ABSTRACT
The gender arrangements proposed in a utopian text do not exist in a vacuum, but respond to the gender arrangements and concepts of gender that prevail in the social context of the text's production. The ways in which details of masculinity and femininity, sexual politics, and reproductive practices are worked out in literary utopias reveal the understanding of gender in the cultural context of their production. The representation of female sexuality in utopian fiction of the period was likewise bound to the broader question of how an alternative regulation of sex could benefit humanity. The utopia of 'true' gender is not inherently emancipatory, as it can lead to prescriptive models of 'natural' or 'essential' gender difference. As Ernst Bloch's The Principle of Hope remains one of the most significant and thorough inquiries into utopian desire, it is worth exploring how Bloch handles the relationship between gender and utopian space.
