Hacettepe University Graduate School of Social Sciences 

Department of English Language and Literature 

English Language and Literature Programme 

  

 

 

 

 

 

ARCHITECTURAL PSYCHOLOGY IN UTOPIAS/DYSTOPIAS: 
WILLIAM MORRIS’S NEWS FROM NOWHERE, GEORGE 

ORWELL’S NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR AND J.G. BALLARD’S 
HIGH-RISE  

 

 

 

 

Adem BALCI 

 

 

Ph.D. Dissertation 

 

 

 

Ankara, 2022 



	
	

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



	
	

ARCHITECTURAL PSYCHOLOGY IN UTOPIAS/DYSTOPIAS: WILLIAM MORRIS’S 
NEWS FROM NOWHERE, GEORGE ORWELL’S NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR AND J.G. 

BALLARD’S HIGH-RISE  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adem BALCI 

 

 

 

 

Hacettepe University Graduate School of Social Sciences 

Department of English Language and Literature 

English Language and Literature Programme 

 

 

 

 

 

Ph.D. Dissertation 

 

 

 

 

Ankara, 2022 



	
	

KABUL VE ONAY 

Adem Balcı tarafından hazırlanan “Architectural Psychology in Utopias/Dystopias: William Morris’s 

News from Nowhere, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise” başlıklı bu 

çalışma, 24.06.2022 tarihinde yapılan savunma sınavı sonucunda başarılı bulunarak jürimiz tarafından 

Doktora Tezi olarak olarak kabul edilmiştir.  

 

 

Prof. Dr. Hande Seber (Başkan) 

 

 

Prof. Dr. Burçin Erol (Danışman) 

 

 

Prof. Dr. Mine Özyurt Kılıç (Üye) 

 

 

Doç. Dr. Zeynep Z. Atayurt Fenge (Üye) 

 

 

Dr. Öğr. Üyesi Aslı Değirmenci Altın (Üye) 

 

 

Yukarıdaki imzaların adı geçen öğretim üyelerine ait olduğunu onaylarım. 

 

 

Prof. Dr. Uğur Ömürgönülşen 

Enstitü Müdürü 

 

 



	
	

YAYIMLAMA VE FİKRİ MÜLKİYET HAKLARI BEYANI 

Enstitü tarafından onaylanan lisansüstü tezimin tamamını veya herhangi bir kısmını, basılı (kağıt) ve 
elektronik formatta arşivleme ve aşağıda verilen koşullarla kullanıma açma iznini Hacettepe 
Üniversitesine verdiğimi bildiririm. Bu izinle Üniversiteye verilen kullanım hakları dışındaki tüm fikri 
mülkiyet haklarım bende kalacak, tezimin tamamının ya da bir bölümünün gelecekteki çalışmalarda 
(makale, kitap, lisans ve patent vb.) kullanım hakları bana ait olacaktır. 

Tezin kendi orijinal çalışmam olduğunu, başkalarının haklarını ihlal etmediğimi ve tezimin tek yetkili 
sahibi olduğumu beyan ve taahhüt ederim. Tezimde yer alan telif hakkı bulunan ve sahiplerinden yazılı 
izin alınarak kullanılması zorunlu metinleri yazılı izin alınarak kullandığımı ve istenildiğinde suretlerini 
Üniversiteye teslim etmeyi taahhüt ederim. 

Yükseköğretim Kurulu tarafından yayınlanan “Lisansüstü Tezlerin Elektronik Ortamda Toplanması, 
Düzenlenmesi ve Erişime Açılmasına İlişkin Yönerge” kapsamında tezim aşağıda belirtilen koşullar 
haricince YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezi / H.Ü. Kütüphaneleri Açık Erişim Sisteminde erişime açılır. 

o Enstitü / Fakülte yönetim kurulu kararı ile tezimin erişime açılması mezuniyet 
tarihimden itibaren 2 yıl ertelenmiştir. (1) 

o Enstitü / Fakülte yönetim kurulunun gerekçeli kararı ile tezimin erişime açılması 
mezuniyet tarihimden itibaren  ….. ay ertelenmiştir. (2) 

o Tezimle ilgili gizlilik kararı verilmiştir. (3) 

    27/07/2022 

                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                Adem Balcı 

 

1“Lisansüstü Tezlerin Elektronik Ortamda Toplanması, Düzenlenmesi ve Erişime Açılmasına İlişkin Yönerge”  

(1) Madde 6. 1. Lisansüstü tezle ilgili patent başvurusu yapılması veya patent alma sürecinin devam etmesi durumunda, tez 
danışmanının önerisi ve enstitü anabilim dalının uygun görüşü üzerine enstitü veya fakülte yönetim kurulu iki yıl süre 
ile tezin erişime açılmasının ertelenmesine karar verebilir.   
 

(2) Madde 6. 2. Yeni teknik, materyal ve metotların kullanıldığı, henüz makaleye dönüşmemiş veya patent gibi yöntemlerle 
korunmamış ve internetten paylaşılması durumunda 3. şahıslara veya kurumlara haksız kazanç imkanı oluşturabilecek 
bilgi ve bulguları içeren tezler hakkında tez danışmanının önerisi ve enstitü anabilim dalının uygun görüşü üzerine 
enstitü veya fakülte yönetim kurulunun gerekçeli kararı ile altı ayı aşmamak üzere tezin erişime açılması 
engellenebilir. 
 
 

(3) Madde 7. 1. Ulusal çıkarları veya güvenliği ilgilendiren, emniyet, istihbarat, savunma ve güvenlik, sağlık vb. konulara 
ilişkin lisansüstü tezlerle ilgili gizlilik kararı, tezin yapıldığı kurum tarafından verilir *. Kurum ve kuruluşlarla yapılan 
işbirliği protokolü çerçevesinde hazırlanan lisansüstü tezlere ilişkin gizlilik kararı ise, ilgili kurum ve kuruluşun önerisi 
ile enstitü veya fakültenin uygun görüşü üzerine üniversite yönetim kurulu tarafından verilir. Gizlilik kararı verilen 
tezler Yükseköğretim Kuruluna bildirilir.  
Madde 7.2. Gizlilik kararı verilen tezler gizlilik süresince enstitü veya fakülte tarafından gizlilik kuralları çerçevesinde 
muhafaza edilir, gizlilik kararının kaldırılması halinde Tez Otomasyon Sistemine yüklenir.  
 

* Tez danışmanının önerisi ve enstitü anabilim dalının uygun görüşü üzerine enstitü veya fakülte yönetim kurulu 
tarafından karar verilir. 



iii 
	

ETİK BEYAN 

Bu çalışmadaki bütün bilgi ve belgeleri akademik kurallar çerçevesinde elde ettiğimi, 

görsel, işitsel ve yazılı tüm bilgi ve sonuçları bilimsel ahlak kurallarına uygun olarak 

sunduğumu, kullandığım verilerde herhangi bir tahrifat yapmadığımı, yararlandığım 

kaynaklara bilimsel normlara uygun olarak atıfta bulunduğumu, tezimin kaynak gösterilen 

durumlar dışında özgün olduğunu, Prof. Dr. Burçin Erol danışmanlığında tarafımdan 

üretildiğini ve Hacettepe Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Tez Yazım Yönergesine 

göre yazıldığını beyan ederim.  

 

  Adem Balcı 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



iv 
	

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Annem için... 



v 
		

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

 
Throughout my Ph.D. odyssey, I have had the good fortune to benefit from the 

knowledge, experience, and expertise of many invaluable people, and likewise, I have 

been overwhelmed by the genuine kindness and outpouring support of many others. 

Although the list is a long one, it is with great pleasure that I would like to acknowledge 

them by name. Without their presence in my life, writing this dissertation would have 

been a more solitary journey and certainly much harder.   

First and foremost, I would like to express my heart-felt thanks to my supervisor Prof. 

Dr. Burçin Erol, who has always been an inspirational role model for me since my 

undergraduate years at Hacettepe University with her unending energy, enthusiasm, 

work-discipline, and expertise. Working with her for my doctoral work has been a real 

pleasure for me, and I have incurred debts of gratitude to her for her rigorous readings 

of the numerous drafts of each chapter, conscientious attention to details, constructive 

feedback, helpful comments, constant support, patience, and most importantly, 

unwavering belief in me. It goes without saying that it was a relief to be in such good 

hands, and my appreciation is beyond words.  

I would also like to extend my thanks to Prof. Dr. Hande Seber and Assoc. Prof. Dr. 

Zeynep Z. Atayurt Fenge for their invaluable insights, expert feedback, and incisive 

criticism, which have enriched my argument. I have especially benefited from Dr. 

Atayurt Fenge’s expertise in the novel and the theories of spatialities. Special thanks go 

to her. I owe also debts of gratitude to the other jury members, Prof. Dr. Mine Özyurt 

Kılıç and Assist. Prof. Dr. Aslı Değirmenci Altın, for the time and effort they took to 

read my dissertation, and for their sound feedback and invaluable suggestions.  

I owe special thanks to Prof. Dr. Serpil Oppermann for being unstintingly supportive of 

me since my undergraduate years. Besides being an invaluable mentor, who has always 

supported my studies and encouraged me, she has always been there to uplift me 

whenever I lost hope. My sincere appreciation also goes to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sinan 

Akıllı, from whose expertise as my supervisor I benefited a lot while writing my MA 

thesis, for his unending support, encouragement, and friendship. I would also like to 



vi 
	

extend my deepest thanks to Prof. Dr. Meldan Tanrısal for cheering me up during our 

daily chitchats with her sharp sense of humour, and for being supportive of me when I 

needed her help. I also owe debts of gratitude to Prof. Dr. Asalet Erten, whose unfailing 

support and blessings have motivated me further. I feel myself very lucky for having 

met with Prof. Dr. Ünal Aytür, who is for me the most significant and exemplary 

scholar of English studies in Turkey. His support and encouragement are much 

appreciated. I must also acknowledge the unyielding support and generous advice of 

Prof. Dr. A. Deniz Bozer, Prof. Dr. Nurten Birlik, and Assist. Prof. Dr. Sibel Dinçel. 

I feel very fortunate to have excellent friends in my life, whose camaraderie has made 

this Ph.D. journey less lonely, more enjoyable, and certainly much more endurable.  

First of all, I must acknowledge my heat-felt thanks and incalculable debt to Arzu 

Çevirgen, long time friend, colleague, and office-mate, who has helped me in constant 

and considerate ways throughout my Ph.D. studies, and proved a valuable friend in 

times of needs. I cannot thank her enough for going through all steps of this process 

with me, and at times getting more stressed than me. Many thanks to Özden Dere, 

another invaluable friend in the quest, whose support and stimulation have been 

unyielding despite the miles between us. As well as a good friend, Özden has also 

proven to be an excellent fellow traveller in conference trips.  

Special mention is due to Assist Prof. Dr. Fazile Eren Kaya for being a true friend, who 

has managed to relax and cheer me up at the end of long office days with her unending 

energy and deep sense of humour. I am especially thankful to her for taking me out to 

try new desserts and dishes, and most importantly, providing me with all kinds of 

memes, which mostly made my day in the rush of every day routine.  

Nilay Cevher deserves a special mention for years of friendship and support. On the 

first day of school at Hacettepe University in 2007, we met accidentally in the labyrinth-

like corridors of he Faculty of Letters. For the past fifteen years or so, she has been one 

of my best friends, and we have saved many excellent memories at home and abroad. I 

remember our lunch breaks at school with a smile on face. Another friend that deserves 

special mention is Assoc. Prof. Dr. Selda Taşdemir Afşar, who frequently participated 

in these lunch breaks, during which we had candid conversations and discussions. I am 

indebted to her for offering her time and help whenever I needed.  



vii 
	

I also owe debts of gratitude to Dr. Tuba Ağkaş Özcan for her unflagging support and 

constant stimulation. She has proven to be a good friend by being there whenever I 

needed her help, and encouraging me much more when my energy waned. My best 

wishes go to Assist. Prof. Dr. Seçil Erkoç for her genuine companionship and 

unconditional support. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Assist. Prof. Dr. 

İmren Yelmiş, who has been a source of encouragement and support since my first day 

in the department, for our stimulating conversations from which I have benefited a lot. 

Thanks are due to Dr. Kübra Vural Özbey and Dr. Cemre Mimoza Bartu for their warm 

conversations and collegial help, and to Dr. Hatice Çelikdoğan and Assoc. Prof. Dr. 

Kübra Baysal for theier constant support and encouragement.  

I am much indebted to Ömer Cengiz, whose friendship I have been enjoying for almost 

two decades now. Despite the miles between us for some time, he has tirelessly 

supported me with long phone calls, and encountered all the difficulties of doing a 

Ph.D. with me.  

My last thanks are reserved for my dear family. I am indebted to my parents, Safiye and 

Ahmet Balcı, and my sisters, Semiye Yıldız, Zeynep Öztürk, and Yüksel Ekiz, for their 

unfailing support and unconditional love, which have been immense stimuli in bringing 

this dissertation to fruition. Semiye deserves special thanks for taking me to the airport 

indefatigably for my educational trips for over the past fifteen years. My warmest 

gratitude is to my two-year-old nephew, Doruk, who has recently begun poaching on 

my computer with the claim that he is writing “our” dissertation. In these trying times, 

his joie de vivre has thankfully enlivened us, and writing my dissertation in his company 

has been much more fun. Last but not least, I must express my special thanks to my 

mother for encouraging me to further my studies, for standing by me, and for raising me 

curious. This dissertation, which is dedicated to her, is hers as much as mine.  

 

 

 

 



viii 
	

ABSTRACT 

Balcı, Adem. Architectural Psychology in Utopias/Dystopias: William Morris’s News from 
Nowhere, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise, Ph.D. 
Thesis, Ankara, 2022.  

 

Perusing three utopian/dystopian novels set in London, namely, William Morris’s News from 

Nowhere (1891), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), and J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise 

(1975), this dissertation scrutinises the functional use of architecture in utopias/dystopias as a 

primary element rather than a mere backdrop to manipulate the psychology of the characters in 

line with the domineering ideology the writers explore either to praise or attack. Morris’s 

utopian novel News from Nowhere delineates a socialist society in a future agrarian land called 

Nowhere to criticise the mechanic and dehumanising environment of the Victorian Era. By 

reading the work side by side with the essays of Morris on socialism and Arts and Crafts 

movement, as well as the park movement in the nineteenth century, it is observed that in the 

depiction of the pleasing land of utopia, Morris incorporates his socialist and artistic ethos to 

reflect the positive role of utopian architecture. On the contrary, in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-

Four architecture is used as a means of oppression to serve the Party’s corrupt ideology. 

Drawing on Michel Foucault’s Panopticism and Michel de Certeau’s concepts of “strategy” and 

“tactic,” it is seen that the totalitarian government of Oceania attains its power through the 

manipulation and control of architecture, which affects the psychology of the characters in a 

negative way. In much the same way but in a totally different context, Ballard’s High-Rise is 

also about the negative impact of architecture on the thoughts and behaviour of the tenants of a 

high-rise building. In the light of Freud’s discussion of civilisation, Henri Lefebvre’s socio-

spatial diagram of the production of social space, and Michel de Certeau’s concepts of 

“strategy” and “tactic,” it can be said that in High-Rise it is the eponymous high-rise building, 

which brings about violence due to the negative effects of modernist architecture on the 

psychology of the characters. Consequently, in these three utopian/dystopian works, the 

functional use of architecture, is especially crucial, for the ideologically loaded architecture in 

each one of them is at the centre of the major events the writers explore.  

Keywords: William Morris, George Orwell, J.G. Ballard, News from Nowhere, Nineteen 
Eighty-Four, High-Rise, Utopia, Dystopia, Architecture, Architectural Psychology. 



ix 
	

ÖZET 

Balcı, Adem. Ütopya/Distopyalarda Mimari Psikolojisi: William Morris’in Hiçbir Yerden 
Haberler’i, George Orwell’in Bin Dokuz Yüz Seksen Dört’ü ve J.G. Ballard’ın 
Gökdelen’i, Doktora Tezi, Ankara, 2022. 

 
Londra’da geçmekte olan William Morris’in Hiçbir Yerden Haberler’i (1891), George 

Orwell’in Bin Dokuz Yüz Seksen Dört’ü (1949) ve J.G. Ballard’ın Gökdelen’ine (1975) 

odaklanan bu tezin temel amacı ütopya/distopya yazınında mimarinin sadece olay örgüsünün 

geçtiği bir ortamdan ziyade, ütopya yazarlarının övmek, distopya yazarlarınınsa yermek 

amacıyla ele aldığı ideolojileri yansıtarak karakterlerin psikolojilerini  etkilemede kullandıkları 

temel araç olduğunu savunmaktır. Morris’in ütopyası Hiçbir Yerden Haberler, Viktorya 

Döneminin mekanik ve insanlıktan çıkarıcı ortamını eleştirmek için Hiçbir Yer isimli sosyalist 

ve tarıma dayalı bir toplumu resmetmektedir. Eser, Morris’in sosyalizm ve Sanat ve El Sanatları 

akımı üzerine yazdığı denemeleri, ve on-dokuzuncu yüzyılda umumi parkların açılmasına vesile 

olan park hareketleriyle birlikte okunduğunda görülmektedir ki, bu mutluluk verici yeri tasvir 

ederken, ütopik mimarinin olumlu yönünü yansıtmak için Morris kendi sosyalist ve sanatsal 

görüşlerini de işin içine dahil etmektedir. Ütopyanın tam aksine, Orwell’in Bin Dokuz Yüz 

Seksen Dört isimli distopyasında ise mimari, karakterler üzerinde tahakküm kuran baskıcı 

iktidar sahiplerinin kendi ideolojileri doğrultusunda kullanılmaktadır. Michel Foucault’nun 

“Panoptisizm” ve Michel de Certeau’nun “strateji” ve “taktik”  kavramları ışığında 

bakıldığında, Oceania’nın totaliter hükümetinin, mimarinin çeşitli unsurlarını kullanarak 

karakterleri manipüle ettiği, onlar üzerinde baskı kurduğu ve onları böylece kontrol altında 

tuttuğu görülmektedir. Benzer bir şekilde ama tamamen farklı bir bağlamda, Ballard’ın 

Gökdelen romanı da mimarinin karakterlerin düşünceleri ve davranışları üzerindeki olumsuz 

etkisi hakkındadır. Freud’un uygarlık kavramı üzerindeki düşünceleri ve Henri Lefebvre’in 

“mekanın üretimi” ve Michel de Certeau’nun “strateji” ve “taktik” kavramları ışığında 

bakıldığında, Ballard’ın Gökdelen romanındaki bina, modernist mimarinin insan psikolojisi 

üzerindeki olumsuz etkisinden ötürü şiddete yol açmaktadır. Sonuç olarak, her ne kadar mimari 

tüm ütopya/distopyalarda önemli bir yere sahip olsa da, özellikle bu çalışmada adı geçen üç 

eserin her birinde, yazarların irdeledikleri temel konuların merkezinde olması sebebiyle ayrıca  

önem arz etmektedir.  

Anahtar Sözcükler: William Morris, George Orwell, J.G. Ballard, Hiçbir Yerden Haberler, 
Bin Dokuz Yüz Seksen Dört, Gökdelen, Ütopya, Distopya, Mimari, Mimari Psikolojisi. 

 



x 
		

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 

KABUL VE ONAY……………………………………....……………………………...i 

YAYIMLAMA VE FİKRİ MÜLKİYET HAKLARI BEYANI……………..……..........…ii 

ETİK BEYAN………………………………………………………..………...…………...…iii 

DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………..…..iv 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………………………...……v 

ABSTRACT…………………….………………………………………….......…......viii 

ÖZET ………………………………….…………………………………...…….….....ix 

TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………….…………………………..…...………..x 

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...……1 

CHAPTER I: THE ARCHITECTURE OF PLEASURE: WILLIAM MORRIS’S 
NEWS FROM NOWHERE………………………….......................…...……………..50 
 
CHAPTER II: THE ARCHITECTURE OF OPPRESSION: GEORGE 
ORWELL’S NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR…………….......…………………...…...86 

CHAPTER III: THE ARCHITECTURE OF VIOLENCE: J.G. BALLARD’S 
HIGH-RISE ......................................................……………….………………...…...124  

CONCLUSION …………..………..………………………………………………...152 

WORKS CITED……………………………………………………………...……...162 

APPENDIX 1: ORIGINALITY REPORT ………………………………….……..182 

APPENDIX 2: ETHICS BOARDS WAIVER FORM ……………………………184 

 



1 
		

 

INTRODUCTION 

 

 

Informed by the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences, and deeply 

entrenched in the phenomenon of utopianism, this dissertation aims to scrutinise the 

functional use of architecture in utopian/dystopian narratives by exploring the complex 

web of interlinks between ideology, power, knowledge, and resistance as reflected in 

the selected British utopias/dystopias. Similar to real life, in literary works too there is 

no way of escape from architecture, for there might be no setting without the delineation 

of an architectural landscape. The architecture surrounding us and our everyday lives 

both in real life and in the fictional works is by no means neutral, but replete with 

diverse ideologies and competing power relations. What is more however, such 

ideologically loaded architectural realms have a direct influence on the psychology, 

moods, thoughts, emotions, and hence behaviour of their occupants. Literary works, 

ranging from the Gothic novel, and horror, mystery, fantasy and science fiction genres 

to travel literature and drawing-room comedy, among many others, make much use of 

this aspect of architecture to set the tone for the unfolding of the events. Yet still, among 

all literary genres, utopia/dystopia emerges as the most significant one that benefits 

from such function of architecture, as it attains its critical mode from the apt use of 

architectural spaces. While the utopia writer uses architecture for good ends to construct 

a better society for the wellbeing of its occupants so as to juxtapose it with a 

malfunctioning contemporaneous society, the dystopia writer uses it as the embodiment 

of the corruptive and dehumanising features of the domineering minority to manipulate 

and control the thoughts, emotions, and behaviour of the subordinate groups to prevent 

even a tiny possibility of rebellion. At this juncture, the basic premise of this 

dissertation is that ideologically loaded architecture is used in utopias to set the peaceful 

utopian atmosphere, while it is used as the primary means of oppression and 

manipulation that opens the door to the hell of dystopia. Consequently, through the 

analysis of a work of utopia and two works of dystopia, namely, William Morris’s 

(1834-1896) News from Nowhere (1891), George Orwell’s (1903-1950) Nineteen 



2 
		

Eighty-Four (1949), and J.G. Ballard’s (1930-2009) High-Rise (1975), with respect to 

the exploration of the impact of architecture on the thoughts, moods, and behaviour of 

the characters at the intersection of power and ideology embedded into architecture, this 

dissertation claims that in these works the psychology and behaviour of the characters 

are also manipulated and controlled in line with the dominant ideology through the 

functional use of architecture.  

Before discussion, it will be much helpful to give some insights regarding the 

methodology to be followed both in the Introduction and in the chapters. For the sake of 

unity among all these works, what will be explored will not be restricted to architecture 

per se, but will include all built environments, including other human-made constructs 

ranging from woods, parks, and public places to squares and streets. As well as these 

built environments, the presence and absence of the natural environment in utopias and 

dystopias respectively will also be explored in detail to shed light on how human nature 

is overpoweringly enmeshed, and influenced by its own environment. In the first place, 

the arrangement of the novels for the chapters, beginning in the Victorian Era with 

utopia, and then switching to the tumultuous age of the twentieth century, follows a 

chronological order to demonstrate both the development of the utopian/dystopian 

narration, and also different approaches to and manifestations of architecture within the 

larger socio-cultural, economic, and political developments in the world. Although 

totally unlike, all the works are set in different utopian and dystopian manifestations of 

the city of London, which is specifically chosen as the spatial denominator. What is 

specific to these works is that they are all centred around the functional use of 

architecture, and make much use of it. Following the true nature of utopia as a literary 

genre, the discussion begins with the rural and pre-lapserian London of the first chapter, 

continues with a war-torn dystopian one in the second chapter, and finally ends with a 

modern manifestation that is adorned with nothing but bare concrete. Despite such stark 

differences among them however, all three books  are entangled in diverse ways through 

complex power relations. In this respect, the analysis of the competing power relations 

as reflected in architecture which influences the characters will be conducted by 

drawing from the theories of three French critics, namely, Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991), 

Michel Foucault (1926-1984), and Michel de Certeau (1925-1986), whose appreciation 



3 
		

of space overlaps and speaks back to the significance of the architectural spaces in 

utopias/dystopias.  

Such exploration of the architectural realms in utopias/dystopias might be categorised as 

a technique that is part of what the literary critic Robert T. Tally terms “spatial literary 

studies,” which might be accepted as the extension of the spatial turn in the humanities 

and social sciences. The French philosopher Michel Foucault, one of the most 

significant of the spatial theorists, claiming that “[t]he great obsession of the nineteenth 

century was […] history;” declared the second half of twentieth century to be “the 

epoch of space” (“Of Other Spaces” 22). Such privilege of time over space is rather 

problematic, because, in this kind of approach while the former is associated with 

“narrative development and change,” the latter is reduced to a “mere background or an 

empty container in which the unfolding of events over some durée could take place” 

(Tally, “Introduction: The Reassertion” 2). However, space is as worthy as time. 

Therefore, Foucault’s suggestion might be accepted as a paradigm change, as he wanted 

to shift the focus from “time” to “space,” and most probably unknowingly, elicited the 

so-called spatial turn, the origins of which might be traced back roughly to the 1960s. 

For Tally, although it is very difficult to pinpoint the exact date of the spatial turn, it has 

been more than fifty years now. Spatial literary studies, which draw on the studies of the 

spatial critics ranging from geography, sociology, urban studies, gender studies, 

postcolonial studies and philosophy, is a comparatively recent field of study that 

emerged in the past few decades (“Spatial Literary Studies” 317, “Introduction: Spaces 

of the Text” 1). Along with Foucault, a number of other philosophers, geographers, 

urbanists, sociologists, and literary and cultural critics such as Henri Lefebvre, David 

Harvey (1935- ), Edward W. Soja (1940-2015), Yi-Fu Tuan (1930-), Gilles Deleuze 

(1925-1995), Edward W. Said (1935-2003), Derek Gregory (1951- ), Nigel Thrift 

(1949- ), Michel de Certeau, Homi K. Bhabha (1949- ), Manuel Castells (1942- ), 

Anthony Giddens (1938- ), Tim Ingold (1948- ), Bruno Latour (1947- ), Doreen Massey 

(1944-2016), Gillian Rose (1947-1995), Fredric Jameson (1934- ), and Robert T. Tally 

Jr. (1969- ), among many others, have explored different aspects of space from cultural, 

topographical, postcolonial, sociological, and gender perspectives, and set the stage for 

a critical re-appreciation of space, – which was initially rendered static, inactive and 



4 
		

insignificant, –  not as a mere backdrop for the events to unfold, but as an active and 

dynamic agent, shaping and shaped by everyday practices. Due to manifold studies 

carried out by these spatial critics, we have become, in the words of Edward Soja, 

“increasingly aware that we are, and always have been, intrinsically spatial as well as 

temporal beings, active participants in the production and reproduction of the 

encompassing human geographies in which we live, as much and with similarly given 

constraints as we make our histories” (12).    

As James Kneale also puts it, “it is not easy to say what ‘space’ is;” and what is more, 

“[i]t is often taken for granted as a category of existence or experience, and has received 

much less attention than time in philosophy, social theory, and textual criticism – 

although not in the discipline of geography” (423). The definition of the term in The 

Oxford English Dictionary seems to support his argument, for it is defined as “[t]he 

dimensions of height, depth and width within which all things exist and move” 

(“Space”). Such a definition of the term is actually a very reductionist one, for it both 

treats space as an empty container to be filled, and reduces it just to its mathematical 

dimensions as a measurable thing.  Such partial and limited definition of the term might 

be rather misleading, because space is dynamic and agentic, and is continually produced 

and re-produced as part of our everyday practices. In this respect, as Foucault also 

argues, space is not something to be treated as “the dead, the fixed, the undialectical, the 

immobile” (“Questions on Geography” 70).1 What is more, as Kneale also puts it, 

“space is not natural, or abstract, or literally ‘there,’ but is relational, lived, and lively” 
																																																													
1 Foucault actually blames the philosophers for the disregard of space, and argues: “Among all 
the reasons which led to spaces suffering for so long a certain neglect, I will mention just one, 
which has to do with the discourse of philosophers. At the moment when a considered politics 
of spaces was starting to develop, at the end of the eighteenth century, the new achievements in 
theoretical and experimental physics dislodged philosophy from its ancient right to speak of the 
world, the cosmos, finite or infinite space. This double investment of space by political 
technology and scientific practice reduced philosophy to the field of a problematic of time. 
Since Kant, what is to be thought by the philosopher is time. Hegel, Bergson, Heidegger. Along 
with this goes a correlative devaluation of space, which stands on the side of the understanding, 
the analytical, the conceptual, the dead, the fixed, the inert. I remember ten years or so ago 
discussing these problems of the politics of space, and being told that it was reactionary to go on 
so much about space, and that time and the ‘project’ were what life and progress are about. I 
should say that this reproach came from a psychologist – psychology, the truth and the shame of 
nineteenth-century philosophy” (“The Eye of Power” 149-150).  

 



5 
		

(423), and hence, “space and society produce each other” (423). Kneale elaborates on 

his explanation as follows:  

space is relational – it is not anything in itself but derives its apparently natural 
characteristics from its relations with other places, people, and things. […] Second, 
space is multiple and heterogeneous. There are many different narratives within 
one place and many experiences of it; the cultural politics of identity and difference 
become spatial metaphors of “position.” […] Finally, space is in process, becoming 
rather than fixed. The agonistic relations between and within places ensure that 
their futures are always open, allowing us to resist teleological arguments and to 
derail apparently singular narratives (like globalization). There are always 
alternatives. (424-25, emphasis original) 

Kneale’s argument actually is very much in tune with what Foucault states above, and 

communicates well with the comments of other critics as given below. To sum up his 

view in a nutshell, there is a reciprocal relationship between space and society, both 

influencing one another in diverse ways. The interrelationship between space and 

society is perhaps the best manifestation of the fact that space is not “merely a backdrop 

or setting for events, an empty container to be filled with actions or movements; […] 

[r]ather, […] both a product and productive” (Tally, Spatiality 119-120). Just on the 

contrary, as James Kneale and Rob Kitchin also posit, space is “charged with meaning 

through discourse and practice” (2). With all the studies conducted in the humanities 

and social sciences on space with the spatial turn, “space could no longer be seen 

simply as a backdrop against which life unfolds sequentially, but rather, intimately tied 

to lived experience” (Warf and Arias 4). Since space is no longer seen as an empty 

container for the events to unfold, for Barney Warf and Santa Arias, “‘space matters,’ 

not for the trivial and self-evident reason that everything occurs in space, but because 

where events unfold is integral to how they take shape” (10, emphasis original). That is 

to say, “[s]pace is not simply a passive reflection of social and cultural trends, but an 

active participant, i.e., geography is constitutive as well as representative” (Warf and 

Arias 10). Consequently, it is possible to deduce that space is “a means by which we 

organise the world” (Garcia 2).  

In literary studies, as in cultural studies and critical theory in general, the appreciation 

and re-assertion of space have made a breakthrough, for in literary studies the focus up 

until recently has been on time and temporality, while the exploration of space was 



6 
		

reduced mostly to “the areas in which things took place, the mere setting, a backdrop or 

container in which the events unfolded but which itself had little direct consequence.” 

Furthermore, “[s]pace or place in this rendering remained rather static and 

inconsequential, whereas time and temporality appeared to gain significance, whether 

they are considered in terms of grand historical developments over centuries or an 

individual’s experiences of the passage of the hours in a day” (Tally, “Space of the 

Novel” 153). Despite such privilege of temporality, space is actually “nothing new to 

literature,” because, “[s]etting is a key feature of almost all stories, as events take place 

in a given place, after all. […] Whole genres may be defined by such spatial or 

geographical characteristics, such as the pastoral poem, the travel narrative, utopia, or 

the urban exposé” (Tally, “Introduction: The Reassertion” 1).   

Although setting is important in all genres of literature, for the novel, it is specifically 

significant, for as Tally also posits, it is “often a crucial aspect of the novel, since the 

history and geography directly affect the way that characters, events, and plots are 

understood” (Tally, “Space of the Novel” 154). Space tells us a lot more than time with 

respect to the characters, event itself, and the unfolding of the events. The novel is 

generally known as a temporal form. However, it is also a spatial form. To put it in 

other words, it is a spatio-temporal form. As Tally further argues, “[g]enerally speaking, 

space and spatiality, like time and temporality, have always been part of literature and 

literary studies” (Tally, “Introduction: The Reassertion” 1). Space and spatiality actually 

reveal much more than one can imagine, and hence perhaps it can be argued that 

spatiality is more significant than temporality. For Tally, when one talks about space in 

a literary work, it does not necessarily just refer to “geography,” but also to all “[o]ther 

spatial arrangements, such as architecture, interior design, and types of spaces, 

invariably have their own effects on a narrative” (“Space of the Novel” 155). In this 

respect, it can be argued that while exploring Charles Dickens’s (1812-1870) novels, 

London is generally the referential point. However, the spatiality of his novels cannot be 

limited to the city of London as a geographical referent, but to all kinds of spatial 

arrangements such as houses, factories, mansions, orphanages, graveyards, and the 

cityscape, among many others, and their bond and/or interaction with each other. 

Likewise, James Joyce’s (1882-1941) Dublin as manifested in his novels Ulysses (1920) 



7 
		

and A Portrait of the Artist (1916), and the short stories in the story collection Dubliners 

(1914) is not about Dublin per se as a geographical element, but about its colonial past, 

the spectre of which manifests itself in the extant imperial architecture that the 

characters encounter, or about the sense of entrapment and paralysis, which pursues 

each one of them wherever they go. In much the same way, in Victor Hugo’s (1802-

1885) novels, spatiality cannot just be reduced to the city of Paris, but also includes the 

Cathedral of Notre-Dame, the Seine, and the poverty-stricken quarters of the poor, just 

to give a few examples.  

To turn to the spatial traits of familiar literary texts is worthy of note, for such an 

analysis provides fresh insights for the interpretation of known texts, by shifting “the 

focus away from the author and the context, onto the text itself” (Brosseau 10). As a 

matter of fact, the primary objective of this dissertation is therefore to venture into the 

realm of the spatial literary studies within the concept of an architectural analysis of 

traditional utopian/dystopian narratives to provide fresh insights for future studies with 

respect to the exploration of the hitherto unnoticed and/or disregarded aspects of 

familiar and much investigated texts. Because, by emphasising the spatial nature of 

classical texts, this study will redefine how they are better shaped by the spatial 

arrangements of designs and architectural surroundings. In this respect, as Tally also 

argues, “[i]n examining spatial representation in literary works, spatially oriented 

criticism has also invoked interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary practices, frequently 

making productive connections to architecture, geography, history, politics, social 

theory, and urban studies, among other fields” (“Introduction: Spaces of the Text” 2). 

Hence, the focus on the representation of architecture in utopian/dystopian narratives 

will be explored from a spatial perspective. To this end, it is helpful to explore the ideas 

of some spatial critics, namely, Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, and Michel de 

Certeau. Although they focus on space from different angles, their theories seem to 

complement each other. Consequently, evaluating these critics side by side will be 

much helpful to shed light on how space is a kind of battleground of different and 

competing power relations, which shape it while at the same time being shaped by it 

due to its dynamic nature.  



8 
		

The eminent French critic, sociologist, and urbanist Henri Lefebvre focuses on the role 

of space as  “a means of control, and hence of domination, of power” (30).  As opposed 

to previous mathematical and philosophical appreciations of space, which attributing “a 

strictly geometrical meaning” regarded it as “an empty space” (1), Lefebvre evaluates it 

as “social space” that is produced and reproduced by means of the social relations of the 

users. That is why, he “inveighs against any treatment of space as mere container or 

milieu, as a kind of neutral setting in which life transpires” (Molotoch 888). For 

Lefebvre, therefore, “(Social) space is a (social) product” (Lefebvre 26; 27, emphasis 

original). What is more, “[s]ocial space per se is at once work and product – a 

materialization, of ‘social being’” (Lefebvre 101-102, emphasis original). The 

production of space is not a simple one as “in the sense that a kilogram of sugar or yard 

of cloth is produced” (Lefebvre 85). In a similar way, as he further argues, the 

production of space is not “an aggregate of the places or locations of such products as 

sugar, wheat or cloth” (85). It is a much more complex phenomenon, to express which 

Lefebvre proposes a socio-spatial formulation that is made up of a triadic division of 

space into three processes/components: physical space (perceived), mental space 

(conceived), and social space (lived). Lefebvre uses this spatial triad to scrutinise the 

intersection of power and space, and expresses each one of them respectively with the 

terms spatial practice, representations of space, and representational spaces.  

In Lefebvre’s triadic formulation, spatial practice is the first component, and stands for 

the perceived space, which refers to the physical space that is imbued with the everyday 

activities of the users. What is significant with respect to spatial practice is that “[i]t is 

lived directly before it is conceptualized; but the speculative primacy of the conceived 

over the lived causes practice to disappear along with life, and so does very little justice 

to the ‘unconscious’ level of lived experience per se” (Lefebvre 34). It is the primary 

producer of space, and hence “embraces production and reproduction” (Lefebvre 33). 

Therefore, in spatial practice, “the reproduction of social relations is predominant” 

(Lefebvre 50). In the words of Lefebvre, “[t]he spatial practice of a society secretes that 

society’s space; it propounds and presupposes it, in a dialectical interaction; it produces 

it slowly and surely as it masters and appropriates it” (Lefebvre 38). Therefore, to 

understand the spatial practice of a society one needs to decipher its space, and the 



9 
		

everyday practices it offers (Lefebvre 38).  Intervention into “the daily life of a tenant in 

a government-subsidized high-rise housing project,” or just “motorways,” or “the 

politics of air transport” will unravel the spatial practices of people in capitalist 

societies (Lefebvre 38).  

Representations of space, the second component of the triad, are the conceived space, 

which stands for the “conceptualized space” of “scientists, planners, urbanists, 

technocratic subdividers and social engineers” (Lefebvre 38). As a matter of fact, it is 

the realm of the producers. As conceptualised, representations of space are tied “to 

knowledge, to signs, to codes, and to ‘frontal’ relations” (Lefebvre 33). As the dominant 

space “in any society (or mode of production),” representations of space are abstract, 

yet still play a significant role in “social and political practice” (Lefebvre 41), for they 

combine “ideology and knowledge within a (social-spatial) practice” (Lefebvre 45). In 

representations of space, it is very difficult to distinguish ideology from knowledge. If 

the producers cannot realise their ideologies in concrete form by applying them, it does 

not mean anything at all.  

Also referred to as spaces of representation, representational spaces are the third 

component of the triad, and embody “complex symbolisms, sometimes coded, 

sometimes not, linked to the clandestine or underground side of social life, as also to art 

(which may come eventually to be defined less as a code of space than as a code of 

representational spaces” (Lefebvre 33), and hence refer directly to the experience of 

lived space that manifests itself with these images or symbols. It is primarily the space 

of the “inhabitants” or the “users,” but also, the space of some artists and writers and 

even philosophers, who just “describe” (Lefebvre 39, emphasis original). What is 

specific to representational spaces is that while on the one hand the users or the 

inhabitants just experience what is imposed on them by the domineering powers, 

nevertheless the former simultaneously seek ways of altering and appropriating what is 

forced on them. That is to say, the users are in search of specific tactics to react against 

mastery over them. Representational spaces overlay “physical space, making symbolic 

use of its objects” (Lefebvre 39). Hence, unlike abstract representations of space, it is 



10 
	

“alive” and “speaks” (Lefebvre 42). What is more, “it may be directional, situational or 

relational, because it is essentially qualitative, fluid and dynamic” (Lefebvre 42).  

In the production of space, there is a “dialectical relationship” of the perceived, the 

conceived, and the lived spaces of the triad (Lefebvre 39). The complex relationship 

among the moments of space “are never either simple or stable, nor are they ‘positive’ 

in the sense in which this term might be opposed to ‘negative’, to the indecipherable, 

the unsaid, the prohibited, or the unconscious” (Lefebvre 46). Each one of the 

components of the spatial triad contributes in diverse ways to the production of space 

“according to their qualities and attributes, according to the society or mode of 

production in question, and according to the historical period” (Lefebvre 46).  

Following a trajectory similar to that of Lefebvre, Michel Foucault also associates space 

with power, and explores how it turns into a battleground for competing ideologies. In 

the majority of his whole corpus, if not all, Foucault is profoundly preoccupied with 

power relations and diverse manifestations of power, as sovereign power, disciplinary 

power, and bio-power.  He accepts his preoccupation with power with the statement: “It 

is true that I became quite involved with the question of power” (“The Subject and 

Power” 778). With respect to his exploration of the nexus of space, power and 

knowledge as a means of social control, this study will focus on his conceptualisation of 

the disciplinary power in a disciplinary society with respect to the concept of 

Panopticism, a term he adopted from the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s (1748-

1832) architectural plan for a model penitentiary to shed light upon the controlling 

nature of modern society. To this end, just before a critical discussion of Foucault’s 

concept of Panopticism, it will be much helpful to explore Bentham’s Panopticon. 

Investigating Bentham’s model penitentiary and its function requires unearthing the 

etymological roots of the word Panopticon, which will throw much light on the 

functioning of this concept, for Bentham “named this prison Panopticon to reflect the 

Greek roots meaning ‘all seeing’” (Strub 40) to emphasise the primary objective of his 

model penitentiary, which was to sustain perpetual surveillance. Etymologically, the 

word Panopticon is derived from the Greek word, panoptes, meaning “all-seeing,” the 

roots of which go back to the name of an entity in Greek mythology. This mythological 



11 
	

figure, who is usually known as a “herdsman” (Roman and Roman 80) or a “giant” (81) 

with “a hundred eyes” (Hamilton 98), is Hera’s watchman Argus Panoptes, “the All-

Seeing” (Hard 228), who is also known as Argos Panoptes.2 Here the emphasis is on 

Panoptes’s a hundred eyes, some of which never fall asleep to keep watch even while 

sleeping. Drawing heavily from the myth of Argus Panoptes with respect to his all-

seeing nature, Bentham proposes a model penitentiary based on the principle of constant 

inspection, which is actually provided through the functional use of a specific 

architectural edifice designed in the form of an annular building with individual cells of 

the prisoners in the periphery and a central tower of inspection at the centre, where only 

a guard is situated to observe the inmates of the cells to keep them under strict control.3 

																																																													
2 As Edith Hamilton posits, as Argus Panoptes “could sleep with some of the eyes and keep on 
guard with the rest” (98), Hera sets him as a watchman to protect the nymph Io from Zeus. 
However, Hermes, the mischievous messenger God, “[d]isguised as a shepherd,” lulls him “to 
close all his eyes in sleep with the aid of his reed pipe and the story of its invention by Pan” 
(Roman and Roman 81), which actually explores the sad story of the nymph Syrinx. When 
finally all the eyes of Argus Panoptes go to sleep, Hermes beheads him (Roman and Roman 81). 
After this event, Hera takes Panoptes’s eyes, and “set them in the tail of the peacock, her 
favorite bird” (Hamilton 99). 
 
3 In his Panopticon writings, Letter II, which is entitled “Plan for a Penitentiary Inspection-
House,” Bentham describes his Panopticon plan layout as follows:  

The building is circular.  
The apartments of the prisoners occupy the circumference. You may call them, if 
you please, the cells.  
These cells are divided from one another, and the prisoners by that means secluded 
from all communication with each other, by partitions in the form of radii issuing 
from the circumference towards the centre, and extending as many feet as shall be 
thought necessary to form the largest dimension of the cell.  
The apartment of the inspector occupies the centre; you may call it if you please the 
inspector’s lodge.  
It will be convenient in most, if not in all cases, to have a vacant space or area all 
round, between such centre and such circumference. You may call it if your please 
the intermediate or annular area.  
[…] 
Each cell has in the outward circumference, a window, large enough, not only to 
light the cell, but, through the cell, to afford light enough to the correspondent part 
of the lodge.  
The inner circumference of the cell is formed by an iron grating, so light as not to 
screen any part of the cell from the inspector’s view.  
Of this grating, a part sufficiently large opens, in form of a door, to admit the 
prisoner at his first entrance; and to give admission at any time to the inspector or 
any of his attendants.  (35, emphasis original) 

 



12 
	

As the primary principle of this specific architectural structure is to sustain surveillance 

of the subordinate groups to keep them under total control, the Panopticon, while 

allowing the guard in the inspection tower to observe and speak to the inmates in the 

cells with the help of a specific mechanism, prevents the latter seeing the former except 

the tower itself. In this respect, as Foucault also puts it, what is most significant in this 

architectural model is that the individual inside the cell, “is seen, but he does not see; he 

is the object of information, never a subject in communication” (Discipline 200). With 

such a manipulation of the inmates of the individual cells, the principal effect of the 

Panopticon, for Foucault, is, 

to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures 
the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is 
permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection 
of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this 
architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power 
relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates 
should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. 
To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoner should be 
constantly observed by an inspector: too little, for what matters is that he knows 
himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In 
view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and 
unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline 
of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must 
never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure 
that he may always be so. (Discipline 201, emphasis added)4 

As the ones observed in the cells cannot see the observer in the inspection tower, the 

prisoners cannot know when they are being watched exactly; and thereby they, in a way, 

become their own inspectors, and internalise this feeling of continuous surveillance, 

which makes them regulate their behaviour and self-censor themselves so as not to get 

punished for their misbehaviour. The prisoners are thus disciplined. With the 

Panopticon, Bentham actually “invented a technology of power designed to solve the 

problems of surveillance” (“The Eye of Power,” 148), for, as Foucault claims by quoting 

from Bentham, such a model is vital for “effective exercise of power” (“The Eye of 

Power” 148). 

Indeed, inspection was not a new thing, but the uncertainty of being watched was 
																																																													
4 Also see his “The Eye of Power,” p. 147.  



13 
	

somehow new, and brought forth subordination:  “Bentham’s innovation, then, was not 

just to inspect, or even to ensure that the gaze is asymmetrical, but to use uncertainty as 

a means of subordination. The asymmetrical gaze created uncertainty which in turn 

produced surrender” (Lyon 65). Even though such a penitentiary was never built in his 

lifetime or later, Bentham, as a philosopher of utilitarianism,  — which is simply built 

upon the principle of the greatest good of something for a high number of people, — 

believed his model to be a very functional one, for with only one guard in the inspection 

tower, a high number of prisoners are kept under control, and they are disciplined. For 

Foucault, in this respect, “[w]henever one is dealing with a multiplicity of individuals 

on whom a task or a particular form of behaviour must be imposed, the panoptic schema 

may be used” (Discipline 205). Unlike Bentham’s description of the Panopticon as an 

architectural model however, Foucault uses Panopticism as a metaphor of social control 

in disciplinary societies, where individuals are exposed to constant surveillance and 

manifold means of control by numerous apparatuses of the state. As he uses 

Panopticism to shed light on the functioning of power relations, Foucault believes the 

Panopticon to be “an important mechanism” which not only “automatizes and 

disindividualizes power” (Discipline 202), but also “produces homogenous effects of 

power” (Discipline 202). In this respect, it can be asserted that Foucault adopts the term 

to shed light on the functioning of power relations on the nexus of seeing and being 

seen at the intersection of power, knowledge, and space. Consequently, as Foucault 

posits, “[t]he Panopticon functions as a kind of laboratory of power. Thanks to its 

mechanisms of observation, it gains in efficiency and in the ability to penetrate into 

men’s behaviour; knowledge follows the advances of power, discovering new objects of 

knowledge over all the surfaces on which power is exercised” (Discipline 204).  

Therefore, as opposed to Bentham’s plan, the Panopticon is not a dream building, but 

“the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form […]; in fact, a figure of 

political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use” (Discipline 

205). Foucault’s explanations of the functioning of the Panopticon thus cast light on the 

functioning of power relations in such disciplinary societies, where the primary 

requirement of disciplining is the control of the subordinate groups by means of self-

regulation born due to fear with respect to the uncertainty of surveillance or scrutiny.  



14 
	

Consequently, disciplinary power depends on the continual surveillance of the 

subordinate subjects, which provides a source of knowledge for the rulers, and 

Foucault’s concept of Panopticism sheds light on the inextricable link between 

discipline, power, and knowledge. However, the subordinate groups, while policing 

themselves so as not to be punished, simultaneously seek ways of escape from the 

domineering impact of the disciplinary power. Hence, in such disciplinary societies of 

domination and control, “no matter how terrifying a given system may be, there always 

remain the possibilities of resistance, disobedience, and oppositional groups” (Foucault, 

“Space, Knowledge, and Power” 245). In much the same way, as he puts it in other 

words in another work, “[w]here there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather 

consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” 

(The History 95). Interestingly enough, though Foucault is aware of the possibility of 

resistance from the subordinate groups, he does not explore it, but focuses on the 

dynamics of discipline established by the rulers or the authorities. As opposed to 

Foucault however, Michel de Certeau delves into “antidisciplines,” and sheds light on 

how the subordinate ones resist against the dictates of the manipulators by way of 

different techniques while remaining within the framework established by the latter.  

Michel de Certeau, who is deeply influenced by Lefebvre with respect to his discussion 

of everyday life, and by Foucault with respect to his explorations of the intricate 

relationship between space, power, and knowledge, also engages with the power 

relations in space. Before discussing his distinction from Foucault, it will be beneficial 

to begin with de Certeau’s spatial theory with respect to his critique of everyday 

practices as he discussed in his seminal book The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) 

especially by focusing on his distinction between space and place, and tactic and 

strategy as significant spatial practices within the urban context. de Certeau begins his 

discussion of everyday practices with the criticism of modern society, which is both 

capitalist and consumerist. While conceptualising consumerism, he claims that culture 

consists of products and system, and production is a way of exercising power and a way 

of disciplining the subordinate groups. Hence, society is divided into two groups: the 

producers and users. The users, who constitute the majority of society, are the ordinary 

people, and they are the focus of de Certeau in his discussion. Generally, it is believed 



15 
	

that in the operation of their daily lives, ordinary people are actually subordinate to the 

rulers or authorities, who turn out to be the producers. For de Certeau, the users, who 

are “commonly assumed to be passive and guided by established rules” (xi) of the 

producers, are not, as opposed to the common belief, passive consumers that use up 

what is proffered to them, but are active agents, who re-produce what is presented them 

to appropriate their needs and ways. They re-produce by means of spatial everyday 

practices. de Certeadu expresses this process as follows:  

To a rationalized, expansionist and at the same time centralized, clamorous, and 
spectacular production corresponds another production, called ‘consumption.’ 
The latter is devious, it is dispersed, but it insinuates itself everywhere silently 
and almost invisibly, because it does not manifest itself through its own products, 
but rather through its ways of using the products imposed by a dominant 
economic order (xii-xiii, emphasis original).  

What de Certeau alleges is that consumption itself is indeed another way of production, 

for the users do not consume what is proffered to them in the exact way the producers 

wish. That is why, each consumption is a re-production. This process of the re-

production of production shows that the users react in an invisible way against what is 

imposed on them by means of their practices. What is significant at this juncture is that 

while resisting, they actually remain within the framework established by the producers 

by keeping a low profile, and thereby do not get reactions from the producers. Although 

de Certeau does not give an exhaustive and particular definition of the concept, he refers 

to everyday practices as “‘ways of operating’ or doing things” (xi), and claims that 

everyday practices are not “obscure background of social activity” (xi). To better 

explain the power relations between the users and producers, and to express the 

practices of these two groups, de Certeau adopts two terms, “strategy” and  “tactic” 

from the military lexicon.  

de Certeau makes a distinction between strategy and tactic for the operation of everyday 

practices. To begin with the first of the binary concepts, a strategy for de Certeau, is 

“the calculation (or manipulation) of power relationships that becomes possible as soon 

as a subject with will and power (a business, an army, a city, a scientific institution) can 

be isolated” (35-6). What is more, a strategy, “postulates a place that can be delimited 

as its own and serve as the base from which relations with an exteriority composed of 

targets or threats (customers or competitors, enemies, the country surrounding the city, 



16 
	

objectives and objects of research, etc.) can be managed” (de Certeau 36, emphasis 

original). That is to say, strategies are related with power, and require a planning.  

A tactic, just on the other hand, is “a calculated action determined by the absence of a 

proper locus” (de Certeau 37). The realm of a tactic is “the space of the other” (de 

Certeau 37); that is to say, the space of the marginalised users, and hence tactic is the 

“art of the weak” (de Certeau 37). That is why, “it must play on and with a terrain 

imposed on it and organized by the law of a foreign power” (de Certeau 37).  It must be 

on watch for opportunities to prepare a space for itself. If there is no such space, it must 

prepare it by manipulating events. This foreign power is the strategy of the producer. It 

must be able to catch each opportunity “‘on the wing’” (de Certeau xix), but still, 

“[w]hatever it wins, it does not keep” (de Certeau xix). Because it must manipulate 

these events and opportunities. As a tactic plays on within the framework of the 

strategy, it can also be evaluated as “a maneuver […] within enemy territory” (de 

Certeau 37). Due to this mandatory confinement into the realm of the strategy, tactic 

cannot have the choice of “planning general strategy,” but “operates in isolated actions, 

blow by blow” (de Certeau 37). The only option for a tactic is “to make the most of the 

cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary power” 

and “poach in them” (de Certeau 37). Therefore, a tactic must always be on the alert for 

“opportunities” (de Certeau xix; 37), and even manipulate events to create opportunities 

for itself, for “[i]t is a guileful ruse” (de Certeau 37).  

For de Certeau, all everyday practices, ranging from talking, walking, reading, 

swimming, cooking to shopping and singing, among many others, are all “tactical in 

character” (xix), and we need these tactics to cope with the difficulties of life. What is 

significant with respect to tactics, and hence everyday practices is that they have a 

political nature. In this respect, as de Certeau puts it with respect to the tactics of 

consumption, “the ingenious ways in which the weak make use of the strong, thus lend 

a political dimension to everyday practices” (xvii). While some of the users are aware of 

what they are doing, that is, they resist against what is imposed on them consciously, 

the others are mostly unaware of what they are doing, and carry out diverse tactics 

unwittingly.  



17 
	

de Certeau’s above-mentioned disagreement with Foucault manifests itself with respect 

to their explorations of everyday power relations from two different angles. Although de 

Certeau is indebted to Foucault and his notion of power relations in society, he 

nevertheless is critical of his approach, because especially in his Discipline, de Certeau 

believes Foucault to analyse “the mechanisms (dispositifs) that have sapped the strength 

of these institutions and surreptitiously reorganized the functioning of power: 

‘miniscule’ technical procedures acting on and with details, redistributing a discursive 

space in order to make it the means of a generalized ‘discipline’ (surveillance)” rather 

than exploring “the apparatus exercising power (i.e., the localizable, expansionist, 

repressive, and legal institutions” (xiv). While Foucault is in the belief that disciplinary 

societies produce subjects that internalise power, and police themselves, for de Certeau, 

the ones in the subject position are not so passive, but react against what is imposed on 

them in diverse ways. Hence, whereas Foucault unearths the “microphysics of power,” 

de Certeau explores resistance and agency. de Certeau criticises Foucault for exploring 

the disciplinary society from the perspective of the rulers or producers and disregarding 

the subordinate groups, who actually constitute the majority. While Foucault is after 

establishing “a genealogy of disciplines,” de Certeau wants to understand ‘anti-

disciplines’, the silent and unacknowledged forms of resistance” (Gardiner 168). 

Different from Foucault, who is concerned with the production of power relations, de 

Certeau prefers to venture into the dynamics of consumption, which in effect turns out 

to be a re-production, for  

[i]f it is true that the grid of “discipline” is everywhere becoming clearer and 
more extensive, it is all the more urgent to discover how an entire society resists 
being reduced to it, what popular procedures (also “miniscule” and quotidian) 
manipulate the mechanisms of discipline and conform to them only in order to 
evade them, and finally, what ‘ways of operating’ from the counterpart, on the 
consumer’s (or “dominee’s”?) side, of the mute processes that organize the 
establishment of socioeconomic order (xiv). 

It is by means of their everyday practices that “users reappropriate the space organized 

by techniques of sociocultural production” (de Certeau xiv). 

Of all the parts and chapters of The Practice of Everyday Life, the part entitled 

“Walking in the City” is the most frequently analysed and quoted part of the book, and 

its significance lies in that it “offers a persuasive theoretical framework for 



18 
	

understanding the temporal and spatial operations of popular culture” (Morris, “What 

We Talk About” 676). As Morris further argues, “Certeau’s central argument in terms 

of the enunciative nature of praxis is that space and place are not merely inert or neutral 

features of the built environment; instead, they must be activated by the ‘rhetorical’ 

practices of users and passers-by” (“What We Talk About” 677). As a result, de 

Certeau’s distinction between space and place with respect to everyday practices is 

worthy of note: “A place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which 

elements are distributed in relationships coexistence. It thus excludes the possibility of 

two things being in the same location (place). […] A place is […] an instantaneous 

configuration of positions. It implies an indication of stability” (117, emphasis original). 

A space, just on the other hand, “exists when one takes into consideration vectors of 

direction, velocities, and time variables” (de Certeau 117). That is why, it is “composed 

of intersections of mobile elements” (117). It might hence be claimed to be “actuated by 

the ensemble of movements deployed within it” (117). Consequently, “[s]pace occurs as 

the effect produced by the operations that orient it, situate it, temporalize it, and make it 

function in a polyvalent unity of conflictual programs or contractual proximities” (de 

Certeau 117). In a nutshell, de Certeau deduces that “space is a practiced place” (117, 

emphasis original). As a matter of fact, while a street that is geometrically determined 

by urban planning is a mere place, it transforms into a space by the help of its users, that 

is, the walkers. In a similar vein, “an act of reading is the space produced by the practice 

of a particular place: a written text, i.e., a place constituted by a system of signs” (117). 

Consequently, “[s]tories thus carry out a labor that constantly transforms places into 

spaces or spaces into places. They also organize the play of changing relationships 

between places and spaces” (118).  

Harkening back to the opening lines of the chapter, in which de Certeau describes a 

viewer looking at the streets of Manhattan from the top of the World Trade Centre, from 

its 110th floor, the viewer has a sort of “voluptuous pleasure” due to the panoptic 

observation of the whole land (de Certeau 92). The viewer is away from the chaos of 

New York. His/her position gives him/her the chance of being “a solar Eye, looking 

down like a god” (de Certeau 92). However, the ones who walk the streets as opposed 

to those looking down the street from their high places are actually the ones who 



19 
	

experience these spaces. One’s elevation to a high place actually “puts him at a 

distance,” and what is more, as written on a poster on the 110th floor of the Trade 

Centre, “[i]t’s  hard to be down when you’re up” (de Certeau 92, emphasis original). 

For the sphinx-like viewer on top of the edifice, it is hard to be down on the streets. As 

opposed to their detached position however, the walkers of the city are actually its 

practitioners: 

The ordinary practitioners of the city live “down below,” below the thresholds at 
which visibility begins. They walk – an elementary form of this experience of the 
city; they are walkers, Wandersmanner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins 
of an urban “text” they write without being able to read it. The practitioners make 
use of spaces that cannot be seen; their knowledge of them is as blind as that of 
lovers in each other’s arms. The paths that correspond in this intertwining, 
unrecognized poems in which each body is an element signed by many others, 
elude legibility. […] The networks of these moving, intersecting writings compose 
a manifold story that has neither author nor spectator, shaped out of fragments of 
trajectories and alterations of spaces: in relation to representations, it remains daily 
and indefinitely other. (de Certeau 93, emphasis original)  

As the practitioners of the city, the walkers create their own stories, although they 

cannot read them. While the city planners, architects, and rulers, that is to say, the 

producers implement and impose their authority by means of the use of geographical 

and geometrical tools, the everyday practices of the walkers, that is the users, have 

nothing to do with geography or geometry. They impose their own tactics while 

walking in the strategic framework of the producers. “Their swarming mass is an 

innumerable collection of singularities. Their intertwined paths give their shape to 

spaces they weave places together. In that respect, pedestrian movements form one of 

these ‘real systems whose existence in fact makes up the city’” (de Certeau 97).  

As Denis Hollier aptly puts it in his Against Architecture, “[t]here is […] no way to 

describe a system without resorting to the vocabulary of architecture” (33). Especially 

as this dissertation is primarily concerned with architecture and its effects on humans, it 

will be helpful to begin with the definition of the word architecture, its roots and 

connection with space. Derived from the Latin word architectura, architecture is 

basically defined as “[t]he art or practice of designing and constructing buildings” in 

The Oxford English Dictionary (“Architecture”). As a matter of fact, such a complicated 



20 
	

phenomenon called architecture, which stands for both art and engineering of building, 

cannot just be reduced to such a limited and reductionist viewpoint. Surrounding us 

with its physical dimension as well as ideological function, architecture is an 

indispensable part of our everyday lives. Yet still, it might make sense when the 

primary function of architecture is at stake: the need for shelter. Humans need shelter to 

protect themselves from external and natural forces such as rain, snow, and storm, to 

give a few examples. In the first place, architecture emerged as a means of shelter but 

then evolved in time with new demands and new meanings attached to it. However, 

reducing architecture just to shelter would be an insult to architecture, for it generally 

“goes beyond protecting us from the elements,” and only then “it begins to say 

something about the world” (Goldberger ix).  

The concept of home is perhaps the most significant aspect of how architecture goes 

beyond being a shelter. Home, for Edward Allen, is “a place for certain kinds of work 

carried out by various members of the family: pursuing hobbies, studying, writing 

letters, cleaning and repairing things, managing financial affairs […], for play and for 

entertaining friends” (20). It is the place where “you hang your hat—along with your 

coat, your shoes, your wardrobe, your dishes, your books, and all the rest of your 

belongings” (Allen 20). To put it in a humorous way, albeit out of context, home is the 

place, as the postcolonial writer Grace Nichols (1950- ) puts it in her poem “Wherever I 

Hang,” “[w]herever […] [she] hang[s] […] [her] knickers” (Lazy Thoughts 10). In 

addition to Allen’s explanation, Nichols’s ironic example demonstrates that home is a 

place, where the occupants feel themselves relaxed and safe, or to delineate it with the 

very expression, where they feel themselves at home. However, besides home, humans 

need gathering places, workplaces, markets, theatres, cinemas, religious places so on ad 

infinitum. Such close relationship of humans with architectural realms shows that there 

is no way of escape from architecture, for we are all surrounded by it, “[a]lmost every 

moment of our lives, awake or asleep, we are in buildings, around buildings, in spaces 

defined by buildings, or in landscapes shaped by human artifice” (Roth and Roth Clark 

1).  

Therefore, unlike defining architecture as the construction of buildings, to delineate it as 



21 
	

“the assemblage of elements” (3), which are not limited to some concrete materials such 

as brick, carbonette, and steel, among many others, but more importantly, incorporating 

“the assembling of people, places, things, anticipations, time, sensation, seasons, 

weather, memory and meaning, which is always in some sense temporary and clouded” 

(Bille and Sørensen 3) will be helpful. With all these diverse assemblages, architecture 

is indeed a field of art, but “the unavoidable art […]; the art form we inhabit” (Roth and 

Clark 4). Since we are all surrounded by architecture, unlike other arts, “architecture has 

the power to affect and condition human behavior” (Roth and Roth Clark 4). Such effect 

of architecture on human thoughts and feelings, if not abused by manipulative powers, 

is actually an important aspect of architecture, for “[a]rchitecture begins to matter when 

it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads. It 

matters when it creates serenity or exhilaration, and it matters just as much […] when it 

inspires anxiety, hostility, or fear” (Goldberger x). 

Such effect of architecture on us is directly related with its symbolic function, for 

besides its volume and mass with respect to its physicality, architecture has a symbolic 

dimension, as well. This symbolic dimension of architecture is embedded with 

ideologies. This aspect of architecture is directly related with the message of the 

architects or the ones who commission them. As they convey specific messages, it can 

be claimed that “architecture ‘speaks’ in moving ‘language’ about human values” 

(Shoemaker 181). Therefore, architecture tells us about politics, economy, religion, 

business, and culture, to give a few examples. In the words of Paul Goldberger, in this 

respect, “[a]rchitecture is the ultimate physical representation of a culture, more so than 

even its flag” (16). Collesium, the Parthenon, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Taj Mahal, 

Casa Mila, Empire State Building, La Sagrada Familia, Eiffel Tower, Buckingham 

Palace, London Tower Bridge, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Notre-Dame de Paris, Westminster 

Abbey, the Sistine Chapel, the Hagia Sophia Mosque, Château de Chenonceau, 

Acropolis, St. Basil’s Cathedral, Sacré Cour, Sydney Opera House, Potala Palace, and 

the Galata Tower, among many others, are only some of the most well-known 

architectural structures unravelling a lot about the socio-economic, cultural, and 

political backgrounds of their countries. Yet still, it is not only such famous ones, but 

also every single architectural structure that tells us much about that society.  



22 
	

The symbolic function of architecture is more manifest “in religious and public 

buildings, where the principal intent is to make a broad and emphatic proclamation of 

communal values and beliefs” (Roth and Roth Clark 5). Monumental architecture is 

used as the symbol of power and authority. For Lawrence J. Vale, in this respect,  

[p]olitical power takes many forms. In addition to the power evinced by a 
charismatic leader, an indomitable military presence, an entrenched bureaucracy, or 
an imposing network of laws and statutes, many political regimes make especially 
powerful symbolic use of the physical environment. Throughout history and across 
the globe, architecture and urban design have been manipulated in the service of 
politics. Government buildings are […] an attempt to build governments and to 
support specific regimes. More than mere homes for government leaders, they 
serve as symbols of the state. (3) 

Because, architecture is “power in action” (Wallenstein xiv). Especially in totalitarian 

regimes such as Stalin’s Communist Russia, Hitler’s Nazi Germany, and Mussolini’s 

Fascist Italy, these monumental structures were used as a sign of power and grandeur of 

the ruler to overwhelm the citizens, and to keep them under the strict rule of the 

authority. 

Besides the manifestation of power, architecture has another significant aspect, as well, 

which is its mnemonic function. This aspect of architecture is described by Goldberger 

as follows: “Buildings also stand as evidence of the power of memory”(xi). By quoting 

from Vincent Scully, Goldberger claims it to be “a conversation between the 

generations, carried out across time” (xi). Although “[w]e may not all participate in the 

conversation, […] we all have to listen to it. For that reason alone, architecture matters: 

because it is all around us, and what is all around us has to have an effect on us” 

(Goldberger xi).  

As the symbolic and mnemonic aspects of architecture also show, “architecture is not 

about itself […] [but] about everything else” (Goldberger 37). Indeed architecture is 

“never a neutral envelope” (Goldberger 37), but a very efficient in affecting the 

psychology and the behaviour of the occupants “in powerful but often imperceptible 

ways” (Spurr, Foreword xvii). In this respect, as Leland M. Roth and Amanda C. Roth 

Clark argue, “[a]rchitectural space […] is a powerful determinant of behaviour” (11). At 



23 
	

this juncture, to discuss the role of architecture in shaping human thoughts and feelings, 

and hence behaviour, it will be helpful to explore the role of environment on human 

psychology within the context of architectural psychology. Before exploring 

architectural psychology, it will be much helpful to make the slight distinction between 

environmental psychology and architectural psychology, which are sometimes used 

interchangeably. Environmental psychology, as Enric Pol posits, is the “most 

comprehensive name” (20) of the field, and the term environment does not necessarily 

refer only to the natural environment, but to “all other environments […] [such as] built 

environments, learning environments and informational environment” (De Young 223). 

In this respect, as David V. Canter and Kenneth H. Craik argue, environmental 

psychology is ”the area of psychology which brings into conjunction and analyzes the 

transactions and interrelationships of human experiences and actions with pertinent 

aspects of the socio-physical surroundings”(2, emphasis original). To put it more 

clearly in the words of Steg, van den Berg, and de Groot, it is “the discipline that studies 

the interplay between individuals and their built and natural environment” (2). Unlike 

environmental psychology’s wide range of interest in all kinds of environments, 

architectural psychology just focuses on the interrelationship between the built 

environment and human psychology and behaviour. Evaluating architectural 

psychology as the third stage of environmental psychology, Pol traces its emergence 

back to “the late-1950s and early-1960s,” and claims it to have “ended in the late-

1980s” (2). In much the same way, for Mirilla Bonnes and Gianfranco Secchiaroli, 

architectural psychology emerged in the late 1950s in the United States and some other 

countries as a result of the studies of the research groups “based on the collaboration 

between psychologists and architects”(4) to explore “the relationship between 

architectural design and the behaviour of patients in psychiatric hospitals” (3).  

By scrutinising the interrelationship between human behaviour and their built 

environments, architectural psychology sheds light on the profound effects of the built 

environment in influencing the psychology and behaviour of human beings. For 

Alexander Abel, “[t]hrough the examination of the mutual relation between human 

experience and behavior, and the dimension of space, created or influenced by man, its 

intention is to support human well-being on one hand, and the continued existence and 



24 
	

conservation of the entire ecosystem on the other” (203). Especially in today’s world, 

when people are spending “more than 90% of their lives indoors” (Evans 536), such 

exploration of the reciprocal relationships between architecture and human 

psychological health is of great significance. However, unlike studies and experiments 

conducted in the fields of architecture and psychology, this dissertation adopts the term 

“architectural psychology” as a trope to explore how architectural structures teeming 

with competing power relations are used effectively as a means by utopia/dystopia 

writers for their own ends to formulate their utopian or dystopian worlds of imagination.  

Due to the profound impact of architecture on the thoughts and feelings of human 

beings, the writers of utopias/dystopias have laid great emphasis on the architectural 

designs of their fictive worlds, and thus have made great use of architectural psychology 

in their works. However, it is not only utopias and dystopias, but also all literary works 

in general that make much use of the psychology of architecture either for the 

characters, or for the readers to set the tone for what will happen. In this respect, as 

Robert Louis Stevenson also argues in his “A Gossip on Romance,” “[s]ome places 

speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses 

demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwreck. Other spots again seem 

to abide their destiny, suggestive and impenetrable, ‘miching mallecho’” (141). 

However, sometimes architectural structures or places become so dominant that they 

actually become the principle characters. The haunted houses in Edgar Allan Poe’s 

(1809-1849) “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), and Elizabeth Bowen’s (1899-

1973) “The Demon Lover” (1945), the eponymous mansion, house, and castle 

respectively in Emily Bronte’s (1818-1848) Wuthering Heights (1847), 5  Shirley 

Jackson’s (1916-1965) The Haunting of Hill House (1959), and Horace Walpole’s 

(1717-1797) The Castle of Otranto (1764), the castle in Bram Stoker’s (1847-1912) 

Dracula (1897), the house in Charles Dickens’s (1812-1870) Bleak House (1853), the 

hobbit houses in J.R.R. Tolkien’s (1892-1973) The Hobbit (1937), Hogwarts School of 

Witchcraft and Wizardy in J.K. Rowling’s (1965- ) Harry Potter series (1997-2007), the 

																																																													
5  Albeit less significant, the mansion called Thrushcross Grange is another architecture 
contributing to the atmosphere and unfolding of the events in Wuthering Heights.  

 



25 
	

six churches designed by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor in Peter Ackroyd’s (1949-) 

novel of the same name, the opera house in  Gaston Leroux’s (1868-1927) The Phantom 

of the Opera (1909-1910), and the cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris in Victor Hugo’s 

(1802-1885) The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1833) are only very few of the literary 

architectural structures that emerge as the principle “figures,” either setting the tone for 

what will happen, or triggering the events, but always the memorable ones while the 

events or the stories are mostly forgotten. They are still with us, and it is very difficult 

for one to forget these mnemonic structures. Stevenson also sheds light on this fact as 

follows:  

[E]ach has been printed on the mind’s eye forever. Other things we may forget; 
we may forget the words, although they are beautiful; we may forget the author’s 
comment, although perhaps it was ingenious and true; but these epoch-making 
scenes, which put the last mark of truth upon a story and fill up, at one blow, our 
capacity for sympathetic pleasure, we so adopt into the very bosom of our mind 
that neither time nor tide can efface or weaken the impression. (142) 

This is why architecture is important in literature. One might forget the plot, events, or 

the characters of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, but not the enormous ministry 

buildings of the Party. In much the same way, the glass architecture of Yevgeny 

Zamyatin’s (1884-1937) We (1924) occurs to one’s mind even if one forgets everything 

else regarding the book. As all of these examples demonstrate, architecture is more than 

a backdrop or setting in numerous literary works, and remains as a memorable 

construction. However, in utopias/dystopias, its significance is much more in the 

foreground.  It is never used a backdrop for the unfolding of the events, and it has its 

own life and stories interconnected with the stories of its human counterparts, and hence 

acts as the primary character of these novels.  

Such functional use of architecture in literature is the sign of the fact that they are 

indeed two different façades of the same pattern. Hence, to shed light on this close 

relationship between literature and architecture, David Spurr claims that “literature is 

the art of writing and that architecture is the art of building” (Foreword xv). There is a 

reciprocal relationship between architecture and literature. Undoubtedly, one can “talk 

about the construction and representation of architecture in literary narratives” (Charley 

2). Likewise, “[a]ll buildings, whether a garden shed or a cathedral have functional and 



26 
	

programmatic stories that are inscribed in plan, form and spatial organisation” (Charley 

2). It is possible to see the entanglement of literature and architecture in diverse ways. 

Consequently, while one can explore the architectural realms in the literary works, s/he 

can also read architecture like a literary text.   

Before exploring the architectural realms in literary utopias/dystopias, it will be 

illuminating to scrutinise the long history of utopianism, and its use of architecture and 

space as a complex phenomenon within the Western context. Although there is not a 

single and unified definition of the term utopianism – because each society and/or 

culture has its own way of social dreaming, and they do not “all look alike” (“What is 

Utopia” 155) – Lyman Tower Sargent defines it as “social dreaming” (“What is a 

Utopia?” 155; “In Defense of Utopia” 15; “Three Faces” 9; Claeys and Sargent 2) at its 

simplest, and this concept engages with “thinking about different ways of living” 

(Sargent, “What is a Utopia” 154). As a broad system of thought, utopianism 

encompasses “the dreams and nightmares that concern the ways in which groups of 

people arrange their lives and which usually envision a radically different society than 

the one in which the dreamers live” (Sargent, “Three Faces” 3). Although not called as 

utopianism per se, there was the utopian thought/impulse since “the dawn of 

humankind” (Sargent, “Utopia” 2403), manifesting itself in numerous forms in myths, 

oral tradition, and religious festivals, “golden age,” and “earthly paradise” (Claeys and 

Sargent 6). The Golden Age is, for example, “at the root of utopianism” (Sargent, 

“More’s Utopia” 199). Myths mostly known with such labels as “golden ages, arcadias, 

earthly paradises, fortunate isles, isles of the blest” are “the foundation of utopianism” 

(Sargent, “Three Faces” 10). What is more, Christianity (Claeys and Sargent 6), some 

festivals like Saturnalia and the Feast of the Fools, and “the myth of Cockaygne (a land 

of plenty)” (Vieira 5-6), also known as Cockaigne, are actually the important influences 

giving birth to the phenomenon utopianism. Although it is mistakenly believed to be an 

exclusively Christian and Western tradition, the manifestations of such belief in better 

and ideals societies can also be observed in some other civilisations, cultures and belief 

systems such as ancient Sumer, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, and 

Daoism, among many others  (Sargent, “Utopia” 2405, 2407).  



27 
	

The multi-dimensional phenomenon called utopianism manifests itself in three different 

ways or forms that Sargent calls “faces.” These three faces of utopianism are the 

“utopian literature,” “utopian practice, including intentional communities,” or 

“communitarianism” and “utopian social theory” (“Three Faces” 4; “Theorizing 

Utopia” 13). Although the names given to them might differ among the critics of 

utopian studies, there is a consensus among most utopian scholars that utopia has three 

manifestations or components. For example, Gregory Claeys argues that “[n]o single 

definition can satisfy the demands of every angle of scholarly enquiry, though there is 

broad agreement that there are three main components or ‘faces’ (as Lyman Tower 

Sargent terms them) of the tradition: the literary, the communal, and the ideological” 

(“Five Languages” 26). In much the same way, in another article, Claeys refers to the 

three ‘faces’ as its “three facets: a literary tradition, an ideology or ideologies, and a 

tradition of communal living and organisation” (“Three Variants” 14). Such a multi-

faceted phenomenon cannot be reduced to only one of its three faces, i.e., the literary 

utopia,6 but within the general framework of this dissertation, only its first face will be 

explored.  

Utopia as a literary genre, like the wider and much complex phenomenon of utopianism, 

is named after the Renaissance thinker Sir Thomas More’s (1478-1535) famed work 

Utopia7 (1516), which was written in Latin and translated into English only “in 1551 by 

Ralph Robynson” (Rogan 309). Although the long utopian literary tradition as a genre 
																																																													
6 Sargent claims literary utopia to have two variants, known as “body utopias or utopias of 
sensual gratification” and “city utopias or utopias of human contrivance” (“Three Faces” 4). 
Utopias of sensual gratification are “social dreaming at its simplest” and require no “human 
effort,” but are regarded “as a gift of nature or the gods” (Claeys and Sargent 2). As a matter of 
fact, these utopias are the myths known with diverse labels such as “golden ages, Arcadias, 
earthly paradises, fortunate isles, isles of the blest,” and share some common traits as 
“simplicity, security, immortality or an easy death, unity among the people; unity between the 
people and God or the gods, abundance without labor, and no enmity between human beings 
and the other animals” (Claeys and Sargent 2). Quite the contrary, in city utopias, which are set 
in imaginary cities, human contrivance of social order is very much in the foreground and 
hence, they are also known as utopias of human contrivance. Plato’s Republic is a well-known 
example of this tradition (Claeys and Sargent 3), but Sargent believes his Laws to fit better 
(“Three Faces” 11).  

 
7 The original title of the book is Libellus vere aureus nec minus salutaris quam festivius de 
optimo reip[ublicae] statu, deq[ue] nova Insula Vtopia. 
 



28 
	

goes back to the ancient Greeks, to Plato’s Republic (c.375 BC), More’s eponymous 

work is significant for denominating a long history of a literary genre, and setting the 

stage for the future utopias by establishing its generic conventions. In effect, it was not 

More’s intention to name a literary tradition; he just called the fictional island of his 

imaginary society that was accidentally discovered by the Portuguese sailor Raphael 

Hythloday Utopia, by combining two Greek words, “ouk” or “ou/u” and “topos,” 

which respectively mean “no” or “not” and “place,” with the suffix “ia” to refer to a 

“place” that is essentially a “no/non place”(Vieira 4; Claeys and Sargent 1; Sargent, 

“Three Faces” 5). Although More’s imaginary island is called Utopia all throughout the 

book, and the title of the work is named after this island, More coined another term, i.e., 

“eutopia,” to refer to the island in the poem called “A Short metre of Utopia,”8 

published at the end of the book. Derived from and pronounced in the same way as 

utopia, eutopia stands for “the good place” (Vieira 5; Sargent, “More’s Utopia” 200). 

When the initial name of the island Utopia, that is, Nusquama – a Latin word standing 

for “nowhere” (Vieira 4), is taken into consideration, More’s aim in further 

complicating matters by means of the use of a very witty pun on the homonyms, utopia 

and eutopia, is obviously in communication with his critical intention in depicting an 

ideal and good place that is simultaneously a non-place. The underlying reason for the 

ambivalent nature of the meaning of the word utopia, 9 which became the name of the 

literary genre – concerned with the depiction of “an imaginary society in some detail” 

(Claeys and Sargent 1) – that had precursors such as Plato’s Republic but was invented 

by More himself, is the satirical nature of the genre, for the utopian writer offers a 

socio-economic, judiciary, political, and cultural commentary on a contemporaneous 

society with respect to its defects by juxtaposing it with an ideal one that literally exists 

nowhere. In this respect, as Northrop Frye also posits, “[t]he utopian writer looks at his 

																																																													
8 Written by the poet laureate Anemolius, the last two lines of the poem reads as follows: 
“Wherefore not Utopie, but rather rightly /My name is Eutopie: a place of felicity” (Three Early 
Modern Utopias 128). In the Penguin edition of Utopia that is used in this dissertation, this 
poem is not included, therefore it is quoted from Oxford World’s Classics’ Three Early Modern 
Utopias: Utopia, New Atlantis, The Isle of Pines (1999).  
 
9 As a matter of fact, More named a literary tradition that had existed long before he wrote his 
Utopia; he just coined the name of the genre, and “[t]he word utopia has itself often been used 
as the root for the formation of new words […] such as eutopia, dystopia, anti-utopia, alotopia, 
euchronia, heterotopia, ecotopia and hyperutopia” (Vieira 3), as utopia as a genre adapted itself 
to the requirements of each age, and hence acquired new meanings.     



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own society first and tries to see what, for his purposes, its significant elements are. The 

utopia itself shows what society would be like if those elements were fully developed” 

(“Varieties of Literary Utopias” 324). In much the same but in a more symbolic way, 

Sargent resembles utopia to “a carnival/funfair mirror in reverse,” which “shows us a 

better possibility” of a “distorted contemporary society” that is held up to it (“In 

Defense of Utopia” 12). From a productive different angle, as Gordin, Tilley, and 

Prakash argue, utopias are “histories  of the present” (1). That is to say, they are more 

concerned with the problems of the present albeit set in different topographies or times, 

past or future alike. Hence, it can be argued that “the primary characteristic of the 

utopian place is its non-existence combined with a topos – a location in time and space 

– to give verisimilitude” (Sargent, “Three Faces” 5; Claeys and Sargent 1). While all 

works of fiction depict “a no-place,” what utopian fiction mostly depicts is “good or bad 

no-places” (Sargent, “Three Faces” 5; Claeys and Sargent 1). 

As is well known, there are many neologisms derived from the word utopia, which 

stand for slightly different things within the general framework of utopia as an umbrella 

term. And, the sub-genre depicting a non-existing good place is eutopia rather than 

utopia. To make the basic distinction between these variants of utopia, be it eutopia, 

euchronia, or dystopia, among many others, it will be much helpful to give the basic 

definitions of only some of these major terms to clarify the slight differences between 

them. Utopia, as Sargent puts it, is “a non-existent society described in considerable 

detail and normally located in time and space” (“Three Faces” 9; “In Defense of 

Utopia” 15; also in Claeys and Sargent 1). Similarly eutopia, which is also known as 

positive utopia, is “a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally 

located in time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as 

considerably better than the society in which that reader lived” (“Three Faces” 9; “In 

Defense of Utopia” 15). Despite the slight difference between utopia and eutopia, as 

Sargent aptly, puts it, “[i]n standard usage utopia is used both as defined here and as an 

equivalent for eutopia” (“In Defense of Utopia” 15; “Three Faces” 9). Following the 

standard usage, in this dissertation, the term utopia will be used as an equivalent of 

eutopia. In a similar fashion, utopia as an umbrella term is oftentimes used as an 

equivalent of euchronia, “the good place in the future” (Vieira 9), which depicts a 



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familiar society located in a future time in an ideal way, emerging especially in the 

eighteenth century and becoming much more common in the nineteenth century with 

some famous examples such as Edward Bellamy’s (1850-1898) Looking Backward: 

2000-1887 (1888) and William Morris’s News from Nowhere, in both of which the 

primary characters fall asleep and awake in the future to find everything enhanced for 

the good of the citizens. Consequently, utopia will also be used in this study as an 

equivalent of euchronia.  

When it comes to the common features of utopia, Sargent states two main aspects that a 

utopia must have: “the society described must not exist” and “the author must in some 

way evaluate that society” (“What is a Utopia?” 157). Besides these main aspects, some 

other characteristics of the majority of utopias are that these are the places, “in which 

everyone has adequate food, shelter, and clothing gained without debilitating labor […]. 

But these basic elements are expressed in different ways in different times and places 

and also reflect individual concerns; as a result, the range of utopias present throughout 

history is immense” (Sargent, “Utopia” 2405). Some other features of most of the 

utopias are enumerated by Frye as follows: “the states predominate over the individual: 

property is usually held in common and the characteristic features of individual life, 

leisure, privacy, and freedom of movement, are as a rule minimized” (“Varieties of 

Liter