Utopie

  ---- by Richard G. Smith

  Baudrillard published dozens of articles in the topical and political journal Utopie (Revue de sociologie de l'urbain), many of which were subsequently republished as chapters in his books of the 1970s and 1980s, appearing in CPS, MP, SS, S, GD and SSM. In 2006, many of Baudrillard's Utopie articles were finally collected together in English as Utopia Deferred: Writings for Utopie, 1967-1978 (2006b). From 1966 Baudrillard taught sociology at the University of Paris X at Nanterre, and it was in that year that the Utopie group was established: 'Utopie truly began at Lefebvre's place at Navarrenx, in the Pyrenees, in 1966. I got to know the group. In fact, just before 1968. All of this really began right before 1968 . . .' (UD, 16). The first issue of the periodical Utopie appeared in May 1967 with Hubert Tonka, an architect and Henri Lefebvre's assistant, as its managing editor. The publication brought together 'a few architects and young intellectuals' (UD, 13): the sociologists Jean Baudrillard, René Lourau and Catherine Cot, the architects Jean Aubert, Jean-Paul Jungmann and Antoine Stinco, and the landscape architect Isabelle Auricoste. The journal's membership fluctuated around the first issues until a principal group, including Baudrillard, remained. In the 1990s there was initially some confusion as to the history of the journal, with Genosko (1994: 166) only examining 'the first seven issues up to August-September 1973'. However, it is now established that the journal was, in fact, published for a decade, the final issue being that for December 1977-January 1978 (Number 17). In an interview Baudrillard comments that Utopie ended around this time because, with 'the appearance of the Giscardian type of liberalism in 1975-6, it suddenly became evident that these small journals were doomed because they no longer had anything to say that mattered' (RC, 32-3), 'They did not speak to anyone any more, they no longer had an impact' (BL, 64), consequently Baudrillard shifted his energies to co-found the journal Traverses.

  Baudrillard had a central role in the establishment and success of Utopie whose collective aim - nourished by the thought of Henri Lefebvre - was to advance a radical ultra-left critique of architecture, urbanism and everyday life: 'the intention was to surpass architecture as such, just as urbanism as such had been surpassed and as the Situationists had liquidated the space of the university as such . . . Everyone was trying to liquidate his own discipline' (UD, 13). While Utopie was 'a minor radical review, of a situationist type' (BL, 64), 'a little on the margin' (UD, 17), that sold few issues, it nevertheless flourished for just over a decade as its founders and contributors had, if not a common project, then at least a clear sense of what they were opposing, 'society, power are on the other side' (BL, 64), and were also energised by having a sense that they were speaking to a movement and atmosphere of revolt that existed in some sections of French society around the events of May 1968: 'The 1968 event came, in some way, to "realize" the project, though also, in the same blow, to extinguish a little of its potential' (UD, 15).

  Passwords

   § architecture

   § may 1968

   § sociology + the end of the social

   § Traverses