Spaces of Memory as Visions of the Future in Spiritualist Utopias

Résumé

The paper examines selected 19th-century Spiritualist texts in the context of the relationship between the past and the future as the foundational element of spatial modelling in the examined narratives. Crucial here is the trope of memory: as cultural as well as literary models, the Spiritualist presented worlds are mnemonic constructs, grounded in the process of reminiscence as the central component of their generic framework and world-building. At the same time, in line with 19th-century euchronias, the texts in question foreground the idea of progress by transferring it from the temporary mortal existence into the everlasting realm of the hereafter, based on the continuous development of its inhabitants. In this sense, Spiritualist accounts negotiate utopia’s complex relationship with memory by postulating the need to coalesce the static cultural matrix of the collective with the dynamic memory of the individual. Thus, the spatial analysis of the selected narratives aims to demonstrate the semiotic tension between the past and the future as the cornerstone of their utopian paradigm.