Ideal forms: images of utopia in "La fièvre d'Ubicande"

Abstract

La fiévre d’Urbicande, a graphic novel drawn by François Schuiten and written by Benoît Peeters, focuses on an unexplainable phenomenon: the appearance of a tridimensional grid that grows until it covers the imaginary city of Urbicande, which was planned according to the utopian vision of a rational, beautiful and symmetrical city. This structure deeply affects the lives of the inhabitants of Urbicande and dismantles the authoritarian regime that controlled them. In transforming the social interactions in the city and establishing new connections among its inhabitants, the mysterious structure can be seen as the embodiment of an alternative utopian desire, which emerges as an excess in relation to the established order. This network is essentially ambiguous: at the same time an artificial construct and a living organism, solid and intangible, its meaning remains indefinite, while it establishes connections and promotes circulation, traits it shares with contemporary visions of post-humanist utopias. On the other hand, it preserves humanist values, such as the notion of the essence of the human spirit. This paper discusses the tensions created by the conflict between these two visions, which the narrative of La fièvre d’Urbicande tries to conciliate, as well as their connection with more traditional utopian projects.