VI. “BE NOT AFEARED; THE ISLE IS FULL OF NOISES”: AN ARCHIPELAGO OF 15 THOUGHT-ISLANDS ABOUT ATLANTIS & OTHER MYTHICAL ISLES.

From: Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2002)

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CALIBAN: Be not afeared; the isle is full of noises / Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. / Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments / will hum about mine ears and sometimes voices / that, if I then had waked after long sleep, / will make me sleep again” and then, in dreaming, / the clouds methought would open and show riches / ready to drop upon me that, when I waked, / I cried to dream again.

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I.

Before I say anything else, I would be remiss in my efforts to curtail my propensity for poor self-promotion if I didn't mention that I've written about Atlantis before. A lot of what here follows is material that I couldn't machine into a less weird, less extra, and less pseudo-rhizomatic, that is non-headachy, form. Google me, if it please you, to read that paper and yet others about utopias, dystopias, and Other spaces.

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II.

Brief thoughts on Atlantis: The Lost Empire & the D.P.H.T

Attention: those one or three of you playing the home game may have read my inaugural post about the Tragedy of Rasputin. Embedded in the opening paragraphs of that particular excursus, as obvious as dead man's toe protruding from the petunia's pot, was an oblique acknowledgement and admission that Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire is my favourite Disney film. What was less apparent was the single reason why. It is my favourite Disney film for a deceptively simple reason, I'd say. Unlike Kida's singsong forbears (the reason, I think why Kida, the songless, ain't part of the 2013 to present Princess draft last I checked, full of such franchise players as Mulan, Snow White, Tiana, Cinderella, Belle, Merida, Rapunzel, Ariel, Aurora, Jasmine, & Pocahontas), the Atlantian princess does not relinquish her Otherness as a necessary tax for the apotheosis of the white male protagonist. She has no desire for cracked glass slippers, the affectations of a charmless prince, half-love's sloppy overlong kiss, legs – bowed or straight –, or even a rustless jian. Sure, one could make the argument that she doesn't suffer any of these desires because of her privilege as princess of a mythical Isle. But, I'm convinced that in the last instance, all Kida wants is to be Atlantian. That is, if anything at all, a SIDE sidequest. Don't get me wrong now, I admit certain soft spots for some of the current lineup of D.P.A.S (Disney Princess All-Stars). Cinderella, for instance, with whom I share an understanding of similar toil, under similar familial circumstances (see The Annuls of Tembotown for further details). But, to me, unlike the bearer of Belle's burden, Kida remains a beast, so to speak. She avoids, almost if not totally, the dread D.P.H.T (Disney Princess Happiness Tax). It is expressed as a simple equation, this tax: give up what you are in order to catch a contact from fine-to-spurious fumes of happiness that the violent, total, severe erasure of self elicits in the adherent service of the white male protagonist. Fur for the dominant complexion, fins for legs. Growl or Splash, woe to all those made happy by another's gladness when that gladness is born of the loss of one's self. It's...dark. So much so that the D.P.H.T has disquieting resonances with the A.D.T (American Dream Tax) immigrants must pay Hasan Minhaj talked about once on Patriot Act and elsewhere. I'll try formalise my gripes, perhaps, at a later date and turn the D.P.H.T into a formal paper. But for now, Atlantis and other mythical isles.

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III.

On the Concept of the Mythical Isle

From what I've read, the concept of the mythical island appears in the texts of numerous cultures as both a literary construct, and as part of mytho-religious systems. Ranging from sources found in Slavic, Nordic, Greco-Roman, British, and Spanish legendary traditions, the chronotope of the enchanted and/or hidden island predominates. Ultimately, the rise and/or fall, occlusion and/or revelation, desire for and/or fear of mythical islands including Aeaea, Hy Brasil, Mag Mell, Saint Brendan's Island, and Hyperborea, is mediated by these places' relationship to time and space: two primary factors considered in the measure and understanding of contemporary theoretical approaches to utopia. Whether regarded as locations, known or no, of occult knowledge, witchcraft and feminine power, death, treasure in the form of relics or enchanted objects, isolation, marooning, healing, succour, or total freedom in the form of immortality, the mythical islands of Occidental folklore and literature are not only conferred the qualities of, but are also predicated on, the tension between conceptions of utopia, heterotopia, and the enclave. Okay.

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IV.

On Platonic Atlantis

So, the ur-example of an Atlantian narrative for most would find its source in the dialogues of Plato. In them, it is generally accepted, that ol' Plato uses Atlantis as a literary device through which to access and explore various themes in Classical Greek political thought and Western political thought more generally. There's, broadly speaking, two versions, or rather, one version culled from two thematically related stories. In these two accounts of Atlantis, ol' Plato details Atlantis' history, and its relation to other, how shall I say so as not offend the true believers playing the home game, more historically verifiable ancient city-states. First up is Timaeus. In this dialogic narrative, ol' Plato presents the recollections of Solon, a renowned Greek legislator and poet, who is said to have received the history of Atlantis during his journey to Egypt approximately 150 years earlier. Ol' Plato reckons that it was in the Egyptian city of Sais where Solon received the history of Atlantis from Egyptian scribes and priests who, drawing from their ancient temple records, described the Atlantian kings as having fought and lost a bloody war against the ancient Athenians approximately nine thousand years before the telling thereof. Back then, the ancient Atlantian kings had pretty much established a confederacy of island-states whose seat of power was located in/on Atlantis itself. From Atlantis, they began a predominantly naval campaign that spread outward from the Atlantic Ocean, toward Europe and Asia. To quell the advance, the crafty diplomats, them Athenians, formed a coalition with other Greek city-states to repel the Atlantians' imperial machinations. Being subsequently abandoned by their allies due to assorted martial and ideological impasses, the Athenians were left to fight and defeat the Atlantian kings alone, an unsurprising aggrandisement of the author's birthplace. Not even, how do they say now, a weird flex, when considering what a book, or scroll of parchment in this case, could do in them days. Right, so after repelling the Atlantian advance and their attempted invasion and conquest of the then known Occidental world, the Athenians also liberated Egypt and every country or city-state under Atlantian rule. Huzzah all round. Shortly after the victory hangover evaporated like last night's vodka from the damp elbowcrook, but before the bus, cab, or stumble home, or, before the Athenians could return to Greece, Atlantis suffered a massive geological cataclysm. Earthquakes, floods. The result of this calamity was the total submersion of the island-continent and Atlantis, the capital, that stood upon it. Weird to think that in most people's minds, Disney or not, Atlantis is a groovy island bohemia filled with lithe coconut cocktail drinkers, poets, artisans, and vegetarian high priestesses. Not imperialists. Fancy that.

Okay. Ol' Plato gives way more details in Critias: the origins of Atlantis, its founding, constructions, rule, culture, and socio-economic relationship with the rest of the ancient world. In this dialogue, Atlantian history stretched back to pre-historic times in a period of the divine acquisition and distribution of power over the earth itself. Ol' Plato reckons that when the Olympians divided the world amongst themselves, Poseidon received Atlantis as part of his allotment. Greenbeard took a mortal wife named Cleito. They danced and established a royal line of Atlantian kings. In the midparts of the island-continent, Poseidon constructed a royal house for Cleito atop a high hill that oversaw the rest of the place, providing a total purview of its fertile plains bordered by the sea. Sounds pretty swell, no? Like Beira in Mozambique, or Savannah, with all the garlic lemon-butter tiger prawns you could eat and rock shandies to wash 'em down gently with part of you thinking, “ach, what a shame to neck this thing” because they look so fly they could sit admired by beret'd nods in MOMA. Sorry. Drifted off there. Right, so ol' Plato reckons that the concentric circular design of Atlantis – the island-continent being comprised of five concentric rings of land and water – was intended to create, lets call it a geo-topographical, defence to protect Cleito and her royal house. With his juice, it wasn't a thing for Poseidon to also provide for both his consort and their future offspring by carving out two sources of hot and cold water that never failed to produce water for both the royal house and the future city of Atlantis. Even to gods apparent be the importance of consistent branding.

Wait, but there's more! Ol' Plato also describes the founders of the royal house of Atlantis, the ten sons of Poseidon and Cleito, the latter bearing the former five sets of demigod males. Bloody primogeniture. The first born of the first born set of twins, Atlas, was made high-king over the vast territory of the island-continent by his father. Natch. Also quite natch, his younger brothers were made princes, each appointed to rule over large principalities (right on the tin, some of them) of the island-continent. Atlas himself had many sons, with the succession of the throne always passing to the eldest. By ol' Plato's accounting, Atlantis seems to have been a peaceful and prosperous city-state that endured for numerous generations of successive rulers of the House of Atlas, Son of Poseidon. The entire population's infrastructural and dietary needs were met by the island's mines, fields and forests, flora and fauna too. Anything that the kingdom lacked or did not produce was imported. Atlantian trade was facilitated in this way by the construction of an island-long causeway which transversed all five of the city's rings, running from the ocean to the acropolis at the centre of the kingdom. With each succeeding king attempting to improve upon the rule and infrastructural works of his predecessor, the Atlantian metropolis, from outer to innermost ring, sea to island-continent centre, was eventually circumvented by great walls made and decorated with differing red, black, and white stone. Before seeing Disney's, I always imagined Atlantis to be a kind of floating Theed from The Phantom Menace.

But how'd they live, you may be asking? That's a question of Atlantian statecraft. Ol' Plato reckons that Poseidon, the island-state's literal patron deity, decreed laws for the city-state that its rulers were bade to follow. These, I like to call them Poseidonic Laws, were inscribed on a pillar of orichalcum, a precious metal second only to gold, erected in the centre of the temple of Poseidon, which itself was situated in the centre of the acropolis. The city's ruling body, an Atlantian council comprising of Atlas, the high king, and his nine brother-princes, were instructed to meet regularly. They jointly retained absolute power concerning judgements of life and death over the Atlantian populace, the justice of which was decided in the temple of Poseidon. The judgements of the Atlantian council were governed, in turn, by strict ritual protocol. So first, as required by ancient ceremony, pledges were exchanged between the very dude-heavy group to verify that no member of the council had any uncooked beefs with any other, nor knew of any outstanding vendetta or quarrel against any another. Second, a sacred bull of a stock left to freely roam the temple was captured and killed. When I first read that, I went “coo-awww what!?” Anyway, the poor bull's carcass was then offered as a burnt sacrifice to the patron god of the city and its rulers. (Sidequest: I need to brush up on the nature of supplications of burnt offerings but is it that the gods or god catch a kind of contact from the fumes of the roasting pieces?)

Sorry. Okay, third, the blood of the victim was subsequently mixed with wine and poured over an open fire as a act of purification for each counsellor. Sure, okay. Fourth, the ruling council were served wine in golden vessels, after which each poured a libation over the fire while swearing an oath to give judgement only according to the inscribed orichalcic laws, sealing his vow with a drink from his wine. One for the squad and one to see me home, as it were. And fifth and last, after the oaths and sacrifices had been openly declared and concluded, each counsellor dedicated his chalice to the temple, followed by a meal that preceded the rulers attiring themselves in azure robes. I like blue, favourite colour, actually. These robes, symbols of office and protocols of judgement, were worn when they adjudicated matters concerning the kingdom of Atlantis according to Poseidon's laws, which they discussed over the embers of the ritual fire in the low light of dawn. Bet they looked fly doing it, too.

Okay so all of this dopeness depended on them being good lads. Ol' Plato says that as long as the Atlantians judged and lived by Greenbeard's laws, that is, as long as they maintained and piously revered the divine element of their dual natures, then both they and their kingdom prospered. Maybe it was the wine and/or the laxity of what sounds like a forever holiday, the Poseidonic Laws began to be forgotten. Ol' Plato says it were mainly because of the dilution of the so-called divine nature of the Atlantians by widespread propagation with mortals. The mortal hate is harsh. In the end, the kingdom and its people failed, however. This denigration was compounded by the hubris of the increasingly human royal line. Sigh. Mortals be flexing, as they say. Witnessing the pride of the Atlantians, Zeus Whitebeard, assembled all the Olympians to pass judgement on the Atlantians, who were condemned for abandoning divine law, instead acting as a faithless coalition of demigods. Stiiiilll sounds kinda fly, non? Anyway, ol' Plato's account of the subsequent fate of Atlantis in the Critias ends abruptly following his description of this Olympic council. Okay.

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V.

On Theosophical Atlantis

Things start to get weird and racist as we go forward. While ol' Plato's dialogues jointly offer the quintessential Atlantis narrative, one of the most detailed examinations of Atlantis can be found in the second volume of Helena Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine (1888). Sidequest: Theosophical Society meetings are a hoot and a holler for a black man. Right. Let's start by putting them roughly side-by-side. Even a cursory glance at the two texts reveals obvious differences in terms of both style and purpose. Ol' Plato's pseudo-historical and allegorical account uses Atlantis as a literary device through which to explore themes of Classical Greek political thought, particularly the associated propitiousness and dangers of inter-state politics, foreign policy, bi- and trilateral sociopolitical, economic, and cultural relations, socio-religiosity, and hubris. Blavatsky, however, presents a complex and comprehensive anthropogenetic cosmology, which describes the origins and development of humanity through what she calls seven “root races”. I first read this like “well, here we go. Take me there, Helena!”. So, this seven-stage genealogy describes the anthropological, biological, and spiritual evolution of each race, from one into the other. It also provides ethnographic and archaeological speculation concerning the influence of their environments on the trajectories of their development and degeneration. Okay. The prelude. Got it.

So, Blavatsky gives an exhaustive account of the nature and culture of 'proto-Atlantians' she calls 'Lemuro-Atlanteans'. As discussed in Sumathi Ramaswamy's The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories (2004) and Frederick Spencer Oliver's A Dweller on Two Planets (1905) for example (there are troves of Atlantian literature out there. I'm trying – and as you will see failing – to keep this post short by keeping my reach near), Lemuria is a mythical/hypothetical lost island-continent that was believed to be located either in the Indian or Pacific Ocean. Blavatsky states that the Lemuro-Atlanteans “built cities and spread civilization”, represented “the incipient stage of anthropomorphism”, were grand in physical stature, evidence of which, according to Blavatsky, is preserved in their statuary on the Easter Islands, that Lemuria was destroyed by fire, and Atlantis by water (Blavatsky 316). Okay. So, theosophically, the Lemuro-Atlanteans represent the last of what Blavatsky calls “antediluvian monster-animals” whose technical and engineering prowess is allegedly evidenced by the fact that they constructed massive cities of rare materials (earth and metal, mostly volcanic rock, marble, and black stone), which they also used to carve their own likenesses for religious and ritualistic purposes (Blavatsky 316). Would make for a good band name: 'give it uuuup for THE ANTEDILUVIAN MONSTER-ANIMAAAAALS!' [sparse applause] 1! 2! 3! 4! Sorry. Okay, so according to the Doctrine, the Lemuro-Atlanteans were not only master architects, but also artisans, scientists, astronomers, and mathematicians – skills which they developed over hundreds of thousands of years (the exact timeframe of the civilizations' developmental trajectory being left unspecified in the text). Blavatsky goes further to state that the descendants of the Lemurians are the Indigenous Australians, described in the Doctrine as evolutionary degenerative in comparison to their Lemurian forebears, who “instead of vivifying the spark dropped into them by the 'Flames', extinguished it by long generations of bestiality” (Blavatsky 317). See what I mean?

Now, in contrast, the so-called Aryan (right on time), caucasoid nations, of which Blavatsky self-identifies, can trace their ancestry to the Atlantians, privileged as being distinct from the Lemurians in terms of being a more spiritual race, described in the Doctrine as the “Sons of Wisdom” (Blavatsky 317). Smh, as they say, we've arrived, Helena, thanks for the trip, no no no, keep it. Well, despite the racial dialectics Blavatsky establishes, in which the Lemurians are described as representative of the physical and the pastoral, while the Atlanteans the spiritual and intellectual, according to theosophical teachings, the Lemuro-Atlanteans were the origin of the first human civilizations. Being that the former are described as being the predecessors of the latter, this dialectic to which she refers would appear to be a spurious one established only to be employed in a self-aggrandizing narrative of a superior ancient and mythic ancestry, to my judgement. As such, in appealing to Atlantis, theosophy implicitly contradicts the very genealogy it invokes by stating that the conjunction of spirit and intellect has been a part of human civilization since antediluvian times. Blavatsky states that

the Atlantic portion of Lemuria was the geological basis of what is generally known as Atlantis. The latter, indeed, must be regarded rather as a development of the Atlantic prolongation of Lemuria, than as an entirely new mass of land upheaved to meet the special requirements of the Fourth Root-Race. Just as in the case of Race-evolution, so in that of the shifting and re-shifting of continental masses, no hard and fast line can be drawn where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in natural processes is never broken. Thus the Fourth Race Atlanteans were developed from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian Third Race Men, centred, roughly speaking, toward a point of land in what is now the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Their continent was formed by the coalescence of many islands and peninsulas which were upheaved in the ordinary course of time and became ultimately the true home of the great Race known as the Atlanteans. (Blavatsky 331-334: emphasis mine)

Despite Blavatsky's specification that there existed a somewhat paradoxical psycho-physical divide between the Lemurians and Atlantians, the latter are nevertheless privileged, described as representatives of a coalescence of the finest psycho-physical attributes of the Lemurian Third Race. As such, within the Theosophical framework of the Doctrine, the Atlantians were “giants whose physical beauty and strength reached their climax, in accordance with evolutionary law, toward the middle period of their fourth sub-race” (Blavatsky 317). Yeah. This white-is-right thinking reminds me of one of two times I attended meetings at a certain chapter of a Theosophical Society, as I mentioned up top. I walked in there and was regarded with a rather hard what-the-fuck.

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VI.

On Donnellyean Atlantis

How about this fellow Donnelly I've read about in my insomniac oh-that’s-interesting-late-night-early-dawn-bad-for-my-eyes-dim-light-reading? Well, turns out that like Blavatsky's account of Atlantis and Atlantians themselves, Ignatius Donnelly's Atlantis, the Antediluvian World (1882) provides a comprehensive overview of the history of Atlantis and its relation to the rest of the ancient world. However, while Blavatsky's claims make recourse to an occult or channelled provenance (the history of her Atlantis being received directly from otherworldly sources), Donnelly provides ostensibly ‘lucid’ theories and commentaries predicated on seemingly detailed philological study of antediluvian mytho-religious systems, traditions, narratives, legends, and folklore spanning from Peru to Scandinavia and Asia beyond. In this way, the purpose of Donnelly's text obviously differs from both Plato's and Blavatsky's in that it is an attempt to not only historically verify the existence and praxes of Atlantis and its people, but scientifically substantiate both by using numerous inter-textual and comparative techniques. Bang this one time for the true believers!

Sorry. Okay, so Donnelly's, let's call it Will-to-science, is palpable in the text's clear statement of its research interests and propositions. It's divided into five sections, each dealing with a different aspect of Atlantis's relation to other ancient cultures in an exhaustive and comparative analysis of its culture, religion, science, and socio-economics. Subject matter addressed in the text's chapters includes, but is not limited to; Atlantian colonies in Central America, Egypt, Mississippi, Iberia, Peru, and Ireland; Atlantian metallurgy, particularly of silver, gold, and what Donnelly describes as sacred metals, such as orichalcum; the traditions of Atlantis and the Atlantian royal line's relation to Phoenician, Greek, Semitic, and Norse gods; Atlantis and its relation to deluge narratives found in Chaldean, Biblical, and American legends; and a close reading of Platonic Atlantis. I know, right? Anyway, the opening chapter of the text explicitly states that the purpose of Donnelly's inquiry is to demonstrate several distinct and novel propositions. Of the 13 propositions explored, those that specifically pertain to Atlantis are as follows:

• That there once existed in the Atlantic Ocean, opposite the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea, a large island, which was the remnant of an Atlantic continent, and known to the ancient world as Atlantis.

• That the description of this island given by Plato is not, as has been long supposed, fable, but veritable history.

• That Atlantis was the region where man first rose from a state of barbarism to civilization.

• That the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greeks, the Phœnicians, the Hindoos, and the Scandinavians were simply the kings, queens, and heroes of Atlantis; and the acts attributed to them in mythology are a confused recollection of real historical events.

• That the mythology of Egypt and Peru represented the original religion of Atlantis, which was sun-worship.

• That the oldest colony formed by the Atlanteans was probably in Egypt, whose civilization was a reproduction of that of the Atlantic island.

• That the implements of the "Bronze Age" of Europe were derived from Atlantis. The Atlanteans were also the first manufacturers of iron.

• That the Phœnician alphabet, parent of all the European alphabets, was derived from an Atlantis alphabet, which was also conveyed from Atlantis to the Mayas of Central America.

• That Atlantis was the original seat of the Aryan or Indo-European family of nations, as well as of the Semitic peoples, and possibly also of the Turanian races.

• That Atlantis perished in a terrible convulsion of nature, in which the whole island sunk into the ocean, with nearly all its inhabitants.

• That a few persons escaped in ships and on rafts, and, carried to the nations east and west the tidings of the appalling catastrophe, which has survived to our own time in the Flood and Deluge legends of the different nations of the old and new worlds. (Donnelly 1-3)

I propose that what makes Donnelly's reading of Atlantis pertinent to any attempt at developing a theoretical profile of/for Plato's Atlantis as a model of utopia, heterotopia, and enclaves is the manner in which Donnelly treats Plato's narrative. While Blavatsky's account draws on numerous Eastern esoteric texts to create an elaborate and often convoluted geographical, spiritual, scientific, and genealogical/eugenic profile of Atlantis and its occupants, Donnelly emphasizes the simplicity of Plato's narrative. In short, Theosophical Atlantis describes the island-continent in decidedly mystical terms, while Donnelly centralizes the fact that Plato's accounts of Atlantis are presented in demystified, almost banal terms. For example, Donnelly points out that “there is nothing improbable in [Plato's narrative], so far as it describes a great, rich, cultured, and educated people”, and that “almost every part of Plato's story can be paralleled by descriptions of the people of Egypt or Peru” (Donnelly 22). Donnelly further emphasizes the simplicity of Plato's narrative by stating that “there are in Plato's narrative no marvels; no myths; no tales of gods, gorgons, hobgoblins, or giants. It is a plain and reasonable history of a people who built temples, ships, and canals; who lived by agriculture and commerce; who, in pursuit of trade, reached out to all the countries around them.” (Donnelly 23)

Okay, sure. While I broadly agree that the crux of the Don’s argument here, that by and large the Platonic Atlantian narrative can be described as stated above, ol' Plato is also very clear in invoking the Classical Greek gods in Atlantis's genesis and denouement. That said, however, the majority of the narrative pertains, as I think Donnelly correctly states, to the statecraft, engineering, socio-economics, and culture of Atlantis, its history being book-ended by the presence and actions of divine authorities and powers. Whether Donnelly's claims that the early history of most nations begin with gods or divine powers, beneficent or malign, and that ol' Plato's account contains nothing of the kind was a glaring oversight on his part or not, Donnelly emphasizes the narrative simplicity of ol' Plato's Atlantian accounts as the most fundamental aspect of said narratives. It is for this reason that Donnelly's offers this somewhat erroneous, albeit insightful observation; namely, that had “Plato sought to draw from his imagination a wonderful and pleasing story [concerning the origin of one of the most enigmatic yet persistent pseudo-mythical island- continents], we should not have so plain and reasonable a narrative. He would have given us a history like the legends of Greek mythology, full of the adventures of gods and goddesses, nymphs, fauns, and satyrs” (Donnelly 23).

To further emphasize this point, Donnelly briefly compares ol' Plato's Atlantis to the allegorical depictions of Utopian island-continents and their associated city-states in Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1624) and Thomas More's Utopia (1516) (we'll get there. Before Judgement Day, broken Seals, and trumpets’ clear clarion, I hope). Donnelly claims that unlike these two texts, there is no ostensible evidence that ol' Plato's narrative is didactic in nature, that there is no ancillary proof that “Plato sought to convey in it a moral or political lesson, in the guise of a fable” in which an ideal republic, or condemnation of the failures of a republic or civilization more broadly, are delineated (Donnelly 23). Instead, Donnelly describes ol' Plato's narrative as a “straightforward, reasonable history of a people ruled over by their kings, living and progressing as other nations have lived and progressed since their day” (Donnelly 23). I mean, okay. Sure.

Why'd I pick Blav and Don, here? Jawns like Rudolph Steiner's The Submerged Continents of Atlantis and Lemuria (1911), and James Churchward's The Lost Continent of Mu Motherland of Man (1926) are clear in stating the importance and influence of Blavatsky and Donnellys' texts on modern Atlantian studies (of which I'm...a part?), mystic and historiographic alike. On the level, the above excursus on the Doctrine and Atlantis was intended to illustrate that of the two texts typically regarded as being instrumental in the revival of modern interests in Atlantis, the texts themselves represent two broadly contrasting ways of countenancing Atlantis. With Blavatsky, one receives a mystical account of the island-continent and its inhabitants. With Donnelly, one receives a primarily, and perhaps more accurately pseudo-,historiographic account of Atlantis and its people and their relation to ancient cultures and the ancient world more generally. That said, however, from a theoretical standpoint at least, these two accounts beg the question as to whether Atlantis is best thought of as a utopia, heterotopia, or enclave. Let's talk about it. But first! I will briefly compare the similarities and differences between Plato's Atlantis to five other isles of Occidental myth and legend. Because I can't sleep (yet again).

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VII.

On Atlantis Contra Aeaea, Hy Brasil, Mag Mell, Saint Brendan's Island, and Hyperborea

Circeland:

Okay, sure. When it comes to mythical isles? Atlantis is the jewel that completes the crown, so to speak. But any crown worth wearing must have more than one jewel, right? Okay. So then, like Atlantis, most Occidental mythical islands can be loosely grouped into three categories, in my view. In no specific order, they are 1) Terra incognita (uncharted lands, which I theoretically associate with the concept of heterotopia), 2) terra horribilis (bad lands, which I theoretically associate with the concept of dystopia ), and 3) terra perfectus (perfect or ideal lands, which I also theoretically associate with the concept of utopia). These categories and their attendant taxonomies are not dialectically opposed, but dialogic. As such, a mythical isle can be described as one, two, or all three of the above. So for example Aeaea, the mythological island named in Homer's Odyssey as the fabled home of Circe, THE Sorceress (second, in my mind, only to Hecate herself), can be described as both terra perfectus and terra horibilis. Okay, let's start here. In Homer's epic, the text's eponymous hero Odysseus tells Alcinous that he was housed/imprisoned on the island for a year on his way home to Ithaca following the Trojan War. Boy, did he tarry. Sigh. Mortals be flexing. Anyway, while the geographical location of the island is contested in ancient texts, Roman authors typically identified Aeaea with mount Circeo on Cape Circaeum on the westerly coast of Italy, a small peninsula 100 kilometres south of Rome. Hence the name (*cough* Circeland)

So, in Book ten of the Epic, Homer describes Circe's home as being situated on “spacious ground” amid “dense brush and trees” (Homer 10: 197). Who doesn't like a shady acre – not the Shady Acres of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective fame, mind. Anyway, here, there are, quite clearly, topological similarities between Plato's Atlantis and Homer's recounting of Circe's Aeaea. Not unlike Cleito's keep (another dope band name, methinks), Circe's house is described as being located in a forest clearing, “built of polished stone, with views in all directions”, offering the sorceress a panoptic view of the island (Homer 10: 273-4). While not being the direct work of a divine entity – Cleito's place being engineered by Poseidon himself – Circe's house is, however, described as being supernaturally protected by mountain wolves and lions which surrounded it, bound to do so by Circe's magic, which Homer refers to as “wicked potions” (Homer 10: 273-290). Cue Animorphs theme song.

Aeaea, as a representation of both a terra perfuectus and a terra horibilis, is pretty much relative to the standing of Homer's characters on the isle itself. While Circe's beasts are described as docile, offering no initial threat or attack toward Ody Squad, the “wolves and sharp-clawed lions there” stood in Circe's gateway, completely under her thrall (Homer 10: 220). In this way, the isle is idyllic for Circe being that she has total dominion over it, the men that happen upon it, and the beasts, regardless of how wild or dangerous, that dwell thereupon as well. Now THAT is a proper flex.

But, for interloping auslanders like Ody Squad, however, the threat of this magical isle is inextricable from the feminine and magical power embodied and controlled by Circe, its patroness, mistress, protectrix and majestrix (shouts to Marvel’s Saturnyne, the Omniversal Majestrix of the Dimensional Development Court, like Emma Frost in body, Circe in spirit). This threat and power is represented as being predominantly magical as opposed to geographical or topological in that after Circe offers Ody Squad hospitality and food – stools (you don't think about it, but that's a nice thing to be offered, a stool), drink, cheese, barley meal, yellow honey, and Pramnian wine – they are described as losing all memory of their homes. On the one hand, such a total erasure of memory could be seen as a utopian moment allowing for or facilitating the opportunity for radical existential restructuring, tabula rasa, allowing each man in Ody Squad the chance to live a new life in which to create or re-create themselves. I'd leave these essays alone and become a musician. Or an astronomer.

Sounds kinda fly, right? However, this complete loss of memory is described as indiscriminate. Therefore, while Ody Squad, battle and sea-weary as they were at this point in their nostos, may have taken solace in the magical erasure of the horrors of war and death they had witnessed at and since Troy, so too gone would be the memories of their wives, lovers, children, siblings, parents, and any and all moments of both joy and sadness that made them up, that they’d experienced up to and including the moment of erasure. As such, Homer's construction of the island as a literary device is one of a dualistic contrast and the theme of simultaneity. It is a site on which and through which functions a double-Craft, a space in which time and its recollection can be subtly, albeit totally, countermanded.

On the other hand, the fact that after Ody Squad had “drunk down the drink [Circe] gave them”, she “penned them in her pigsties” and, using a wand, transmutates them from men into Moreauean hybrids, inter-special creatures with “bristles, heads, and voices just like pigs – their bodies looked like swine – but their minds were as before, unchanged”, presents Aeaea as both distressing and deceptive in the dualistic transmutivity it ostensibly offers (Homer 10: 310-315). I reckon it's important to note that the hybridity of said transformation is described as being rather traumatic. Though the transmuted men were provided for by the sorceress in both their anthropic and hybridized states, being also given acorns, beech nuts, and cornal fruit as man-beasts, they wallowed in mud and were transfixed by sorrow following their transmutation (Homer 10: 313-326). Wow. Shady Acres for real. As such, the sacred groves of Aeaea, in their resplendence, mystery, and horror, represent both the utopian and dystopian attributes of a mythical isle in terms of its seemingly auto-antonymic liminality, insularity, bounty, and carcerality. Furthermore, a vital difference between Aeaea and Atlantis pertains to the patronage and style of rulership of each isle. What distinguishes Aeaea from the patriarchal constitution and administration of Atlantis is the fact that the attractive and equally dangerous aspects of the island are under the absolute control of a female authority. Cool.

Hy Brasil:

Right, so Hy Brasil, unlike Aeaea, is known as a phantom island and therefore a good example of terra incognita. Similarly to Atlantis, it was believed to be situated somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, west of Ireland, in fact. In Irish mythology, the island is described as being perpetually veiled in mist except for one day every seven years whereby it would become visible, but would remain physically inaccessible. As such, the isle's status as terra incognita has an important temporal constituent. The fact that it has a limited window of perceptibility and verifiable corporeality by sight means that whatever imaginings of the horror or succour it could offer are exacerbated by the brevity or temporariness of its presence. Interesting. Now, according to Barabara Freitag's Hy Brasil: The Metamorphosis of an Island, from Cartographic Error to Celtic Elysium (2013), Hy Brasil is itself identified with numerous other mythical isles including the Elysian Fields, the Isles of the Blest, the Fortune Islands, Thule, Ogygia, and the Garden of the Hesperides, as well as Atlantis, and therefore with numerous cartographic positions, geophysical descriptions, and also spatio-existentialisms (sorry) (Freitag 6). Similarly, in Seafaring Lore and Legend (2004), Peter Jeans states that thematically, Hy Brasil, and the various other names by which it is known, represents the physical embodiment of longing and the unattainable. Due to the unreachability and therefore perpetual veil – literally and figuratively – of mystery protecting the isle from discovery and analysis, Hy Brasil symbolizes a perfect space which

exercise[s] a powerful fascination for sailors and shore-folk alike, because they represented the Utopia that we human creatures perennially long for [,] they are far-off lands where things will be different (and immeasurably better), where the sun shines ever-warm on a green, pleasant, and fruitful land, where good health will be restored to halt the lame, love to the lorn, riches to the poor, and so on. (Jeans 7)

Hy Brasil differs from Aeaea in terms of what each island offers. While the latter is a site of dualism in the form of onto-existential transformativity, offering mystery, magic, and danger wrapped in the unpredictability, power, and attraction of female enchantment, the former is decidedly more straightforwardly utopian in its offer of peace and immortality symbolized by its idyllic spatio-temporal perfection. This idealism functions both through and because of the islands brevity of perceptibility – a brevity of corporeality whose prehistory is as veiled in mystery as the island itself – allowing the onlooker a glimpse at something assumed to be ironically infinite or stable beyond the mist of its occlusion, and the paradoxically stable instability of its re-appearances. So, when applied to Atlantis, the temporal constituent underpinning the legend of Hy Brasil is inverted in that ol' Plato describes the history of Atlantis as spanning over nine thousand years. As such, unlike the brevity of Hy Brasil's corporeal verifiability, the only brevity prevalent in ol' Plato's narrative of Atlantis pertains to the swiftness of its destruction.

Mag Mell:

There's also Mag Mell, another mythical isle of Irish mythology, which is described as utopian and, like Atlantis, is established and overseen by a divine entity. In The Dictionary of Celtic Mythology and Folklore (1998), James MacKillop describes Mag Mell as an idyllic site associated with terms and phrases such as “plain of honey” and “plain of delights” which appear in several Irish narratives describing otherworlds in which “life is endlessly joyous and sweet, where trees bear blossoms and fruit at once, and where there is neither discomfort nor death” (MacKillop 308). They really fucked with honey back in them days, huh? Anyway, in terms of Mag Mell's topographical features, MacKilliop states that “although the name of this FAIRYLAND seems to imply that it is a level place on land, it is often described as a floating ISLAND, the domain of the Celtic sea god MANANNAN MAC LIR” (MacKillop 308). Regardless of whether Atlantis is seen as an island utopia or not, its topography, rulership, and provenance accord with those of other bounteous oceanic enclaves overseen or created by sea gods. Okay, sure.

Saint Brendan's Island:

But, unlike Atlantis, which ol' Plato describes as an imperially martial city-state, Saint Brendan's Island is described as being a Paradisaical reprieve from the prejudices and wars of humanity. According to William F. Williams's Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience: From Alien Abductions to Zone Therapy (2000), the narrative detailing the voyages of Saint Brendan are part of a sub-genre of religious and fantasy writing he calls 'Paradise literature'. This literature typically details the amazing adventures of ecclesiastical pilgrims and their encounters with a variety of both real and fictional creatures including giants, talking birds, and other dangerous animals (Williams 41). The exploits of Saint Brendan are presented in a text called the Navigation Sancti Brendani Abbatis (Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot) (trans. Denis O' Donoghue 1893). The text recounts the Irish monk's attempt to discover Paradise on earth by sailing west.

According to the narrative, after having founded a community at Clontarf in western Ireland, serving as its abbot and working as a missionary in Scotland and Wales, Saint Brendan, along with 17 comrades, sailed west in order to discover Paradise in a leather boat called a curragh. During his voyage, Saint Brendan and his crew (which I will call SBS-Saint Brendan Squad) are said to have entered fantastical spaces, including the Island of Sheep, the Paradise of Birds, and the edge of Hell, before arriving at the outlying areas of Paradise itself (Williams 41). Saint Brendan's Island differs from Mag Mell in the sense that while the latter represents a symbol of the unattainable, the inaccessible for the living, the former represents not only the bounty and fecundity typically associated with Occidental mythical isles, but that this excess is accessible by the living who can persevere with faith to overcome the trials of the journey and only thereby gain access to said terrestrial Paradise. Furthermore, Saint Brendan's Island illustrates the difference in what mythical islands offer in their accessibility or inaccessibility. While ol' Plato's Atlantis offers the seemingly banal socio-economic, political, and existential praxes of Classical Greece or Egypt, albeit exoticized by the insularity of its topography, Saint Brendan's Island offers truly fantastical, that is radically alternative, modes and types of being.

Hyperborea:

Okay, cool. Now, Hyperborea, unlike the unpeopled pastoral idyll of Saint Brendan's Island Paradise, is more akin to ol' Plato's Atlantis in the fact that it is described as both populated by Olympian demigods and/or their descendants by the Classical Greek poet Pindar. In The Odes of Pindar (trans, Richmond Lattimore 1942), Pindar describes the Hyperboreans as “Apollo's people”, sun-worshipers who occupied a utopian, insular, and inaccessible land, stating that “never on foot or ship could you find the marvellous road to the feast of the Hyperboreans” (Pindar 88). Is it too late to watch some episodes of Battlestar: Galactica? Sorry. Okay, so in this way, Hyperborea reflects the notion of the Occidental mythical isle as a radically isolated space, an enclave beyond the reach of specifically mortal means and locomotion. Like Atlantis, Hyperborea is the exclusive dwelling of numino-mortal (sorry) beings, and is thereby a space founded and governed by hybridity. This is evidenced by the fact that Pindar names Perseus, a demigod, as an example of the type of being having access to Hyperborea.

In the Pythian Odes, Hyperborea itself is described as a space of otherworldy perfection, a blessed place where “never the muse is absent from their ways: lyres clash, and flutes cry, and everywhere maiden choruses whirling” (Pindar 87-88). This image of Hyperborea as a space of artistic innovation and freedom likens it with Blavatsky's description of the spiritually and creatively adroit inhabitants of theosophical Atlantis. Part of me is like cool! Part of me is like yeah whatever. Anyway, Pindar describes the Hyperboreans themselves as occupants of a land in which “neither disease nor bitter old age is mixed in their sacred blood; far from labour and battle they live; they escape Nemesis, the over just” (Pindar 87-88). As such, unlike ol' Plato's Atlantis – whose inhabitants were forced to wage war and trade – Pindar's Hyperborea is not only utopian in the sense that its chronotope is described as perfectly idyll, but it is also heterotopian in the sense that its people and their way of life are unmarred by the ravages of time or the forces of radical differentiation in the form of socio-political change, revolution, violence, death, epidemic, labour, or commerce.

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VIII.

On Jameson, Utopia, & Atlantis

Having provided the above excursus on Platonic, Theosophical, and what we can call pseudo-historiographic Atlantis, as well as a brief comparative analysis of Atlantis against other Occidental mythical isles for context, I’ll think through some stuff by referring to Jameson, Foucault, and Bey's theoretical conceptualizations of utopia in order to test Plato's Atlantis against their formulations of utopia, heterotopia, and the enclave. In Archaeologies of the Future (2005), Jameson states that one of the objective preconditions for a utopia is that a utopia must presume that

the miseries and injustices thus visible must seem to shape and organize themselves around one specific ill or wrong”, further claiming that “the Utopian remedy [toward such ills] must at first be a fundamentally negative one, and stand as a clarion call to remove and to extirpate this specific root of all evil from which all others spring. (Jameson 12)

For this reason, Jameson cautions that approaching utopias with positive expectations is a mistake, which I extrapolate in my thinking about Atlantis to suggest that while a preponderance of Occidental mythical isles are typically seen as spaces that consistently represent the idyllic, particularly pastoral, utopia, they also misrepresent such formulations as well.

Right, so, while the bounty of Atlantis as described by Plato offers “visions of [a] happy world, spaces of fulfillment and cooperation, representations which correspond generically to the idyll or the pastoral rather than the utopia”, the concept of the mythical isle is not what it seems (Jameson 12). From a Jamesonian perspective, outside of Classical Greek political thought and allegory, I could probably say, with some confidence, shaky maybe, that there are two distinct ways that Plato's Atlantis, in either utopian or dystopian terms, as terra horribilis or terra perfectus, can be thought. Either as an “alleviation and elimination of the sources of exploitation and suffering” or as a “composition of blueprints for bourgeois comfort”, that is, the mythical island as resort, land of extreme luxury, and/or unattainable or radical exclusivity (Jameson 12).
According to Jameson,

Utopian space is an imaginary enclave within real social space, in other words, that the very possibility of Utopian space is itself a result of spatial and social differentiation. But it is an aberrant by-product, and its possibility is dependent on the momentary formation of a kind of eddy or self-contained backwater within the general differentiation a process and its seemingly irreversible forward momentum. (Jameson 15)

When thought of in utopian/dystopian terms, the notion of atemporality, a chronotope's ability to remain unravaged by time's dismantling of spacial inertia, a mythical isle like Atlantis appears to be akin to a “pocket of stasis”, an “enclave within which Utopian fantasy can operate” (Jemson 15). This atemporality decouples the utopian enclave from the momentum and forces of social change. Such socio-political atemporality is, in praxis, “the distance of the Utopias from practical politics, on the basis of a zone of the social totality which seems eternal and unchangeable, even within this social ferment [Plato, Blavatsky, and Donnelly] have attributed to the age itself” (Jameson 15). If we consider Atlantis as an example of such a space, while the Atlantian acropolis Plato describes is topographically permeable along specific channels (the transversal causeway, in particular), it is, in its residual praxes, still a closed space triple canopied by zonal walls. As such, within the remit of the Platonic legend, Atlantis is a space beyond the social turbulence of other named continental societies (G.O.A.Ts like Ancient Greece and Egypt, in particular), due to both its natural oceanic barricades, and the edifices of Atlantian engineering that doubly surround and sequester it.

Hmmm, okay. While Jameson describes a utopia as a space predicated on stasis and insularity, a passive preservation achieved through inaction, the protective insularity that Plato's Atlantis projects does not stop it from projecting itself outwardly. Small dog bite hard. The aggressive and partially successful naval campaign waged by the Atlantian navy, its imperialism, and continued socio-economic and martial supremacy which, in turn, warranted the formation of a united Greek coalition to answer the Atlantian war-machine, illustrates that Platonic Atlantis was not a model of socio-political abstentionism like Hy Brasil, Hyperborea, or Mag Mell. It is described as a distant, albeit active, emanation of power. Therefore, unlike Jameson's description of a utopia, Plato's Atlantis is thoroughly engaged in the socio-political and economic gestalt of the ancient world; a prime mover involved and influencing, through war and commerce, the direction of its momentum. While isolated and also made unassailable by the natural defence offered by the Atlantic ocean, Atlantis, as an interstice-space, would appear to be an immovable force. Forever forever save for the sabotage of its own nature and its own hand to reify it full. According to Jameson, utopias of this kind can only be troubled “in those rare moments in which revolutionary politics shakes the whole edifice”, in the case of Platonic Atlantis, the Greek coalition, on the one hand, and the decidedly apolitical cataclysm that destroyed the island itself, on the other (Jameson 16).

Seems unavoidably and deeply dualistic, does Plato's Atlantis, then. While the house of Atlas would appear to be a court of ancient power, an “ahistorical enclave within a bustling movement of secularization and national and commercial development” which “offers a kind of mental space in which the whole system [of social being and its governance] can be imagined as radically different” from the rest of the ancient world, Plato's Atlantis, though described as a mythical island enclave space, does participate in national and commercial movements of other city-states (Jameson 16). As such, Plato's Atlantis is not atemporal, but rather a space in which the momentum of socio-political and commercial (ex)change is not absolutely governed by external forces. Okay, so, perhaps Plato's Atlantis is a chronotope of alternative time, one influenced by the momentum of differentiation in ancient time, but not determined by it.

We could say, then, that Plato's Atlantis is

something like a foreign body within the social [zeitgeist of antiquity as described by Plato whereby in it,] the differentiation process [is] momentarily been arrested, so that [it] remain as it were momentarily beyond the reach of [ancient socio-political forces] and testify to [their] political powerlessness, at the same time that [it] offer[s] a space in which new wish images of the social can be elaborated and experienced. (Jameson 16)

In the last instance, however, in the case of Plato's Atlantis, the force that exerted the ultimate influence on the island and its ruling city-state was not the differentiating socio-political and economic momentum of the Athenians, or the liberated Egyptians, nor the former Atlantian colonies, but nature itself.

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IX.

On the Loss of Divine Nature as a Utopian Moment

Recalling Blavatsky and her wild eugenico-anthroplogical study of Lemuria and Atlantis above is important here in acknowledging utopia's relation to what Jameson describes as the anthropological note in the development of utopianism. According to Jameson, this development was enabled by geographical exploration and the resultant travel narratives such voyages produced, the voyages of Saint Brendan being one such example (Jameson 18). While Jameson states that the anthropological element of utopian enclaves is typically a combination of geographical exploration, travel narratives, and philosophical materialism, Blavatsky's Atlantis is completely predicated on Theosophy's consolidation of scientific, mystic/occult, and religious precepts. The Theosophical exploration of the anthropological origins and developments of the interstice-state, represented in the Doctrine by Lemuria and Atlantis, gestures to what Jameson describes as a tendency toward referring to “philosophical materialism to produce a new geographical experience of the enclave, in which new information about tribal societies and their well-nigh Utopian dignity are conjoined with [...] climatological determinism” (Jameson 18). Time to spend a token to buy a curio. What results is a utopian fetishization of not only closed, isolated, or enclavic spaces, but their inhabitants as a re-appraisal and glorification of primitive communism, primitivism, and tribal society. This fetishization also includes “the closures of nationalism on the one hand, which very much vehiculates a geographical secession specified as a racial uniqueness”, which Blavatsky, and subsequently the Nazis, identified with and predicated the so-called righteousness of their global imperialism, as well as their sense of racial superiority on, as noted in Bettina Arnold's "The past as propaganda: totalitarian archaeology in Nazi Germany" (1990) and Hans Tridle's The Esoteric Codex: Nazism and the Occult (2015) (Jameson 19).

A negative reading of Plato's Atlantis, and particularly the constituent element of its rulers, namely their divine nature, would suggest that the destruction of Atlantis was, in a way, a utopian moment within Plato's narrative. While Atlantis itself ostensibly represents an enclave within the broader global-social milieu of the ancient world as described by Plato, the House of Atlas represents an enclave within an enclave, a house of demigods ruling an unassailable, socio-economically prosperous city-state. However, the enclavic status of the House of Atlas is precisely what allows one to think of the destruction of Atlantis in utopian terms. As Plato describes, the destruction of Atlantis was the result of its rulers diluting the currency of their divinity by secularizing it, mortifying it, humanizing it within an increasingly anthropic enclave. This onto-existential, socio-political, and cultural momentum of anti-differentiation by which the nature of all Atlantians, royal or not, was gradually egalitarianized through sexual hybridization, can simultaneously be seen as the very root of all evil that warranted the city's destruction, the source of all of its social ills and ultimate fate, as well as something that could have opened up an opportunity for a new utopian Atlantis, a revolutionary Atlantis, governed and populated by beings not quite demigods, but neither fully mortal. Sounds pretty swell, you ask me. Maybe too good.This possibility of a deeply interstitial Atlantis populated by a truly interstitial people is undermined by the fact that Plato's narrative states that the origins, rise, and fall of Atlantis are inextricably bound to Poseidon's divinity. Should the divinity of he or his line fail, so too would the utopianism of their keep, namely Atlantis itself, and its people.

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X.

On Foucault, Heterotopia, & Atlantis

While Bacon and More use Atlantis as a figurative model to propound a didactic analysis/reflection of the sociopolitical, cultural, and religious aspects of their respective contemporary worlds, as some argue does Plato in terms of Classical Greek political thought, I’m always thinking of Foucault who points out that “utopias are sites with no real place”, that “they present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces” (Foucault 3). Okay, word. In order to test Platonic Atlantis against Foucauldian heterotopia, I am inclined to take Donnelly's position in terms of the probability, not necessarily historical reality, of Platonic Atlantis here. This is to say that Donnelly's point concerning the banality of Plato's account of the island-content and its city-state is an interesting insight that would suggest that Platonic Atlantis does not represent the distillation of a perfect, that is static, society. Instead, Plato's account describes a rather dynamic history of a people, their origin, rise, and fall. If Atlantis, as described within the remit of Plato's dialogues, which ostensibly appears to be a utopia, but theoretically reneges this definition by not being representative of an ideal, timeless society, can it be described as a heterotopia? Or, less literally, is there anything heteroptoic about Plato's Atlantis?

I can’t recall how many times I’ve made recourse to it, but in “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopia” (1984), Foucault discusses the concept of heterotopia by providing and analysing various styles thereof. Rather crisp and pithy, Foucault's explorations on the subject are helpful in addressing the above question because the term “heterotopia” describes the human geographical phenomena of spaces and places that function in non-hegemonic ways or conditions. As such, heterotopic spaces are spaces of otherness, liminality, fusion, confusion, play, and dynamism. They can hybridize various modalities and states of matter, they can be physical and ephemeral simultaneously like the space of a telephone call or one's reflection in the mirror.

Let me try run ‘em out. Within the narrative framework of Plato's Atlantis, the city-state can be thought of as heterotopic in the following ways. Firstly, Atlantis, both topographically and culturally, represents a “counter site, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted” (Foucault 3). According to Plato's account, this is at least topographically accurate. As an island-continent, the city-state of Atlantis is described as a topographical counter-site and reflection of the sociopolitical and socio-cultural infrastructures and ideologies of other, and in certain respects rival, cultures, most notably Greece (Athens) and Egypt (Sias).

Culturally, according to both Donelley and Blavatsky, Atlantis is regarded as both the coalescence and origin of numerous ancient cultures and peoples – their religions, artistry, intellectual and physical skills and achievements – from the mythical Lemurian Third Race, to the Greco-Romans, Egyptians, Scandinavians, Phoenicians, Hindus, and Peruvians. While Plato describes the relationship between Atlantis, the Greeks and Egyptians as one of contention, conquest, and war, the destruction of Atlantis symbolizes an inversion of these other sites, cultures, and histories, from which Atlantis originated, influenced, and inherited. As such, in its reflection of other cultures, Atlantis is symbolically indistinguishable from the first heterotopia Foucault names in his essay, namely the mirror. Through Atlantis, the aforementioned ancient cultures see themselves in a civilization that no longer or never really existed, in an unreal, virtual, mythic space that opens up behind the surface of said cultures' histories (Foucault 4). According to Blavatsky and Donnelly, entire races, technologies, forms of commerce, religions, scientific/empirical elements, and psycho-physical abilities originate in a space the veracity of which is and has been deeply contested. As such, Plato's Atlantis can be seen as the shadow of numerous ancient cultures and people, one that gives visibility to them, that allows said cultures to understand and perceive themselves in a space that is not or, at the very least, radically absent (Foucault 4).

This reflective aspect of Plato's Atlantis foregrounded by both Blavatsky and Donnelly seemingly appeals to the utopian attributions thereof; an idealized reflection to constitute an equally idealized history and origin of an entire culture(s). However, in view of the banality of Atlantis made apparent with the seemingly oddly unadorned Platonic narrative of the island-continent and its city-state, there is a heightened, that is perceptible, sense of Atlantis's de-mystified reality. Therefore, based on this pseudo-'reality' Donnelly highlights, Atlantis exerts a counteraction on/against the the reality of the Mayans, Incans, Norsemen, Egyptians, or Athenians, and the histories that they occupy. It appears as is from the sunken ground of Atlantis, from the ground of this virtual or mythical space, this specular ghost the shape of an island, these cultures are thought to have constituted and re-constituted themselves and the times and places of their civilizations and histories (Foucault 4). Plato's Atlantis functions as a heterotopia in this sense because it is, according to Blavatsky and Donnelly, described as being connected to other real spaces of ancient civilization, by real socio-political, economic and cultural forms of international/intercultural relations and exchange - religion, commerce, and/or colonial conquest. But it is also unreal because in order for this perception to occur, both Blavatsky and Donnelly have to pass through/into the myth of Atlantis, namely, an advanced civilization, lost in a day and night of calamity, leaving no unquestionable proofs or traces of the veracity of its existence (Foucault 4). I gues sometimes, you gotta pass through the back of the mirror to arrive at yourself. Donnelly's exorbitant, or at least metonymic, method of achieving the goal of his text, namely substantiating a single narrative of Atlantis (Plato's) as verifiable history, seems to undermine its very telos. Donnelly's attempt to discover a single history reflected in those of many does not reflect the singular history of Atlantis Plato describes. So, basically, Donnelly's Atlantis is fractal, a bricolage of various times and places, peoples and praxes, all warped inward and outward in their constitutive co-reflection. Donnelly's Atlantis is not a vanity of the ancient world. It is a kaleidoscope of the ancient world.

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XI.

On Plato’s Atlantis and the Problem of Banality

I’m tempted to look more closely at Plato's narrative description of Atlantis because Atlantis has many of the hallmarks of a heterotopia, or indeed, heterotopias within it. That said, the account of Atlantian life and culture, though surprisingly robust despite its pithiness, does not elaborate, in depth, certain praxes of its inhabitants that would help elucidate a clear theoretical profile of the city-state's heterotopianism, or the heterotopias it contained. Despite Donnelly's claim in favour of the veracity of Atlantis based on the banality of Plato's account thereof, in many ways, and I am tickled by this, Plato's narrative is not banal enough. I mean there’s no or little mention made of Atlantian funerary (Atlantian cemeteries), sexual (brothels), vacational (Atlantian leisure), theatrical (Atlantian theatre), or corrective (Atlantian jails, dungeons, or wards-though Plato does make mention of guard houses) praxes. That might be asking the old sage for too much, now. Still, Plato's narrative does make mention of spaces within the city-state that have heterotopic qualities which can be used to theoretically speculate on Atlantian 'heterotopian-ness', for example, the temple of Poseidon, an island-long race-horse track, bathing areas/houses, and gymnasiums.

Foucault describes heterotopias of crisis as spaces wherein which socio-cultural rituals of initiation or coming-of-age, or consummation occur privately. Examples include boarding schools or motel rooms. I can vouch for the former. Vouch, testify, condemn, lament. The problem of banality re-emerges here as Plato does not make mention, direct or indirect, of how Atlantian youths are educated, how menstruation is approached, how the elderly are housed and taken care of, how and where Atlantian marriages/betrothals are consummated, or how pregnant Atlantian woman are cared for. As such, the coming of age and/or crisis of these modes of being, as Foucault calls them, ones which must occur “elsewhere/nowhere” other than the home, is left to speculation (Foucault 5).

This problem of banality extends to another type of heterotopia Foucault describes, namely, the heterotopia of deviation. Such spaces sequester individuals expressing behaviour considered aberrant or contraventional against the gross socio-cultural norm. Examples include hospitals, prisons, convalescent homes, asylums, and cemeteries. While Plato mentions that the kings of Atlantis had power of judgement over the lives and deaths of their countrywomen and men based on sacred Poseidonic laws, his narrative does not mention how Atlantian's are buried, the rituals, protocols, prayers, and processions concerning the death, internment, katabasis, or resurrection of the body involved, nor simply how Atlantian corpses are disposed of and removed from the city-state. However, Plato mentions successive generations of Atlas's line, each seeking to outdo each in terms of the addition of wealth, resources, infrastructure, and splendour to the kingdom they inherited. As such, the praxis of primogeniture categorically requires death in order to be practised. Despite this, Plato does not make mention of any Atlantian heterotopias of deviation; no mention of cemeteries, charnel houses, or mausoleums. Furthermore, Plato's narrative makes no mention of Atlantian medicine (though in Cirtias, Atlantian starcraft, seacraft, and arithmetic are noted as particularly prodigious), or sciences/arts of healing. In fact, there is no mention of illness, infection, epidemic, or sickness of any kind, psychological or physical in Plato's Atlantis. However, simply because Plato omits details of this nature should not lead one to assume that Atlantis was a deathless land, nor its inhabitants immortal, like Pindar's Hyperborea(ns).

The first serviceable example of heterotopia Plato's narrative provides in terms of developing a theoretical profile of/for Atlantis is that of the heterotopia of juxtaposition. While Plato's account does not make mention of Atlantian theatrical praxes, an element of which Foucault takes as an ur-example of a heterotopia of juxtaposition, namely the theatrical stage, he does make mention of the elaborate and fecund gardens of Atlantis. Hetertopias of juxtaposition are spaces wherein which a single space juxtaposes numerous spaces. Such heterotopias could also be described as heterotopias of bricolage/coalescence. Examples include the garden, whereby plants and flowers can be arranged or altered so as to act as a microcosm for numerous environments and habitats. According to Foucault, “the oldest example of these heterotopias that take the form of contradictory sites is the garden”, a microcosm in which “all the vegetation of the garden was supposed to come together in this space” (Foucault 6). As such, the garden is supposed to attest to symbolic perfection, and act as “the smallest parcel of the world and then it is the totality of the world” ( Foucault 6). Consider this against Plato's pithy, albeit comprehensive, account of Atlantian horticulture:

Also whatever fragrant things there now are in the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or essences which distil from fruit and flower, grew and thrived in that land; also the fruit which admits of cultivation, both the dry sort, which is given us for nourishment and any other which we use for food-we call them all by the common name pulse, and the fruits having a hard rind, affording drinks and meats and ointments, and good store of chestnuts and the like, which furnish pleasure and amusement, and are fruits which spoil with keeping, and the pleasant kinds of dessert, with which we console ourselves after dinner, when we are tired of eating- all these that sacred island which then beheld the light of the sun, brought forth fair and wondrous and in infinite abundance. With such blessings the earth freely furnished them. (Plato)

Cool, so, through the heterotopia of Atlantian gardens and overall horticulture, which embody concepts including fecundity, specifically appetitive abundance, bio-difference/diversity, and perfection – all of which Atlantis's gardens embody in the Critias – intimates a latent link between Atlantis and other mythical utopian spaces, not all of which are isles, such as Eden, Shangri-La, and Shambalah, for example.

In terms of heterotopias of time, Foucault states that there are heterotopias of indefinitely accumulating time, for example museums and libraries in whose spaces objects from various points in time are brought together and though existing in time, are shielded from temporal decay by virtue of being housed therein. According to Foucault, museums and libraries have become heterotopias in which time does not necessarily stop, but rather represent a “will to enclose in one place all times, all epochs, all forms, all tastes, the idea of constituting a place of organizing in this way a sort of perpetual and indefinite accumulation of time in an immobile place” (Foucault 7). As such, heterotopias of time are spaces wherein which objects from varying points of time can be physically dislodged from their original chronotopes. A second type of heterotopia of time concerns the opposite of infinity, namely, the brevity of time. Foucault refers to this as “the mode of the festival” (Foucault 7). Foucault chooses the fairground as an example of such a space, one that accumulates heteroclite objects and praxes which stand idle for the duration of the year, save on specified days/weeks where they teem with activity, albeit only for a truncated period of time.

Besides horse-racing (yet remaining mum on the frequency of its practice), Plato makes no mention of Atlantian entertainment in his narrative, making the discernment of whether or not Atlantis possessed heterotopias of time in the mode of the festival speculative at best which, in comparison to the privileged details of Atlantian horticultural praxes and provisions, seems odd. Furthermore, while Plato makes clear mention of the intellectual feats of Atlantis, its impressive edifices attesting to its inhabitants' engineering prowess, their development of the Atlantian acropolis, its fortifications, the success and might of the city-state's navy and so on, the author makes no mention of where or how this wealth of knowledge was ordered, stored, or referred to. There is no mention of an Atlanian library, museum, record house, legislature, clerical registrar or archive. So like Plato's omission of detail regarding Atlantian medicine, the lack of detail concerning Atlantian infrastructures of learning, knowledge, history, and art might lead one to assume that all Atlantian wisdom and techne were, in some way, an affordance made possible by the hereditary aspects of their semi-divine natures; or, as Brendan Fraser’s Rick O’ Connell says to Rachel Weisz’s Evey on the burning riverboat: “relax, I am the map”.

In terms of the heterotopia of purification, Foucault specifies that these spaces always “presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable”, meaning that “the hetrotopic site is not freely accessible like a public space”, but “either the entry is compulsory, as in the case of entering a barracks or a prison, or else the individual has to submit to rites and purifications. To get in one must have certain permission and make certain gestures” (Foucault 7). As such, these heterotopias are typically isolated, permeable, but ultimately exclusive and not freely open to the public. The examples Foucault refers to, in terms of activities of purification, both religious and hygienic, are Muslim hammams and Scandinavian saunas.

While Plato makes mention of Atlantis's cold and hot springs and the bathing areas established for private citizens of the Acropolis, the royal house, horses, men, and women in his narrative, the nature of the use of and access to said bathing areas remains unclear. However, the rituals of judgement – which involve hunting, sacrifice, libation, feasting, and the wearing of the vestments of judgement in the form of azure robes – suggest that the temple of Poseidon at the centre of the island-continent represents a heterotopia of ritual/purification. I think of it this way in, well, two ways. First, the temple of Poseidon is described as being a space where the Atlantian rulers convened to pass judgement against themselves and their people. Before any judgement was passed, Plato describes, in detail, the protocols and rituals each member of the council would have to undergo and properly execute in order to purify themselves, both before their gods and before one another, of any charges or impiety. This ritual involves specific clothing, times, sacrificial victims, and pronouncements. Second, the ritual of judgement cannot occur without the preceding ritual sequence of purification. Furthermore, this entire process occurs out of view of the public, in terms of both space and time (it being characterized as a nocturnal/auroric rite). As such, the dual-fold predication of Atlantian rituals of judgement and the spaces in which they take place are hetrotopic in that they are 1) exclusive, only accessible to a conditional few and 2) that accessibility to based on knowledge of the requisite processes and protocols of ritual purification.

It is in terms of the sixth possibility of heterotopia Foucault theorizes that Plato's Atlantis, both as city-state and island-continent, is most heterotopic. Foucault describes the sixth principle of the heterotopia as being twofold. On the one hand, the heterotopia's function is to create spaces of illusion. The function of the space of illusion is to expose all real spaces and sites wherein which human life is partitioned as more illusory. On the other hand, Foucault states these heterotopias also “create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled. This latter type would be the heterotopia, not of illusion, but of compensation” (Foucault 8). If we regard Atlantis as an idyllic and mystical stronghold of a super-race, as Plato's literary narrative intimates, Blavatsky's Theosophical anthro-mysticism professes, and Donnelly's comparative philology attempts to scientifically verify, then the island-continent and city-state represent a perfect organization not only of terrestrial space, evidenced in the concentric symmetry of its topography, but also the perfect arrangement of its society and populace. But beyond this, Atlantis – and mythical islands more generally – as an island, theoretically shares some of the qualities of the heterotopia par excellence, namely, the boat/ship. Foucault states,

the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea and that, from port to port, from tack to tack, from brothel to brothel, it goes as far as the colonies in search of the most precious treasures they conceal in their gardens [...therefore] in civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates. (Foucault 9)

It would then seem that Atlantis's naval imperialism, bio-diversity, and socio-economic fecundity Plato describes, all closed in on itself and yet given over to the sea and the treasures hidden in the ports, brothels and, gardens of ancient Egypt and Athens, conforms to Foucault's rather poetic conceptualization of the heterotopia par excellence. That said, however, regardless of how heterotopic a boat/ship may be, Plato's narrative of Atlantis sharply illustrates that a mythical island, like a boat/ship, regardless of however laden, can sink.

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XIII.

On Bacon’s Bensalem and Atlantis as Revisionist Heterotopia of Exclusion and Time

Sir Francis Bacon's unfinished and posthumously published text The New Atlantis (1627) is typically regarded as a work of speculative or utopian fiction. Hermeneutically, the short-story length text is often interpreted as a collection of the author's tastes, ideals, and aspirations concerning the establishment and maintenance of an ideal commonwealth. Swell. In the fictitious island city-state of Bensalem, the author's so-called New Atlantis, Bacon concentrates his concerns and hopes for a decidedly utopian vision of dignity, splendour, piety, civic consciousness. Don’t they always. Well, when taken in conjunction with Bacon's preceding texts such as Essays (1597), Of the Interpretation of Nature (1603), and The Advancement of Learning (1605), these sociopolitical and cultural praxes and ideologies were greatly desired by Bacon as a statesman. In the text, these traditional humanist views are buttressed by Bacon's more futurist speculations through the aspect of the narrative that has, to date, received the most concerted scholastic attention, namely the collegiate institute of advanced learning called The House of Solomon. Dope. It is through The House of Solomon, where, within the seemingly boundless remit of speculative fiction, Bacon imagines, and in some ways prophecies or predicts, the future of human knowledge within noteworthy degrees of accuracy in his approximations. Nostradamus entered the chat lookin’ for all the soothsayer smoke*. Hmmm, you know, I think it can be argued that Bacon's imagined college can be viewed as a referent for the modern research university for both pure and applied sciences. Maybe a reach. Regardless, the speculative epistemology and new science Bacon ostensibly champions has, latent within even its broadest speculations, a practical or utilitarian awareness. Science, and its dedicated advancement, was seen to have, in the last instance, the teleological aim of the total control or mastery of nature in order to expedite and facilitate the comfort and convenience of humanity in toto. I hear a Geiger counter screaming somewhere. This goal is evident in the application of the discoveries made by the students, scholars, and researchers of Solomon's House in the diegetic scientific enterprises outlined in the text. Metaphysics or abstract thinking, however, are ostensibly shunned. In this sense, Bacon's Atlantis in Bensalem is more Platonic in the banality of its pragmatism, 'banality' here not being used prejudicially, but as Ian Box notes, the fabulous aspect of the narrative offers a fantastical banality, in the form of righteous uniformity (Box 6). Banality here signifies the predominance placed on the relation between what has come to be co-extensive with myth or the mythic, namely Atlantis, and the imminent. As such, Bacon's Atlantis in Bensalem can be described as a diegetic chronotope homogenized by a rigid confluence of scientific and political ideals.

Time for a pre-episode recap. The narrative of The New Atlantis centres around a mythical island named Bensalem. Its discovery is narrated by an unnamed speaker and his crew of European sailors whose ship survives a squall only to be becalmed in uncharted waters of the Pacific Ocean somewhere west of Peru. Initially, the plot is spartan, later gradually unfolding to reveal the sociopolitics, enterprise, and cultural rituals and customs of the Bensalemites. Central of these revelations is Bacon's detailed description of the island's state-sponsored scientific, mostly research and development, institution called the House of Solomon, described as being "the very eye of this kingdom" (Bacon 8). Not dissimilar to Plato's account of his Atlantis, Bacon's description of the various aspects of Benslem's society and history focus on the religious foundations thereof. It is clear from the outset of the text that Bensalem, though foreign, sequestered, and in certain respects uncanny to the European maroons, it is fundamentally a Christian society. Most notably, Christianity mediates the activity and praxes of the island's central and most revered institution, namely, the House of Solomon. As the Head of the House of Solomon notes in a dialogue toward the end of the text, there are strict ordinances and rites observed by the scientists of Solomon's House. These are described to include “certain hymns and services, which we say daily, of Lord and thanks to God for His marvellous works; and some forms of prayer, imploring His aid and blessing for the illumination of our labours, and the turning of them into good and holy uses” (Bacon 25). Bacon describes the island's conversion to Christianity as the result of a miracle several years after the Ascension of Jesus. According to the Governor, the Bensalemites are converted to Christianity after witnessing a miracle, the apparition of what they call the Finger of God, a great pillar of light in the sky. The pillar dissipates and leaves behind an arc containing within it a letter from the Apostle St. Bartholomew and the Old and New Testaments (canonical books thereof). Evangelion Angel destruction type shit. This ostensible Christian fundamentalism is contrasted to the Pagan-inflected cultural feast in honour of the family institution, called "the Feast of the Family", another central aspect of Bensalemite society and culture. Lastly, Bacon describes at length a college of sages or the House of Solomon, whose ethic and telos is to pursue the total knowledge of natural science which "God of heaven and earth had vouchsafed the grace to know the works of Creation, and the secrets of them", as well as "to discern between divine miracles, works of nature, works of art, and impostures and illusions of all sorts" (Bacon 8). Included in the description of the methodology, ranks, and activities of the researchers and scientists of the Order, Bacon provides detailed descriptions of a series of instruments, process and methods of scientific research that are employed in the island by the Order in Solomon's House (Bacon 8).

The final third of the narrative details a dialogue between one of the speaker's crew and the Head of the House of Solomon, who takes said interloper on a guided orientation of the institute. He reveals to the speaker and reader the scientific, specifically Baconian method, enterprises of the House, its experiments and goals of ultimately understanding and conquering nature, as well as the goal of applying the sum total of their knowledge toward the goal of the betterment of all society. The archon of the Order gives the following four criteria as being the measure of the House's success in meeting its goals: 1) the end of their foundation; 2) the preparations they have for their works; 3) the several employments and functions whereto their fellows are assigned; 4) and the ordinances and rites which they observe. It is through the House of Solomon that Bacon offers a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge.

Bacon offers the following description of the telos of the Institute as “the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible" (Bacon 19). Furthermore, the offices, ranks, functions, and activities of the members of the House, the methods by which they acquire data, collate, analyse, store, communicate and apply said knowledge are described as follows:

For the several employments and offices of our fellows, we have twelve that sail into foreign countries under the names of other nations (for our own we conceal), who bring us the books and abstracts, and patterns of experiments of all other parts. These we call Merchants of Light.“We have three that collect the experiments which are in all books. These we call depredators. We have three that collect the experiments of all mechanical arts, and also of liberal sciences, and also of practices which are not brought into arts. These we call Mystery–Men. We have three that try new experiments, such as themselves think good. These we call Pioneers or Miners. We have three that draw the experiments of the former four into titles and tables, to give the better light for the drawing of observations and axioms out of them. These we call Compilers. We have three that bend themselves, looking into the experiments of their fellows, and cast about how to draw out of them things of use and practice for man's life and knowledge, as well for works as for plain demonstration of causes, means of natural divinations, and the easy and clear discovery of the virtues and parts of bodies. These we call Dowry–men or Benefactors. Then after diverse meetings and consults of our whole number, to consider of the former labours and collections, we have three that take care out of them to direct new experiments, of a higher light, more penetrating into nature than the former. These we call Lamps. We have three others that do execute the experiments so directed, and report them. These we call Inoculators. Lastly, we have three that raise the former discoveries by experiments into greater observations, axioms, and aphorisms. These we call Interpreters of Nature. (Bacon 24)

The revelations and descriptions of Bensalemite society, enterprise, and culture occur, not unlike Plato's dialogic chronicles of Atlantis, through a series of dialogues between the speaker and various interlocutors. These include the Governor of the House of Strangers, Joabin the Jew, and the Head of Solomon's House, each describing various aspects of the central activities and interests of the island-state. Through these dialogues, the reader is given intimations of the nature, so to speak, of life on Bensalem. Its inhabitants are described as adroit in morality, robust in character, honest, humble whereby not Bensalemite accepts gestures of payment made to them from the speaker and his crew. Jaobin the Jew adds to the Bensalemite profile chastity and piety as two of the central values upheld and practised on the island. This ostensible moral probity is a part of the revisionary bent of the text. As Ian Box notes in "Bacon on the Values of War and Peace," Bacon's typical preoccupation with all strata, flows, and phenomena of political life are “absent from the New Atlantis ...the concern with such character traits as cunning, envy, vanity, boldness, anger and revenge has no application in a fable whose characters are uniformly virtuous and altruistic. In Bacon's ideal society of science the problems of ethical and civil life that figure so prominently in the Essays no longer exist” (Box 117). This departure from the running telos of the oeuvre is telling, methinks.

Anyway, with a title like New Atlantis, the reader is immediately invited to speculate that Bacon's text is, in some way, revisionary in nature. Furthermore, as the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that through Bacon's revision of Plato, he inserts more heterotopic elements within the broad mytho-historical/allegorical aegis of 'Atlantis'. That said, the revisionary aspects of the narrative are immediately clear at the beginning of the text, opening with a revelation that the speaker and his crew of becalmed sailors, reach Bensalem after a squall somewhere north of Peru, between South America and the Far East (China and Japan) (Bacon 2-3). As such, the initial revision is topological in that the location of Bensalem is described to be in a totally different and in fact opposite ocean to Plato's Atlantis. This topological revision is total enough that Plato's Atlantis is no longer its own sovereign island-state, but a continental landmass, America, in Bacon's narrative. Bacon describes it as one the pre-diluvian nations with great fleets and expertise in seacraft of whose pre-diluvian might and prowess little remains. Here Bacon's pseudo-historical view of Atlantis is revises not only the island-state's location, but primitivises its achievements and its ultimate fate in the last instance. Bacon buttresses his assertions and claims about the natural, cultural, and geographical history of Plato's Atlantis with robust detail, ostensibly giving his account further credence when viewed against the comparative paucity of Plato's account of the natural history and culture of the island-state itself. In his 1986 study of Bacon's political thought, author Howard B. White stated that The New Atlantis represents “a rewriting of Platonic myth, and a rewriting clearly intended as a refutation” (White 112). This tendency of Bacon's passively aggressive, critical, and corrective tone can be noted in the author's direct engagement with Hellenic Atlantis, and, my extension, Plato. In the following excerpt, Bacon offer an entirely alternate history of Atlantis to that of Plato (referred to as 'your man') or an expansion thereof stating,

At the same time, and an age after, or more, the inhabitants of the great Atlantis did flourish. For though the narration and description, which is made by a great man with you; that the descendants of Neptune planted there; and of the magnificent temple, palace, city, and hill; and the manifold streams of goodly navigable rivers, (which as so many chains environed the same site and temple); and the several degrees of ascent, whereby men did climb up to the same, as if it had been a scala coeli, be all poetical and fabulous: yet so much is true, that the said country of Atlantis, as well that of Peru, then called Coya, as that of Mexico, then named Tyrambel, were mighty and proud kingdoms in arms, shipping and riches: so mighty, as at one time (or at least within the space of ten years) they both made two great expeditions; they of Tyrambel through the Atlantic to the Mediterrane Sea; and they of Coya through the South Sea upon this our island: and for the former of these, which was into Europe, the same author amongst you (as it seemeth) had some relation from the Egyptian priest whom he cited. For assuredly such a thing there was. But whether it were the ancient Athenians that had the glory of the repulse and resistance of those forces, I can say nothing: but certain it is, there never came back either ship or man from that voyage. Neither had the other voyage of those of Coya upon us had better fortune, if they had not met with enemies of greater clemency. For the king of this island, (by name Altabin,) a wise man and a great warrior, knowing well both his own strength and that of his enemies, handled the matter so, as he cut off their land-forces from their ships; and entoiled both their navy and their tamp with a greater power than theirs, both by sea and land: arid compelled them to render themselves without striking stroke and after they were at his mercy, contenting himself only with their oath that they should no more bear arms against him, dismissed them all in safety. (Bacon 10)

Similarly, in the following adjoining passage, Bacon echoes Plato's reasoning for the destruction of Atlantis, both concluding it was predicated on divine retribution, albeit differing on the actual method employed:

But the divine revenge overtook not long after those proud enterprises. For within less than the space of one hundred years, the great Atlantis was utterly lost and destroyed: not by a great earthquake, as your man saith; (for that whole tract is little subject to earthquakes;) but by a particular' deluge or inundation; those countries having, at this day, far greater rivers and far higher mountains to pour down waters, than any part of the old world. But it is true that the same inundation was not deep; not past forty foot, in most places, from the ground; so that although it destroyed man and beast generally, yet some few wild inhabitants of the wood escaped. Birds also were saved by flying to the high trees and woods. For as for men, although they had buildings in many places, higher than the depth of the water, yet that inundation, though it were shallow, had a long continuance; whereby they of the vale that were not drowned, perished for want of food and other things necessary.So as marvel you not at the thin population of America, nor at the rudeness and ignorance of the people; for you must account your inhabitants of America as a young people; younger a thousand years, at the least, than the rest of the world: for that there was so much time between the universal flood and their particular inundation. For the poor remnant of human seed, which remained in their mountains, peopled the country again slowly, by little and little; and being simple and savage people, (not like Noah and his sons, which was the chief family of the earth;) they were not able to leave letters, arts, and civility to their posterity; and having likewise in their mountainous habitations been used (in respect of the extreme cold of those regions) to clothe themselves with the skins of tigers, bears, and great hairy goats, that they have in those parts; when after they came down into the valley, and found the intolerable heats which are there, and knew no means of lighter apparel, they were forced to begin the custom of going naked, which continueth at this day. Only they take great pride and delight in the feathers of birds; and this also they took from those their ancestors of the mountains, who were invited unto it by the infinite flights of birds that came up to the high grounds, while the waters stood below. So you see, by this main accident of time, we lost our traffic with the Americans, with whom of, all others, in regard they lay nearest to us, we had most commerce. (Bacon 11)

The diegetic topological differences would indicate that Bacon's Atlantis has little to do with Plato's Atlantis not only topologically, but thematically and narratively as well. Furthermore, the Bensalemians or New Atlanteans are described to inhabit “a fair city; not great indeed, but well built, and that gave a pleasant view from the sea” (Bacon 3). This ostensibly humble description, interpolating something of the dignified, even stoic, humility and grace emphasized in Christian doctrine, is the antithesis of Plato's descriptions of the grandeur of Atlantis, and its architectural, cultural, and militaristic magnanimity. While Plato describes one of the central aspects of Atlantis as its imperial warmongering, the speaker's men offer pistolets (pistols) in exchange for goods and services, specifically to attend his men who had, one assumes suffered from various ailments associated with malnourishment and dehydration having run out of food and water on the journey. As the speaker states, “we offered some reward in pistolets unto the servant, and a piece of crimson velvet to be presented to the officer; but the servant took them not, nor would scarce look upon them; and so left us, and went back in another little boat, which was sent for him” (Bacon 4). The New Atlanteans seemingly have no interest in martial effects. This could be seen as an overturning or renegotiation of the entire Atlantis myth, a conscious design on Bacon's part to controvert the violence and aggression inextricable from the Atlantis Plato describes, a reterritorialization of the Atlantean myth from imperial conquest, to pacifist scientism. Hmmm.

Well, any reader with even a cursory knowledge of popular disseminations of Atlantis begins the narrative with questions such as: how does Bacon view Atlantis? What aspect/attributes of Plato's island's narrative thereof does Bacon highlight, use, incorporate, or specifically review? And in so doing, what does that reveal about Baconian Atlantis? Why, in terms of the impetus behind the work influence his choice of focus on the narrative he revises? Initially, Atlantis-as-Bensalem is ostensibly constructed primarily as an allegory of epistemological, sociopolitical, and cultural purity. Bacon's description of the primacy of the House of Solomon intimates that Bensalem is to be viewed as a model of the sovereignty of knowledge and its disciplined pursuit. Its extreme isolation in time and space is, furthermore, emblematic of the author's perceived belief in the austerity of radical sequestration, by sea and squall, from the corruption of the mainland Continents both of the New and Old worlds. In terms of the consideration of its heterotopic qualities, Bacon's New Atlantis can be regarded as an indistinct mass facilitating a distinctive cross-working of varying forces and flows of power, moral ethical, epistemological, and religious intertextuality. The confluence of these themes and concerns would make Bacon's Atlantis appear less Platonic due to the fact that such a reading of Atlantis, or the myth thereof, or even the motif of the mythical isle, circumscribes Plato's pseudo-history purely within the remit of allegory and symbolism, not natural history. Furthermore, this reading overlooks Plato's description of Atlantis as a highly permeable and inter-textual chronotope itself, Bacon holds Bensalem in a state of exclusive purity. Plato, on the contrary, describes his Atlantis as deeply intersectional, sociopoliticaly and culturally exothermic. That said, while the premium placed on purity in Bacon's Atlantis is high, Bensalem is not anti-heterotopic. It is, however, important to keep the irony of the heterotopia in view. They are spaces wherein which the typified onto-existentialism of a given culture break down at most, or are renegotiated at least. Not only are heterotopias as described by Foucault all ironically concerned with variegations of purity in the last instance (be it time, access, cleanliness and so on), they also represent the merging of multiple spaces in one chronotope. Merger, confluence, and admixture all imply interaction, exchange, dialogue, and penetration. As such, while exclusive, Bensalem is still permeable, is still open and receptive to that which it excludes. Within the narrative, at the very least, Bensalem is primarily a heterotopia of exclusion: one need be a Christian to enter. What if the speaker's men had been Pagans, atheists, or simply the wrong type of Christian? Would they have been admitted? If so, would they have been received with the same level of grace, or would their sojourn have been more an exile within a space of exiles, treated something like the Jews of Bensalem? In terms of revision, Bacon's narrative revises the fact that Plato's narrative describes Atlantis as being a highly advance society. As a result, the New Atlantis in Bensalem can only function as a scientific utopia if in the process of its revision of the Platonic model primitivises it, in this way destroying it, its achievements, whereby performing a revisionary violence toward it strips it of its distinctly Pagan preeminence, subverting and overlaying it with an imagining of Judeo-Christian perfection and rectitude. As such, the connection between piety, charity, and right knowledge is repeated throughout the New Atlantis. It is important to note that this Christian/scientific utopianism is not devoid of power and/or structures of power. As Samuel H. Beer states in “Two Models of Public Opinion: Bacon's 'New Logic' and Diotima's 'Tale of Love'”, the characterization of Bacon's narrative as a utopia, a scientific utopia, would suggest that in Bensalem, “there is no ground for politics or government” due to the fact that “the state has withered away” as a direct result of the ultimate triumph of science (Beer 163-80; 166). Similarly, in “Bacon's Humanitarian Revision of Machiavelli” (2004), Richard Kennington suggests that wisdom “is so embodied in the institutions that the political, and especially force, is minimized” suggesting that Bensalam's scientism produced a radical depoliticisation of human being, an end of politics, or any political 'instinct' in human beings and their cohabitation and interacts themselves, repressive or ideological violence of any kind (Kennington 66). Hmmmm, while this is true within the diegetic remit of the text, Bensalem is not without order, nor is it devoid of rule and protocols and flows of power. While in Plato's Atlantis, power is political, imperial, and wielded exclusively by a patriarchal theocracy, Bensalem revises this model of power, re-imagining it as a Christian scientism. In the last instance, a comparison of power between Plato and Bacons' narratives reveals that in either version of Atlantis, old or new, biopower still exists and has not been obviated by either religion or science. While the New Atlanteans prohibit the speaker and his crew to way anchor in the Atlantean harbour, they are greeted by an Atlantean bearing a scroll, on which is writ in Hebrew, Ancient Greek, scholarly Latin and Spanish what amounts to an immigration notice. It reads

land ye not, none of you; and provide to be gone from this coast, within sixteen days, except you have further time given you. Meanwhile, if you want fresh water or victuals, or help for your sick, or that your ship needeth repairs, write down your wants, and you shall have that, which belongeth to mercy. (Bacon 3)

On the one hand, this scroll is a symbol of Bacon's antiquarian interests, and the premium placed on the aforementioned cultures. On the other hand, the trans-cultural and trans-historical intersectionality of Bacon's Atlantis is similar, if not identical, to the spores of Atlantean reach and influence described by Plato. That said, there is also clear Judeo-Christian influences on Bacon's symbolism. The seal on the immigration notice/scroll described as a stamp of cherubim, next to which is a cross. One could argue that the Atlanteans, having surveyed Bacon and his crew, surmised, being wise and ancient, that they hailed from the West wherein which these symbols would signify authority. That said, there is no ancillary support in the diegesis of the narrative to buttress this conclusion at this point. As such, the only logical conclusion left is that Bacon, a God-fearing man, set in the seal and stamp, a symbol of authority over him, namely, the cross and one of the highest orders of angels. Or even more simply as Bacon states, the cross is a comfort “and above all, the sign of the cross to that instrument was to us a great rejoicing, and as it were a certain presage of good” (Bacon 3-4). In terms of Atlantis-as-heterotopia, within the narrative of the text, these symbols are keys of access to a heterotope of exclusion. I think its interesting to note that the attitude of the New Atlanteans on their first encounter with the speaker and his men, while not ostensibly hostile in any marked way, is distinctly prohibitive. However, it is Christianity that acts as a key to defusing said prohibition of entry following first contact. The reason the ambassador eventually gives for this prohibition is the fear of first pirates, secondly quarantine against the speaker's ill. He states,

in Spanish, asked, "Are ye Christians?" We answered, "We were;" fearing the less, because of the cross we had seen in the subscription. At which answer the said person lifted up his right hand towards Heaven, and drew it softly to his mouth (which is the gesture they use, when they thank God;) and then said : "If ye will swear (all of you) by the merits of the Saviour, that ye are no pirates, nor have shed blood, lawfully, nor unlawfully within forty days past, you may have licence to come on land." (Bacon 4)

Even within the pseudo-mythic diegetic uncharted South Seas, the Cross, and the Word still retain their authority and the right of access said symbols allow. This extends to the hospitality of the Bensalemians which leads the speaker to conclude that "God surely is manifested in this land" (Bacon 5). The consistency of Judeo-Christian affirmation for any and all aspects of the land betrays the author's own beliefs and the then inextricability of religion from all facets of sociopolitics and human enterprise, including scientific investigation. It clear even at the beginning of the text that Christianity gains the speaker and his men access to the fine lodgings and comfortable furnishings of the House of Strangers, wherein which strangers to Bensalem are described to be lodged, but various other pleasures and comforts. The speaker states that

soon after our dinner was served in; which was right good viands, both for bread and treat: better than any collegiate diet, that I have known in Europe. We had also drink of three sorts, all wholesome and good; wine of the grape; a drink of grain, such as is with us our ale, but more clear: And a kind of cider made of a fruit of that country; a wonderful pleasing and refreshing drink. Besides, there were brought in to us, great store of those scarlet oranges, for our sick; which (they said) were an assured remedy for sickness taken at sea. There was given us also, a box of small gray, or whitish pills, which they wished our sick should take, one of the pills, every night before sleep; which (they said) would hasten their recovery. (Bacon 5-6)

In this way, Bacon simultaneously uses this passage as a revisionary illustration of the further banalities and details that Plato eschews entirely by providing the reader examples of New Atlantean medicine, diet and praxes of fermentation and other culinary arts, but simultaneously highlights the fact that these salves are only accessible for/to Christians. I mean, not only is foreign access to the city-state an ecclesiastical matter, but the administration of the monitoring and care of said foreigners is overseen by an ecclesiastical figure or authority. In the narrative, the governor of the House of Strangers (a boarding house for foreign visitors) is a Christian priest by vocation. This further shows that similarly from the voyage, discovery, and scientific enterprise, God, for Bacon is also inextricable from a conceptualization of utopia at all its levels, in all its strata both foreign and domestic. In this way, it is made abundantly clear to the reader through the treatment of the speaker's crew by the Bensalemites and specifically the Governor of the House of Strangers that New Atlantis is presented as a distinctly Christian paradise. Unlike Plato's Atlantis, which is both a Poseidonic gift and ruled by the sea deity's Orichalchic laws, New Atlantis revises this Paganism whereby its governorship is determined purely by the laws of brotherly love exemplified by Christ.

“In “Religion and Francis Bacon's Scientific Utopianism” (2007), Stephen A. McNight draws attention to the fact that Bacon's revisionary project is very specific. The telos of New Atlantis is the presentation of a scientific utopia, the direct result of diligent and focussed study and investigation of nature conducted by the members of Solomon's House. However, unlike Plato, whose narrative is, ostensibly above all else, historiographic, Bacon's Atlantean narrative is doubly predicated on religiosity and scientism. In this sense, Bacon's scientific utopianism is inextricable from the religious themes that book end and saturate the narrative. In the last instance, the heteroptocpic qualities of Bensalem go beyond those of exclusion. In “The New Atlantis: Francis Bacon's Theological-Political Utopia?” (2008), Smith notes that besides the hetrotopia of exclusion, similarly to Plato, Bacon's Atlantis is also a heterotopia of juxtaposition. The heterotopic cosmopolitanism in “the New Atlantis may be read in terms of an extremely peculiar syncretistic sequence of quasi-liturgical rites, festivals and occasions. Bacon extracts disparate elements of rites from Christian, Jewish, Greek (and to a lesser extent, Roman and Persian) contexts and compounds them into novel and virtually unrecognizable forms” (Smith 102). In this sense, the text is heterotopic because the referentiality of the elements, cultures, praxes, and ideologies Bacon bricolages do not develop or amalgamate in a recognizable fashion and it is precisely within the heterotopic chronotopes where the typical breaks down.

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XIV.

On Knowledge, Time, & the House of Solomon

I think that the chief irony of the text's overt religious saturation is the latent hermeticism or occultism of its wisdom, or the wisdom posited as the achievement of Bensalem's most important institution, namely the House of Solomon. Super witchy haunt, this House. One could argue that the 'key' to the House, which is a House of Wisdom, is wisdom. That said, by definition, both wisdoms are occult, that is, hidden. Just as foreigners have limited access to the Bensalemite public, similarly do only the researchers/scientists/alchemists of the House of Solomon have access to its secrets. In this sense, the House of Solomon is both a hetrotopia of access/exclusion and time within a broader hetrotopia of exclusion/access.

It is interesting to note that while Bacon's scholastic ethic was predicated on the notion that it is the duty of scientific investigation and the enterprising spirit of the scientific method to cut through the obfuscatory mysticism and metaphor of religion, the discoveries, let alone the general atmosphere of the House of Solomon is doubly occult. I argue that the ostensibly and fervently Christian foundations of Bacon's New Atlantis experienced in the very palpable projection of Christianity seems a guarantor of its lack. The vast amounts of advanced scientific knowledge amassed and stored in the House of Solomon is, by dint of being radically sequestered in terms of space and time from other centres of knowledge, makes said knowledge not only occult but also heterotopic definition, the House of Solomon being a heterotopia of time in this regard. Bensalemite Hermetic and/or occult knowledge eschews the cloak of mysticism and gnosticism in favour of the fervour of Judeo-Christian devotion. However, this does not dissipate the truth of the definition of its knowledge being occult, nor the fact that other extradiegetic societies and orders with similarly ostensibly Christian societies and orders, such as The Rosicrucian Order or the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. The chiefest paradox of this similarity is the fact that while the head of the House of Solomon gives the speaker permission to publish all that he has seen and learned on the island, the text itself remains unfinished, meaning that diegetically, the full details of the scientific achievements of the the House remain occluded to the reader. As such, though the Bensalamites are ostensibly perfect altruists whose charity is an example of perfect Christian brotherhood and brotherly love, the fact that they do not share their wisdom fully illustrates that their altruism has limits and, is in the last instance, self-motivated and self-directed much in the same way that secrecy, misinterpretation, fear, and in some instances persecution follows societies and orders dedicated to the the pursuit and use of arcane knowledge. Knowledge preserved from the ravages of time in the occult libraries of the hidden island city-state, access to which is described as being conditional on numerous levels.

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XV.

A Day and a Night: Conclusion

As a primary examples of accounts of the ur-Occidental mythical island, both Plato's Atlantis and Bacon's Bensalem reflect heterotopic qualities. The above archipelago of 15 idea-islands I think, in some ways, good and not so good, reveals that any theoretical profile of Plato's Atlantis, as well as revisions and expansions of it similar to the one conducted by Bacon, must take into account the fact of the city-state's numerous facets of simultaneity and paradox.

The above analysis has compared Plato's Atlantis against Bacon's Bensalem to illustrate that while other mythical or lost lands/isles in Western mytho-religious systems often serve or reflect a specific purpose or quality, Atlantis in both texts is a comparative composite of them all in various ways. The island-state as simultaneously mystical and banal, attractive and dangerous, seemingly timeless and radically brief, the stories of Atlantis detailed by Plato is and Bacon to a lesser degree, are theoretically predicated on paradoxes. It is a space of onto-existential liminality and topographical symmetry. From Atlantian rule and the Atlantian population itself being described as the result of inter-ontic procreation, and Atlantis itself being most accurately described as a city/island-state built and ruled by demigods, from its origins, Plato's Atlantis and its foundations are always-already concerned with boundary crossing/liminality. Similarly, Bensalem being an ostensibly Christian city-state that upholds Pagan rituals and rites and is primarily governed by a hermetic order predicated on occult knowledge raises dialectics of permeation, access, exclusion, and even right/wrong religiosity.

In each instance, the paradoxes resulting from this liminality and boundary crossing also manifest in the city-state's sense of being at once open and closed. Plato's narrative illustrates that while the topography of the island and the architecture of the city echo the panopticism of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, Atlantis was by no means completely carceral, completely closed, insular, or self contained. On the one hand, as the Critian dialogue states, Atlantic trade, conquest, and other forms of inter-cultural exchange were fundamental aspects that contributed to the city's socio-economic strength and prosperity. On the other hand, the land itself was rich with exportable goods; from precious fusile ore (orichalcum, most notably), to quarry stone, timber, husbanded as well as wild livestock including marshland, river-land, and mountain-land animals, all of which are described as being bounteous and sufficiently maintained by the natural resources of the island itself, allowing for aqueducts, gardens, temples, guardhouses, horse-racing tracks and so on. As such, the heterotopic concentration of diasporic flora and fauna found on Plato's Atlantis gives the island an Edenic, albeit closed quality. At the same time, with trade and warfare, Atlantis would also appear to have been a secular, cosmopolitan city-state. Similarly, Bacon's Bensalem is a repository of hundreds of years of knowledge ranging from medicinal and culinary arts, to all of natural philosophy and history. However, access to this knowledge let alone the island itself requires a certain spiritual purification. While the border of Bensalem is permeable, it is only so to the baptized, creating dialectics of exclusion and time that act as the antithesis of its ostensible cosmopolitanism.

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