Abstract
By asserting in the introduction of his ?Faber Book of Utopias' that "the aim of all utopias, to a greater or lesser extent, is to eliminate real people" [CAREY : xii], the British literary critic John Carey provocatively enhances what makes utopian stories so contradictory. On one hand, any utopia aims at fabricating ideal citizens. In that sense, it can be considered as a creative process since "anyone who is capable of love must at some time have wanted the world to be a better place, for we all want our loved ones to live free from suffering, injustice and heartbreak" [CAREY : xii]. On the other hand, reaching this goal always implies a "reform of the self" [CAREY : xix] or, to state it plainly, an elimination of the people unable to conform to the utopian ideal. In that sense, utopia also often infers the destruction of the people who do not succeed in adapting themselves to the utopian ideal. This ambiguity explains why "utopia" etymologically means "nowhere" that is to say an imaginary place, whether heavenly or nightmarish.
