Utopian Moments. Reading Utopian Texts (original) (raw)
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Society for Utopian Studies Conference, 2023
The insurgent utopia idea This talk explores the concept of “insurgent utopia”, a variant of concrete utopia (Levitas 2010, 2013; Wright 2010). Insurgent utopia emerges, and takes form, content, and function, when: (i) it is ontologically grounded in social struggles, imbued with a humanizing character, and embedded within the realm of human experience; (ii) propelled by the agency of those individuals most impacted by the oppressive reality they seek to transform, and (iii) when it gains pedagogical significance and value through experimentation (reflection and praxis). Beyond mere philosophical debates and theoretical abstractions, this conception of utopia highlights the importance of grounding utopian visions in tangible realities, subjectivities, and transformative processes, while remaining mindful of political dynamics of power, domination, and colonialism, and their implications. Moreover, akin to concrete utopia, the pivotal aspect lies not in achieving the ultimate utopian destination, but rather the transformative movement that mobilization for its realization triggers, and how it unfolds into a series of interconnected and mobilizing insurgent utopian dreams. Its approach prioritizes the process and flux ("becoming") over the substance ("being"). By integrating the elements characterizing Freire's (1972) concept of "inédito viável" (untested feasibility) insurgent utopia serves as a potent catalyst for social transformation, rooted in critical examination of the world, individual and collective conscientization practices, dialogue, emancipatory pedagogy, and collective action. It directly involves the individuals impacted by the reality to be transformed, eliciting indignation, fostering hopeful understanding that change is attainable, and instilling confidence in devising the means for effective change. This work aims to contribute by presenting an analytical-conceptual framework for the concept of insurgent utopia and providing a practical exemplification for discussion on how it materializes from the concrete reality of social struggles: the case of the Florestan Fernandes National School of the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil (Fernandes & Da Trindade 2023).
Moreana
T he Utopia Reader is a timely and provocative collection of utopia texts that are drawn, for the most part, from "the Anglo-American utopian tradition" (xi). The collection is a generous one. Many of the selections are from fictional utopias, but others were written as blueprints or constitutions for what are now referred to as intentional commumtJes. In a short but essential introductory chapter, which serves as a preface to the texts that follow and explains their parameters, Claeys and Sargent offer inclusive and elastic definitions of their terms, including utopia, utopianism, and variations of the utopian genre (eutopia, dystopia, utopia satire, anti-utopia, and critical utopia). For them, "social dreaming" (1) is the beginning and the heart of utopianism or the utopian impulse: "that need to dream of a better life, even when we are reasonably content" (2). Subsequently they identify two different utopian traditions, both well represented in this anthology. On the one hand, there are what they call "utopias of sensual gratification," on the other, "utopias of human contrivance" (2). In other words, some aspects of the utopian impulse are mythicdreams of an earthly paradise, arcadia, or golden age, where life is simple and desires are satisfied without any effort on the part of human beings. Cockaigne-where ripe fruit and roasted fowl simply drop into one's open mouth-is viewed as a later development, since gratification occurs in this life rather than in a mythic past or millennia! future. On the other hand, many utopias depend upon human effort and are unimaginable apart from human control. Plato's Republic is an early instance, More's Utopia the crucial text, which gave birth to the utopia as a recognizable literary form or genre. In practice, these divisions are rarely absolute, however, and the insistence upon social order and control may itself be a manifestation
2005
(or what you will) of an imaginative writer. I wrote that book in order to clear up the muddle in my own mind about innumerable social and political questions, questions I could not keep out of my work, which it distressed me to touch upon in a stupid haphazard way, and which no one, so far as I knew, had handled in a manner to satisfy my needs. But Anticipations did not achieve its end. I have a slow constructive hesitating sort of mind, and when I emerged from that undertaking I found I had still most of my questions to state and solve. In Mankind in the Making, therefore, I tried to review the social organisation in a different way, to consider it as an educational process instead of dealing with it as a thing with a future history, and if I made this second book even less satisfactory from a literary standpoint than the former (and this is my opinion), I blundered, I think, more edifyingly-at least from the point of view of my own instruction. I ventured upon several themes with a greater frankness than I had used in Anticipations, and came out of that second effort guilty of much rash writing, but with a considerable development of formed opinion. In many matters I had shaped out at last a certain personal certitude, upon which I feel I shall go for the rest of my days. In this present book I have tried to settle accounts with a number of issues left over or opened up by its two predecessors, to correct them in some particulars, and to give the general picture of a Utopia that has grown up in my mind during the course of these 4 A Modern Utopia speculations as a state of affairs at once possible and more desirable than the world in which I live. But this book has brought me back to imaginative writing again. In its two predecessors the treatment of social organisation had been purely objective; here my intention has been a little wider and deeper, in that I have tried to present not simply an ideal, but an ideal in reaction with two personalities. Moreover, since this may be the last book of the kind I shall ever publish, I have written into it as well as I can the heretical metaphysical scepticism upon which all my thinking rests, and I have inserted certain sections reflecting upon the established methods of sociological and economic science….
Utopia and process, text and anti-text
Sub-Stance
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Ania Boguska, Verena Adamik, Peter Stillman, rafal szczerbakiewicz, Łukasz Stec, Marcello Messina, Maja Wojdyło, Miłosz Markocki, Iwona Sowińska-Fruhtrunk, Anna Bugajska, Eleni Varmazi, Tomasz Szymański, Mariusz Finkielsztein, Michał Kłosiński, Krzysztof M Maj, Anna De Vaul
Kraków: Facta Ficta Research Centre, 2016
The twenty-six essays which compose this collection cover a substantial range of both historical and theoretical themes, indicating at the least that the utopian idea thrives today across a number of disciplines as well as in domains (like computer games) which are themselves of recent origin and which indicate that utopia can also be addressed as an aspect of the internal psychic fantasy world. There is some consideration here of the lengthy and complex historical relationship between utopian ideals and religion. There is some effort to reconsider practical efforts to found actual communities which embody utopian ideals. Several authors revisit the emotional substrata of utopian aspiration rendered accessible through music in particular. Literature is here nonetheless the chief focus, in keeping with the form of Thomas More’s original text and that of the tradition which has imitated and satirised it. The themes represented here mirror in literary form the dystopian drift in the external world discussed above. Many of the leading authors of post-totalitarian dystopian fiction are included here, notably (to name but a few) Margaret Atwood, Robert Heinlein, J.G. Ballard, David Foster Wallace and, most recently, Michel Houellebecq. Within these treatments, the possibilities are explored that dystopia may emerge from or assume the form of racist regimes, environmental destruction, corporate dictatorship, or religious fundamentalism, or some combination of these factors. Such potential outcomes of modernity need, the authors of this volume also assure us, to be balanced against the utopian promise which bodily remodelling entertains, and the possibility of longevity which scientific and technical advances encapsulate as the epitome of modern individualist utopianism.
Review article on Frank and Fritzie Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World, and James Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, in Theory and Society, 12:6 (November 1983), 819-825.