dialog on your computer. The cover image is a diagram from Marin’s Utopics. The background image is from More’s Utopia, which is in the public domain at Wikimedia Commons.
