ABSTRACT
It may well be that the überschuss of art and literature is necessary not only for the transformative spiralling of postcolonial resistance but also to resolve the contradictions of utopia, for the quest for utopia has produced profoundly contradictory results. Many of these contradictions can be seen in More’s Utopia, such as the conict between freedom and regulation, between voluntarism and coercion, and in general the contradictions surrounding the question of power and its operation in utopian society. Paradoxically, only the thinnest of lines separates utopia from dystopia and the slippage from one to the other hinges on three kinds of ambiguity, three contradictions demarcating the very thin line between them. Wherever utopias occur these contradictions emerge: the relation between utopias and utopianism; the relation between the future and memory; and the relation between the individual and the collective.
