ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the literary production of Saint-Simonianism, one of the most pervasive currents of nineteenth-century utopian socialism. In demonstrating acute perception of the multiple heterogeneous strands of discourse which are mobilized by modern poetic writing, Saint-Simonian writing offers an original and valuable account of the factors which are constitutive of the new genre. The chapter presents the survey of some complex spatial models of interaction which are advanced in the thought of Claude Henri de Saint-Simon. Arguing that the presence of degrees of organization within the natural world offer a means to understanding the structure and evolution of human institutions, Saint-Simon develops a novel awareness of the complex of factors which mediate the life of the individual within social formations. In the 1820s, the Saint-Simonians began to present their social project to the French public in a series of press publications.
