How did the word "utopian” become associated with negative connotations like impossibility, naïveté, and dunderheadedness?
The Oneida Community, a 19th-century polyamorous Christian socialist community in upstate New York.
"As a Victorian literature scholar, I’m a little surprised at how pejoratively the word 'utopian' is used today. Because I immerse myself in another historical period for my research and teaching, I am forced to move back and forth, somewhat vertiginously, between the Olden Times I study and the present moment; just like H. G. Wells’s Time Traveller, I sometimes find it takes a few moments to blink away the 'veil of confusion' occasioned by my most recent trip home from the nineteenth century. For the Victorians the word 'utopian' did not carry the negative connotations of impossibility, naïveté, and dunderheadedness that it does for us now—the writers and thinkers who used that word were for the most part engaged in actual utopian projects, whether literal or literary (or both)...Why, and how did we turn our backs on utopia? Or have we?" - Deanna Kreisel
Article: Whence, Wherefore, Whither Utopia?
"As a Victorian literature scholar, I’m a little surprised at how pejoratively the word 'utopian' is used today. Because I immerse myself in another historical period for my research and teaching, I am forced to move back and forth, somewhat vertiginously, between the Olden Times I study and the present moment; just like H. G. Wells’s Time Traveller, I sometimes find it takes a few moments to blink away the 'veil of confusion' occasioned by my most recent trip home from the nineteenth century. For the Victorians the word 'utopian' did not carry the negative connotations of impossibility, naïveté, and dunderheadedness that it does for us now—the writers and thinkers who used that word were for the most part engaged in actual utopian projects, whether literal or literary (or both)...Why, and how did we turn our backs on utopia? Or have we?" - Deanna Kreisel
Article: Whence, Wherefore, Whither Utopia?