The End of Utopia: Empire of Coconuts - Utopian Impulses in Christian Kracht's Novel Imperium

Abstract

Christian Kracht's novel Imperium (2012) is based upon the life of August Engelhardt, a radical cocovore and nudist, who decides to establish a colony of coconuts in German New Guinea before World War I. In the form of a utopia, the novel contains a sharp criticism of German colonial history. In modernism, utopias are representations of paradisiacal places and identified with alternative ways of organizing better societies. Actually, they are improved by the existence of reality itself, which builds the fundamental source of utopias. Thus, they always end up with corruption. This paper focuses on Christian Kracht's novel Imperium (2012) and aims to analyze the novel within the concept of utopian impulses as constitutive elements of utopias. Referring to Fredric Jameson, this study examines the challenge between reality and utopian thinking. This article also shows how utopias end up in destruction.