Reading Utopia in 2022

Abstract

Abstract: This essay encourages eighteenth-century scholars to read John Lithgow's utopian fiction Equality—A Political Romance (1802). Set in the protocommunist, protofeminist and anti-individualist island of Lithconia, Equality offers readers a world without financial property, class hierarchy, or gender inequality. This essay argues that Lithconia is a radical model for a possible future America that helps us understand today's pandemic and postpandemic crises as part of a history of inequality but also asks us to imagine moving beyond them. The second part of this essay examines Equality 's lack of radical racial politics, which prompts readers to ask not just where and when a better world exists but who it is for.