Utopian maps represent fictional environments

Louis Marin writes: “The utopian representation always takes the figure, the form of a map.”³⁰⁸ This leads to another observation, namely that utopia represents not just one but all possibilities. “[Utopia] gives a location to all journeys, all itineraries, all voyages and their paths: all of them are potentially present because they are all there, but implicitly it negates them all.”³⁰⁹ Holquist,³¹⁰ as mentioned above, conveys a similar thought in his comparison of utopia and chess, when he speaks about the game of chess opening up the possibility of re-enacting not just one battle, but all possible battles, completely detached from the outcome of any historical battle.

Utopia, according to Marin, could potentially represent any or all journeys.

The map, however, narrows down the possibilities and so enables the description of one journey out of all journeys that are theoretically possible in utopia. I will return to this observation below, when discussing how the structure and journey of Numbers 13 are employed to highlight the behaviour of certain characters to stress their righteousness. Furthermore, the idea that any map is theoretically possible will be used to approach Noth’s interpretation of the biblical passage.

Noth has decided to use the utopian potential of Number 13, which he may not have been aware of, to represent one specific map.

The map in utopia can make the fictional, unreal place seem realistic, or

“the locus has become space”,³¹¹ which enables one story to emerge from all possible stories: “With that figure [the mapped, projected journey], a narrative begins, with a before and an after, a point of departure and a point of arrival, a happy coming-back or a final permanent exile.”³¹² The map is the first authorial decision necessary when a utopia is designed, since it defines and limits the space into which the utopia is projected. Inside the area defined and limited by

308 Marin, “The Frontiers of Utopia,” 13.

309 Ibid.

310 Holquist, “How to Play Utopia: Some Brief Notes on the Distinctiveness of Utopian Fiction.”

311 Marin, “The Frontiers of Utopia,” 13.

312 Ibid.

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the invented map, the author can be omniscient (if she so wishes). In that way, the map can maximise the locus’ possibilities, by creating and limiting the space.³¹³

In literary utopias the topographical features are often presented first (examples are provided below), before the radically different socio-political situation is described. Most of the time, nothing too strange or unfamiliar can be seen in the topography of the place at first sight. The description of topography and the initial survey of infrastructure in utopias quite often foreshadow the encounter with inhabitants. Frequently it is only when the inhabitants of the conventional environment are encountered, that the narrator begins to notice differences between his familiar society and the radically different one.

The utopian map represents a location that would not strike a reader as completely fantastic. The tell-tale sign found in many literary utopias that makes clear that the place is still to be considered to be a “no-place” is often that it is located only vaguely (if at all) on a map of the empirical globe.³¹⁴ It is designed to seem realistic, because the utopia does not aim to present a fantastic world too different to be recognisable but to present a changed socio-political situation that seems possible enough to potentially inspire action to bring about the proposed change. A “key function of a utopian text is its ability to encourage readers to visualize the non-existent.”³¹⁵

Supplying a map, like describing the details of a landscape or cityscape in a story, can be an indicator that the place described is not known (or does not exist), either to the author,³¹⁶ or to the reader: “If you’re writing about a real

313 Jonathan Z. Smith describes “mapping” as a way to create and at the same time to limit space to “maximise” possibilities as well. Jonathan Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 292.

314 Thomas More, as with so many features of the utopian literary genre, established this convention: “By the way, More’s a bit worried because he doesn’t know the exact position of the island. As a matter of fact Raphael did mention it, but only very briefly and incidentally, as though he meant to return to the question later – and, for some unknown reason, we were both fated to miss it. You see, just as Raphael was touching on the subject, a servant came up to More and whispered something in his ear. And although this made me listen with even greater attention, at the critical moment one of his colleagues started coughing rather loudly – I suppose he’d caught cold on the boat – so that the rest of Raphael’s sentence was completely inaudible.”

More, Utopia, 34.

315 Roemer, Utopian Audiences, 60.

316 Atwood’s examples of maps of invented places include the maps of Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Ursuala K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy, Tolkien’s maps in Lord of the Rings and layout plans given in some country-house murder mysteries. Atwood, In Other Worlds, 70–71.

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city, a well-known one, the maps of it already exist and the reader can look them up, but if you’re writing about an unknown location, they don’t.”³¹⁷

The utopian map is included to open up the space of the story; it maintains utopia’s basic pun, because even though a map is included, we often find clues in the text that give the place away as in fact not locatable on any empirical map. Finally, the map may be a sign that the author needed to construct a map for herself because the place to be described was not known to her either.

All these features of utopian maps can be put to a simple test for their utopian-ness, which is to attempt to represent them graphically. A characteristic of maps in utopia is that the maps of utopia are not coherent. They cannot be retraced or found in empirical reality:

[…] Raphael’s [protagonist of More’s Utopia] story is less concerned with narrating travel than it is with displaying a map, but a map whose essential characteristic consists of not being another map. Or being in maps, it cannot exactly be found in them.³¹⁸

The aspect of the elusive map, which purports to be an orientation mark but when tested for its graphical representability confirms its own fiction, is an important feature of the utopian map, which will be discussed for the case study of Numbers 13 below. Noth and Na’aman supply failed attempts at representing the map of Numbers 13.

An aspect addressed both by Marin and by Atwood are the margins or edges of maps. As said above, in a utopia the author can use the limited space to maximise possibilities – to become omniscient within the utopia. The edges of the maps are not usually a theme in utopia,³¹⁹ possibly because the author would have to admit that outside of the fictional map she is not omniscient anymore, and that even questions such as how exactly to implement the proposed utopian society in the real world would be asking too much.

However, margins and transitional spaces, though uncomfortable spaces in clearly drawn utopias, are of importance when discussing utopias and their links

317 Ibid., 71.

318 Marin, “The Frontiers of Utopia,” 15.

319 One example of using the presence of an edge is found in the 19^th century techno-utopia Mizora. Taking a trip to the edge of the utopian land Mizora, the protagonist suddenly realises just how secluded and limited the land really is. Mary E. Bradley Lane, Mizora: A Prophecy, EBook, 2008, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24750. Accessed October 30^th, 2013.

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to reality as well as their links to negative downsides of positive proposals.³²⁰ The edge of the map, near which the unknown, unreal, or oscillating is often found,³²¹ is an aspect discussed below. The edge of a utopian map is a dangerous space, because it is yet another aspect that gives away the utopia as a fiction.³²² In the utopia of Numbers 13, the spies enter the land from outside the boundary of the land, and yet they encounter the monstrous and the fantastic, not so much on the outer edges but within the boundaries of the land. It will be argued that such changes in perspective of what is inside and what is outside are a utopian feature, too, and moreover allow an insight into the multi-layered exploration of self and other in Numbers 13.

For the analysis of biblical mapping in Numbers 13 it is necessary to expand the definition of “map” to include descriptions of the landscape and listing of place-names, not only images of drawn maps like the one found in More’s Utopia. Whenever I write “map” it is used as short-hand for the description of a route, landscape, or itinerary, or the listing of a series of toponyms.