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Utopia
has a chequered history amongst historians. Some would argue that the
good place that is no-place has no 'real' history and that its rightful
place is in the study of literature. Others have ridiculed utopians and
tried to consign them to the footnotes of history. But the utopian tendency
has an uncanny resilience - trying to make the world a better place would
seem to be a basic human instinct and far from being marginal to our history
it has played at times a central and pivotal role.
Utopia Britannica began life as a
history of intentional communities in the British Isles, what were called
communes in the 1960s & 70s. As I set off on my journey down
the communal memory lane with my baggage of preconceptions I thought I
was clearly bound for the footnotes of history, but as I travelled through
both geography and time, engaged in the research, I found myself in places
that I never knew existed, accompanied by a cast of characters that ranged
from the truely strange & eccentric, right through the corridors of
power to the dizzy heights of fame & fortune.
What slowly emerged was a Utopian landscape stretched to the farthest
corners of our country and whose influences are embedded so deep into
our national culture as to be virtually invisible.I have spent alot of
time reading the footnotes of other history books piecing together a jigsaw
map of UtopiaBritannica, and now when I travel I move through another
country; a countryof the imagination dreamt into existence by generations
of utopian experimenters who refused to accept that there wasnt
a better place to be than the one that they found themselves in.
Chris Coates 4.6.2001
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