Publications on Utopia in Portugal (2016 and the First Semester of 2017)

If I were to review only the books written in Portuguese and published during 2016 and the first semester of 2017 in Portugal, this would no doubt be a very short article. In fact, the National Library of Portugal only displays thirteen entries from a search for utopia in the title, keyword, or subject; and once we exclude fiction, translations, reeditions, and books that, although they use utopia in the title, are not relevant to the field of utopian studies, we are left with just four references.

The situation is no doubt surprising given the fact that utopian studies is well established in the Portuguese academy and that a number of events were held across the country to commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of the publication of Thomas More's Utopia. In my view, there are two explanations for this: first, the fact that Portuguese academics have been increasingly encouraged (to use a euphemism) to publish internationally in English in peer-reviewed journals or to write book chapters for prestigious British and American publishing houses; second, the fact that the search engine of the National Library is not the right tool to measure academic interest in the topic. We need in fact to resort to the Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Open-Access Scientific Repository of Portugal) to have an idea of the importance of utopian thinking in the Portuguese academy, and once we access it, we find not only many articles published in journals—ranging from topics such as utopia and film to utopia and international politics, from urban planning to readings of Huxley and Houellebecq—but also a significant number of academic works: twenty-six M.A. theses and four doctoral dissertations. Although these academic works have not been published by a publishing house, they are available for open access in the repositories of Portuguese universities. For this survey of publications on utopia in Portugal in 2016 and the first semester of 2017, I will take into consideration not only the four books previously mentioned but also the theses and dissertations that most directly contribute to the field of utopian studies.

Books

Although they all use utopia in the title and somehow contribute to a theorization of the concept, the four books published in Portugal in the period under consideration could not be more disparate. In Jogos Olímpicos sob o signo da utopia (The Olympic Games Under the Banner of Utopia, 2016), Rui Proença Garcia and António Camilo Cunha show that the significance of the Olympic Games far surpasses their sporting interest. By minutely detailing the economic, social, and mediatic impact of the games, as well as a number of issues that need to be addressed—such as environmental and mobility issues—the authors demonstrate that the cities where the games are held are completely changed when they end. The book is worth reading—and relevant for the field of utopian studies—because of the unexpected triple leap the authors perform, reflecting on (1) the concept of utopia, (2) Portuguese utopian literature, and (3) Jesuit reductions in Latin America. Indeed, only by performing such a leap would Garcia and Cunha be able to reach the conclusion they want to propose.

The definition of utopia as the aspiration to an ideal society in its functioning and governance, the idyllic visions of perfect islands found in the literary imaginations of Raul Brandão and Vitorino Nemésio, and the heterotopic spaces of the Jesuit reductions all provide the authors with the basis for the conclusion that the Olympic Games demand a utopian city—the Olympic Village. Justice, identity, and hosting the Other are the key aspects to understanding the utopian spirit that presides over the games. The book goes on to explore the problems of living in a community that we can find in any utopia, including Thomas More's, where the existence of a prison shows that there is crime even in an ideal state. Although the exercise of describing the Olympic Village as a utopia is an interesting one—the...