My thesis project, titled Constructing Speculation: Murakami, Constant, Geddes and the Pursuit of Future-Making, is an extensive research project exploring the ways in which speculation appears in the production of works of fiction, art, and design. Through an exploration of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84, Constant Nieuwenhuys’ New Babylon project, and Norman Bel Geddes’ Futurama, I aim to discuss how definitions of speculative fiction and design can be utilized to better understand explorations of the future. In turn, this explores the implications of speculation as it is consumed by a general public and the potential this method of thinking holds when envisioning possible futures. I recevied departmental Honors in English from Wesleyan University for this project. Below is a segment of the writing from the introduction of the thesis.
For the purpose of this thesis, I will define speculation, with great inspiration from the findings of Dunne and Raby, as the space between reality and dreaming, the present and future, the plausible and the unlikely–a gray-area that invites us to reflect on our reality and consider what could be different, and to envision futures that we might be reluctant to believe but that we can imagine. Speculation invites a level of imagination that allows us to formulate the possibilities of our social, political, economic, and technological structures that far surpass what is normative and readily achievable in our present moment.
The distinctive quality of speculation is its inherent affinity to reality, no matter how far into the future or seemingly unlikely it is. Speculative fiction is always tied to reality because it is rooted in what is plausible in the moment in which it is envisioned. I will track the stakes of speculation and the impact it has on its reader through design, artwork, and fiction, by investigating these works in terms of their closeness to reality. As the speculative work moves further from the abstract, imagined, possibilities of our world and the future, toward the immediately plausible and politically/economically motivated, the stakes of the project and its impact on its viewer are raised.
Chapter One explores how Murakami’s 1Q84 elucidates the nature of the speculative fiction genre by building a world that is tethered to the reader’s own while asking the reader to adopt a new sense of logic. 1Q84 traverses the real and the extraordinary as Murakami’s trademark strangeness becomes more apparent. I look into the ways in which 1Q84 encourages speculation on the part of the reader and the buying-in to the logic of a world they do not fully recognize or understand. Speculative fiction’s ability to subdue the rationale of the reader’s everyday life and social system increases their imagination in a way that allows them to envision a different, new future.
I next examine Constant Nieuwenhuys’ New Babylon, an eighteen year-long art project in which the avant-garde Dutch artist began to incorporate matters of political importance into his work. New Babylon comprises texts, paintings, sketches and architectural models that portrayed Constant’s utopian vision of a society in which labor was entirely automated and humans were free from utilitarian purpose to develop their creative abilities and exercise total autonomy over the physical and social structures of the Earth. New Babylon was politically motivated and can only be realized in an unspecified future moment that, while plausible, would require humankind to uncover a sense of creativity and become liberated from utility and capitalist purpose. In Chapter Two, I argue that New Babylon was a speculative work that, like 1Q84, requires the reader to forego the logic or rationale of the current moment and imagine a future that is plausible but seems exceedingly unlikely. Unlike 1Q84, New Babylon’s speculative nature was crucially rooted in political motivations and was affected by the political turbulence that occurred during its mid-20th century creation.
Finally, I will look at Norman Bel Geddes’ Futurama as a work of speculative design. Futurama was the most successful exhibition of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York and was the pinnacle of Geddes’ career as a designer. His massive model captured the world of the future, a 1960 America with the promise of great urban development and technological progress. Chapter Three argues that Futurama was speculative in its forward thinking and future planning, and was crucially more imaginable than the previous two works because it was both politically motivated like New Babylon, but was also aligned with the normative political and social structures of the time it was presented to the public. This component of Futurama therefore afforded a vision of the future that was new, exciting, and innovative, though its closeness to reality made its political stakes more immediate and impactful. The speculation of this project, like New Babylon, encouraged a reimagining of the future and what was possible, while also indoctrinating the viewer into the normative and prominent capitalist structures in which it was created.
It is important to note that across these projects, and in speculative works in general, there is no prescribed set of politics. While Murakami’s text feels distant from sweeping political statements, Constant’s New Babylon is definitively anti-capitalist and aligned with the views of Karl Marx. In direct contrast is Geddes’ Futurama, funded by a corporate giant, presented at a fair exhibiting the great advances of modern America’s consumer-driven capitalism, and reminiscent of the values of Manifest Destiny. The objective of speculation, regardless of political leaning, remains the same—to provide alternative ways of thinking about the world by disrupting what seems obvious, inevitable, or easiest to imagine. I will be investigating the stakes of speculation and the way they inspire an envisioning of the future that challenges the logic, imagination, and presumptions of their audiences.
1Q84, New Babylon, and Futurama are placed in order of their relationship to plausibility and closeness to reality. These projects’ proximity to the real, from the relative implausibility of 1Q84 to the immediate future-building of Futurama, is integral to their relationship with their reader or viewer. As their imagining of the future becomes more realizable, the stakes, the immediate political impact or effect on the viewer, of these projects become increasingly influential and motivated by the structures of the moment in which they were created.