This publication is an article 2, expanding on the topic, outlined in article 1, published earlier in “Philosophical thoughts” (1019, No. 1). The author considers the constitutional prerequisites of the anthropological anti-Utopia of the Third Reich, the main principles of which were deduced from the folk-political and folk-cultural versions of the German philosophical anthropology completed with ideological statements of the industrialism. The functional potential of the human ideals is regarded. These ideals are canonized in the ideology of the (...) national-socialism with the symbolic representation as Leader, Worker and Soldier as practical persons are conceptualized as antipodes, which in the further myth creations of the national-socialism are concretized and became the features of heroes. The idea and realities of the folk educational state are analyzed including the chronological and topological characteristics of this anti-utopia with the practically unrestricted life-time and the dialectic of the European idea with paradox prescribing to it the Nordic origin. The significance of sacral meaning of the Third Reich is clarified in the categorical schemes of the political romantic. The consequences of intentional primitivism of the world view culture of the youth are detected in the landscapes of the anthropological anti-utopia with the transforming of the normal student into “the political soldier” and recognition of the masculine community as a structuring model of society. The anti-human intentionality of biological reduction of the new world view, which is founded on the myth of the origin and the race theory, is unveiled as a distinction between a “worse” and “non- worse” life what makes this anti-utopia a repressive one and legitimates the crime practices of the re-education and liquidation. (shrink)

Anti-utopia as a genre of literature has always attracted scientific interest. The result of this interest is a number of definitions of the term ‘anti-utopia‘, none of which is universally accepted, and singling out of peculiar characteristics of such literature. The term ‘young adult anti-utopia‘ and specific features of such novels present a scientific lacuna. Having studied the language means creating the fictional world picture in modern anti-utopian young adult trilogies, the author identifies (...) 15 main features typical of the genre. The results of the research lead to the conclusion that some of the features are universal for the genre of anti-utopia in general: description of a totalitarian state, geographical limitation, vague identification of the past, suffering of the poor, a brave protagonist trying to shatter the existing government, etc. But some other features, mainly, the ones connected with teenage self-identification and alleviation of adolescent stand against the worlds of childhood and adulthood, are typical of young adult anti-utopias: young adult as a protagonist, importance of beauty, ability to sacrifice, a deem hope of a better future preconditioned by evolution of the human race. (shrink)

This paper explores the tension between pragmatism and utopia, especially in the concept of "realistic utopianism". It argues that historically, the pragmatic and gradualist rejection of utopia has been anti-utopian in effect, notably in the case of Popper. More recent attempts to argue in favour of "realistic utopianism" or its equivalent, by writers such as Wallerstein and Rorty are also profoundly anti-utopian, despite Rorty's commitment to "social hope". They co-opt the terminology of utopia to positions (...) that are antagonistic to radical alterity. But this is not a necessary response to the utopia/pragmatism tension: Unger, who is explicitly opposed to utopia, in fact proffers a more sympathetic resolution based on the merits of vision, social improvization and collective learning. These may lie closer to the core of the utopian project as a vehicle for the education of desire than Unger himself recognizes. (shrink)

The article analyzes the ethical and political stakes in Giorgio Agamben's The Coming Community. The book was first published in Italian in 1990 and was translated into English in 1993. It was then republished in Italian in 2001, with a short new apostil by the author that reaffirms its persistent and actual “inactuality.” In this text Agamben establishes the philosophical foundations of the long-lasting project started with the publication of Homo sacer. Its republication in 2001 seems thus to reaffirm the (...) politics of his analysis of the past fifteen years. The argument revolves around the analysis of the “whatever singularity” as the subject of the “coming community,” a singularity that presents an “inessential commonality, a solidarity that in no way concerns an essence.” Whatever must not be understood as “indifference” but, rather, as “being such that it always matters.” The ethical and political proposal consists in the call to adhere to this singularity without identity and representation in order to construe a community without postulates and thus also without “subjects.” The paradigm of this politics is identified in Nancy's term inoperativeness, a messianic “de-creation.” The inoperative whatever is directed toward a politics che viene, à-venir as distinct from futura, future: It implies in fact the renunciation of construing images of the future—“utopia is the very topicality of things.”. (shrink)

This article surveys Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's social utopia from the inception of Futurism until its end during World War II, contextualizing it in relation to the various diffused anarchistic ideologies of European artists and intellectuals. From the second half of the nineteenth century onward radical politics and the artistic avant-garde were in close dialogue. Max Stirner's individual anarchy held a special appeal to modernist artists, including Gabriele D'Annunzio and Marinetti. Marinetti's aim of renovating Italy's cultural and political life initially (...) led him to glorify the destruction of old institutions. At the end of World War I he developed a more or less coherent utopian vision of a new society, based principally on the exaltation of individual freedom and the importance of art. During the Fascist regime, Marinetti abandoned politics and concentrated his efforts on making the Aerofuturism of the interwar years the official art of Fascism, which the Futurists saw as the fulfillment of their “anarchist” dream. (shrink)

Este artigo refere-se ao conhecido episódio da famosa novela "Gargantua", de Rabelais, e a sua intenção é mostrar que naquelas singulares sociedade e arquitectura se apresentam ou prefigu­ram, em larga medida, as questões que mais tarde foram exploradas no pensamento utópico oci­dental sobre o tema de "Antiutopia". Em particular, há a intenção de mostrar as relações entre as "Sociedades Ideais" e as "Arquitecturas Ideais"... Como se mutuamente se implicassem. – E, claro, os hilariantes equívocos relacionados com tal...

During the late Soviet era, science fiction was one of the first zones of its ideological cosmos, registering the exhaustion of the communist utopia precisely within the literary genre aimed at its representation. In this article I consider the history of the “editing to death” of the Strugatsky brothers’ short novel Roadside Picnic as a representative case of the anti-utopian “uneasiness in civilization” of late actually existing socialism. Simultaneously with the censorship taming of the uneasiness, the Strugatsky’s science (...) fiction dystopia underwent a radical interpretation in Andrei Tarkovsky’s film adaptation Stalker as a Hegelian “good music with text”. In comparison to the censored edition, which is barely a timid emendation, ultimately yearning modestly for a good life during the most consumeristic and moderately repressive years of Soviet power, Tarkovsky’s aesthetically singular re-reading is truly a “Zone” of editing to death. (shrink)

Panarchy suggests that an optimal framework for the emergence of the best states is that of free competition between states. In Panarchy, people and states negotiate the relationships between them, as sellers and buyers and formalize them in explicit social contracts. Different states may offer varying levels of services in areas such as health, education, and social security for different prices. Low costs for consumer mobility from state to state are necessary for competition. These can be optimized by non-territorial states (...) that offer services to citizens instead of rule a territory and compete over customers in a political market. The right of such states to coerce their clients differentiates them from mere protective associations, and is founded on explicit social contracts (law codes) rather than on monopoly over territory-- sovereignty. First, I explicate the unique properties of Panarchy, non-territorial states and explicit social contracts. Then, following the theories of Douglass North (1986) and Albert Hirschman (1970) I explain why Panarchy appears to be an appropriate framework for avoiding political monopolies and increasing political competitiveness and efficiency through cheap exit mechanisms. Then, I consider possible challenges to Panarchy: Panarchy may be utopian if the state is a natural monopoly; Panarchy does not advocate any political utopia but it may reify the utopian element to the meta-political level, to the preconditions for the emergence of the best states. If non-territorial states are inconsistent with human nature, they may be utopian. I also consider possible ethical objections to Panarchy. I argue that: The territorial sovereign state is not a natural monopoly. A free market in non-territorial states does not have to assume a coercive monopoly regulatory “super-state.” The territoriality of the state is not natural. Though there are valid ethical criticisms of Panarchy, from a utilitarian perspective, they are outweighed by ethical arguments that support it. Finally, I argue that several recent technological innovations have rendered the sovereign nation-state increasingly obsolete, while facilitating and reducing the costs of establishing Panarchy and running non-territorial states. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In the introduction to the 2015 reprint of her classical Partial Visions, Angelika Bammer cites the pithy injunction of the American poet and feminist thinker Adrienne Rich: “We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth … the visions, and the thinking necessary to sustain, console, and alter human existence. … Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy (...) will develop new meaning; thinking itself will be transformed.” Based on sustaining, consoling, and radically altering the present dire state of human existence, the author leads to two sets of initial arguments: Where Are We, and What Are We Doing Wrong. What follows are samples of possible answers, perhaps representative beyond themselves. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} The study attempts to complete the conclusions of social-religious research undertaken up till now, and therefore analyzes the new religious phenomenon” ( Shin-shinshūkyō/ New New Religions ), especially the Aum Shinrikyō cult of the contemporary Japanese society, from an interdisciplinary perspective. Focusing upon the terrorist attack with sarin gas caused (...) by the Aum Shinrikyō cult, our analysis uses the method of Chinese boxes (the small box is in a bigger box which, in its turn, is placed in an even bigger box and so on), to deal with the complex issues beyond the criminal dimension. The study presents in this sense the victims’ confessions ( higaisha ) as well as the aggressors’ confessions ( kagaisha ) as published by the famous contemporary writer Haruki Murakami in the journalistic novel Underground (1997). The Aum Shinrikyō cult and the religious terrorist attack from the Tokyo subway eventually become important “ confession-evidence” in the process of knowing the Japanese spirituality and the way in which its religious feeling, permanently in search of a way of manifestation, reflects the “ normality” of a free modern society. By its aspects of antiutopian “ religious affair”, the Aum story urges mankind on an exercice of autoreflection. (shrink)

This paper seeks to address what I claim are competing utopian and anti-utopian impulses within educational discourse aimed at formulating a just and fair conception of public education. On the one hand, there is a tendency to prescribe concrete utopias – normative blueprints that claim to portent how a redeemed public education will (and ought to) be. On the other hand, there is the tendency to prescribe material revolutions – strategic blueprints that dictate the kinds of political action that (...) educators must undertake in order to bring about lasting social change. I argue that both of these approaches to formulating a just conception of public education are flawed for pragmatic as well as normative reasons. As a way of avoiding the pitfalls inherent to utopianism and anti-utopianism, I suggest that those of us interested in a just conception of education maintain our focus on a kind of pragmatic utopianism. While pragmatic utopianism requires that we abandon the notion that we can ever know what a redeemed public education will look like in its particulars, it does set out standards of deliberation that can increase the likelihood that we will be able to address issues of educational justice as they arise. (shrink)

This article addresses the question of utopia through some reflections on the work of the Russian writer Andrei Platonov (1899-1951). Platonov's work represents an inspirational series of investigations into the circumstances of utopia: not so much utopia as fantasy, nor utopia as actualized in failure, nor even dystopia, but what is here termed `actually existing utopia'. As such his work captures aspects of utopianism that may have been largely opaque to the investigations of either literary (...) versions of the utopian imagination or utopian versions of social science. Platonov shows us an `anthropological' dimension inherent within the utopian impulse: that we are, so to speak, `utopological' beings. And to this dimension of ourselves he applies a critical style that is not straightforwardly anti-utopian or dystopian but what is called here `counter-utopian'. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article analyzes Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men as an illustrative contemporary example of cinematic cosmopolitan utopianism. Departing from the anti-utopian bias that pervaded modes of being, cultural texts and sociology in the late twentieth century, the film rearticulates utopia as a cosmopolitan method necessary to transform nonsustainable paradigms of progress and individualist worldviews. Against an apocalyptic eco-social backdrop, the evolution of the narrative and the protagonists conveys a stressed sense of directionality forward and elsewhere in search (...) of hope. The film's use of spaces and formal choices argues against social exclusion and bigotry, prompting viewers to expand their utopian horizons outside the borders of the national. Daring to envision the end of dystopia, the film ultimately hopes for a cosmopolitan remapping of the global beyond the frameworks provided by anti-utopia, nation, risk and neoliberalism. (shrink)

This article attempts to outline some critical aspects of the accelerationist movement. More specifically, it argues that light can be shed on key aspects of the political proposals of Williams and Srnicek by considering them from the perspective of the socio-political reflections of both Lacan and Deleuze and Guattari. Anti-Oedipus is one crucial starting point for accelerationist thinking, in terms of the concept of the ‘machinic’ and the explicit reference to ‘acceleration’, but it is equally obvious that Lacan has (...) been an important figure in the debate on the topic of ‘desire’. Likewise, and for the same reasons, accelerationism offers the potential for a fruitful reconsideration of Deleuzian philosophy, and of the difficult relationship between schizo- analysis and psycho-analysis. We argue that, in the light of accelerationism, the perspectives of Deleuze and Guattari and Lacan do converge, in particular around the theoretical articulation of the concept of the ‘political’. Accelerationism, as many critics have noted, has numerous implications in the field of subjectivity and often falls into a general plea for a strong neo-Enlightenment. Hence we will attempt to explicate these implications by attempting to read accelerationism via the psychoanalytic categories of jouissance and fantasy. This last category, as Stavrakakis has shown, is directly linked to the political category of ‘Utopia’, and therefore provides an adequate theoretical basis for such a psychoanalytic reading of accelerationism. Should accelerationism be considered the only way out of the socio-political constraints of neoliberalism today? However we approach this question, the argument pursued here is that the best starting points for a critique of accelerationism are the concepts of jouissance, the state/capital relationship, schizo-analysis and paranoid ways of functioning. (shrink)

This paper begins with the proposition that Fredric Jameson's Archaeologies of the Future is the most important theoretical contribution to utopian and science-fiction studies since Darko Suvin's Metamorphoses of Science Fiction. It argues that Jameson's derivation of 'anti-anti-Utopianism' from Sartrean anti-anti-communism will provide 'the party of Utopia' with as good a slogan as it is likely to find in the foreseeable future. It takes issue with Jameson over two key issues: his overwhelming concentration on American (...) science-fiction, which seems strangely parochial in such a distinguished comparativist; and his understanding of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as an 'anti-Utopia' rather than a dystopia. The paper argues that, for Nineteen Eighty-Four, as for any other science-fiction novel, the key question is that identified by Jameson: not 'did it get the future right?', but rather 'did it sufficiently shock its own present as to force a meditation on the impossible?'. It concludes that Jameson fails to understand how this process works for dystopia as well as utopia, for barbarism as well as socialism. (shrink)

To begin with, it is analysed the representation of the urban space which is articulated in some classical and utopian stories (Moro, Campanella). In these stories we are facing with a proposal of ideal society as expression of an organizing will of human reason which faces with nature and bets for the construction of a better future. In this context, those cities dreamt by utopias must be considered as imaginary skethes in a concept of real construction which determined a large (...) extent of urban modernity. Such utopian will has suffered an important break throughout the second half of XX Century, such as it is testified by a serial of anti-utopia stories both in literature (Orwell, Huxley or Dick); and above all, in the recently filmography (Blade Runner, Brazil or Matrix). This displacement in future cities´desing entails not only a reversal on the utopian speech codes, which would be the real reflection of the contemporary experience of the subject inside the urban space, but also a consequence of the development and crisis in Western modernity. In addition, this involves a decisive mutation in the concept of future which would affect substantially to our civilization in the beginning of the XXI Century. (shrink)

The article deals with the philosophy of Nikolai Berdjaev, which he formulated between The Philosophy of Inequality and The New Middle-Ages. Berdjaev’s philosophy is analyzed in the context of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and its aftermath. The other point of reference is the crisis of culture and civilisation, which affected the West in the inter-war period. Berdjaev’s position has been interpreted in view of the archetypal myth of the struggle of the two principles, the principle of order and the (...) forces of destruction. This myth is tied to the millenialist world view. Berdjaev took an anti-utopian stance. He juxtaposed the utopian-revolutionary principle with the hierarchical-creative one. From this position he criticized among others democracy, liberalism and socialism. In the midst of the crisis of the 1920s he remarked the possibility of spiritual rejuvenation putting forward the concept of the New Middle-Ages. One can say that at that time Berdjaev’s philosophy evolved within the conservative-creative framework, from the utopia of conservatism to the utopia of ‘free creativity’. (shrink)

In this article, I give an overview of the Croatian philosopher Gordana Bosanac’s (Varaždin, 1936 – Zagreb, 2019) understanding of utopia. She deals with the topic of utopia in two of her books, Utopia and the Inaugural Paradox. A Contribution to the Philosophical-Political Debate (2005) and The Name of Utopia. Yugoslav Self-Government as a Played Out Project of Emancipation (2015). The second book can be considered a continuation of the first. For better understanding and review, I (...) first present the theses from Bosanac’s first book and then those from the second. Apart from dealing with the concept of utopia in her books, Bosanac deals equally thoroughly with the concepts of inauguration, inauguration paradox, socialism, communism and self-management. Beginning with the concept of utopia itself, she takes the reader from Thomas More through other Renaissance utopians, then Marx, Engels, and Bloch, to anti-utopianism. (shrink)

The article examines the concept of utopia in its post-Marxist context. Since the 1970s—against the backdrop of the failures of May 68, the self-exposures of the USSR, and the decline of the workers’ movement, as well as in accordance with the immanent history of the logic of the history of philosophy itself—the concept of utopia has been running through new areas of meaning and is extremely dialectical in two modes: temporal and ontological. The first transforms utopia from (...) never-being into “past”, the second provides two inversions, considering it as 1) a dystopia, the other of utopia, which is declared to be the hidden truth of utopia; and — when it is fundamentally possible according to its own concept — 2) as impossible, in connection with which utopia and its concept return to the discourse as a kind of empty place around which modern pessimism circles, correctly believing that the future is unimaginable. The time of ends, from the end of the grand narratives of disappointed radicals (Lyotard) to the end of politics (see Rancière’s analysis), is, however, picked up by Marcuse, who suggests considering utopia as ahistorical. The author introduces this strange ahistorical or even anti-historicalism as historical, relying on the conceptualized phenomenon of the desynchronization of the “base” (the development of productive forces to the degree necessary for social revolution) and the “superstructure”, which runs into a limit, since it cannot represent the restrained base, which has broken out of the formational “scientific” logic. When Marcuse writes that a utopia in the strict sense can now be called a project that violates the laws of nature, he means the “impossible” into which utopia turns after the catastrophes of the 20th century, betraying the truth of its concept contained in the simple possibility of another world. More than 50 years after “The End of Utopia” and almost 30 years after the ontological turn in philosophy, we can say that utopia is still unimaginable — in the strict sense is what violates the laws of logic. This thesis opens up the possibilities of a new dialectic and its alliance with transcendentalism, which the author considers as a critique of plastic reason in the spirit of Malabou, constructing time and time again the assumptions-concepts that it needs and which are “practically necessary” according to Kant. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, Uchiyama Gudō, Seno’o Girō, Lin Qiuwu, and others advocated a Buddhism that was radical in two respects. Firstly, they adopted a more or less naturalist stance with respect to Buddhist doctrine and related matters, rejecting karma or other supernatural beliefs. And secondly, they held political and economic views that were radically anti-hegemonic, anti-capitalist, and revolutionary. Taking the idea of such a “radical Buddhism” seriously, A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and (...) Radical Buddhism asks whether it is possible to develop a philosophy that is simultaneously naturalist, anti-capitalist, Buddhist, and consistent. Rather than a study of radical Buddhism, then, this book is an attempt to radicalize it. The foundations of this “radicalized radical Buddhism” are provided by a realist interpretation of Yogācāra, elucidated and elaborated with some help from thinkers in the broader Tiantai/Tendai tradition and American philosophers Donald Davidson and W.V.O. Quine. A key implication of this foundation is that only this world and only this life are real, from which it follows that if Buddhism aims to alleviate suffering, it has to do so in this world and in this life. Twentieth-century radical Buddhists (as well as some engaged Buddhists) came to a similar conclusion, often expressed in their aim to realize “a Buddha land in this world.” Building on this foundation, but also on Mahāyāna moral philosophy, this book argues for an ethics and social philosophy based on a definition of evil as that what is or should be expected to cause death or suffering. On that ground, capitalism should be rejected indeed, but utopianism must be treated with caution as well, which raises questions about what it means – from a radicalized radical Buddhist perspective – to aim for a Buddha land in this world. (shrink)

Our paper is intended to follow the streams of thought along Chinese classicism that fostered hostility towards literary culture and merged into Han Feizi's work, by mid-3rd Century BC. On the one hand, Confucian tradition was prone to an elitist and anti-democratic approach to government, and set a precedent for mistrust in the use of eloquence and bookish culture. On the other, Taoism developed a theoretical contempt towards intellectualism, material culture, and scientific and technical progress, going as far as (...) to fancy unlettered utopias. On the basis of sheer utility and functionality, the Legalist school, whose latest link is represented by Han Feizi, would be receptive to both streams and take mistrust in traditional literary culture to its height. Assimilation of these ideas by Qin Shihuang, the First Emperor, led to implementation of anti-literary radicalism by banning any freedom of speech and, ultimately, by burning books and erudites. Mutatis mutandis, we suggest that a connection may be drawn between that historical process and today's Neoliberal hostility towards the Humanities. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article considers the relationship between modern classical liberalism and utopian theory. The main question we address is: How have key liberal theorists over the past century received utopian visions of the economy, politics, and society? The development of liberalism is commonly associated with strident anti-utopianism, a perception contraindicated by more recent developments in political economy and philosophy. Accommodative liberal engagements with utopia are evident within philosophical discussions addressing the significance of group diversity within free societies, and (...) of maintaining social accord among peoples with divergent beliefs, practices, and other modes of living. This development aligns with a revitalized liberal political economy emphasis upon experimentation and process, which appears congruent with similar tendencies in utopian theory over recent decades. Even liberal critics of utopia, such as Friedrich Hayek, described their own grounded visions of either utopian society, or of piecemeal reforms in a utopian direction. In this article it is argued feasible intellectual opportunities do exist to reconcile liberal theory and utopian conceptions. (shrink)

Utopia can be conceived as a possibility – a space within language, a set of principles, or the product of technological development – but it cannot be separated from questions of place, or more accurately, questions of “no place.” 1 In between the theoretically imaginable utopia and its realisation in a particular time and place, there is a space of critique, which is exploited in anti-Utopian and critical dystopian narratives. 2 In Science Fiction narratives of this kind, (...) technology is responsible for the transformation of the utopian impulse into a set of principles that are precisely stated and rigidly enforced. The critique focuses on the impossibility, due to the reductive force of instrumental reason, of any systematic realisation of a eutopia where the positive qualities of freedom, individualism and creativity are nurtured. The films Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg , and Gattaca, written and directed by Andrew Niccol , both examine utopian claims through speculation on the possible future use of current technologies, the tools of crime investigation and the genome project respectively. However, an examination of the plot cannot attend sufficiently to the particular properties of film and how it, as a medium, constructs utopia as a place. This article aims to address this issue by examining how technologically derived images of utopia are realised in the visual space of film, that is, on the level of the mise en scène. These images are often dystopian but the distinction between dystopia and eutopia is not crucial to the argument, because the aim is not to return utopian ism to its place at the vanguard of progressive politics, nor to reject utopianism on the basis that it is unrealisable, but rather to examine how technology and utopianism can combine in the visual language of film. My concern here is to investigate how utopia is conceived according to the specific features of the medium rather than to present an overarching narrative judgement as to the value of utopian principles. In Gattaca, the utopianism of a genetically determined future is reproduced in the mise en scène as a set of aesthetic principles, whereas in Minority Report the utopian technology itself resembles the apparatus of film. This involves two quite different approaches to the visualisation of utopia: 4 in Gattaca, utopia is embodied in a society in which there can be “no other place,” realised through the subtraction or reduction of visual difference; in Minority Report, utopia is an expression of a panoptic regime that can incorporate all visual and cultural difference such that the visible is “every place.”. (shrink)

This article is devoted not only to Losev''sphilosophical works, but also to his fiction,which he created during 1930s and 1940s.Losev''s eight books of the 1920s (his``octateuch'''') combine into a single whole thatamounts to his philosophy of life and historydepicted in expressive images. At the same timeLosev''s ``octateuch'''' strikes one as having beenwritten at a single sitting and in a singlestyle, in a genre that can be identified as the``philosophical novel'''' having as much right asSpengler''s opus to be called an ``intellectualnovel.'''' (...) In his prose of the 1930s and 1940sLosev tries with artistic methods to resolvethe philosophical problems which he raised inhis works of the 1920s. Losev''s ``octateuch'''' andhis fiction are directed against thosecontemporary materialists who seek to embodyPlato''s Republic, whom he christens``soil-less nihilist idealist utopians.'''' All ofthis leads to the conclusion that Losev''sintellectual novel belongs to a definite andmore specific subgenre. It is undoubtedly ananti-utopia, full of the grotesque. In additionto its scientific and social orientation,Losev''s anti-utopia is also religious innature. Thus Losev not only depicts the realconsequences of utopian dreams, but also turnsto the ``life of the artist,'''' which is far fromany technological or social utopias but isfilled with another, no less terrifying ornihilistic utopia: that of the non-religiousexistence of the human person. Losev preservedhis anti-utopian and anti-nihilist viewsthrough his late period (1950s–1980s), despitethe care he took not to cross Sovietcensorship. Losev''s anti-utopia is the kind ofChristian realism to which he appealedthroughout his life. (shrink)

Kateb poses as a defender of an actually attainable utopia and considers some recent attacks on this idea. He finds flaws in various arguments against any use of violence in attaining utopia, denies that utopian government need be highly authoritarian or machine-guided, and shows the immorality of certain "aesthetic" objections to life in utopia. While condemning theories of indeterminism, he sympathizes with expressions of hostility to utopian psychologists, such as B. F. Skinner, who would like "conditioning" to (...) supersede older forms of being virtuous. The author makes good use of a wide range of works in philosophy and the social sciences, maintains a high level of argumentation, and displays great respect for most of his anti-utopian opponents.--W. L. M. (shrink)

Jane Campion and Gerard Lee's miniseries Top of the Lake (2013) marked New Zealand-born but Australian resident Campion's return to New Zealand for the first time since The Piano (1993). The show's central subject of child sexual abuse by state officials echoes the different yet resonating political situations in twenty-first century Australia and New Zealand, a state of emergency that allows for the emergence of what Rebecca Solnit (2009) calls a ‘disaster community’. Implicitly addressing critiques of her colonialist gaze in (...) the earlier film, the miniseries both decolonises the idea of the Utopian no-place and offers an alternate, emplaced vision of relational, anti-colonial provisional Utopia through the main, mirroring female characters, Detective Robin Griffin and her half-sister Tui Mitcham. In contrast to contemporaneous police procedurals focussed on lone female officers, Top of the Lake rejects the authority of the police state and offers a resolution aslant that critiques generic expectations of individual heroism and resolution within a legal framework. Looking specifically at how the show knows its place—Lake Wakatipu on South Island, New Zealand—the article offers a close reading of Top of the Lake's formal critique of the male colonial gaze and its adoption of a feminist soundscape in relation to Campion's oeuvre; and considers its politics through indigenous media theory, to argue that it marks an initial step towards a decolonisation of viewing practices in relation to feminist conceptions of Utopia. (shrink)

Richard Rorty stood out as a relevant thinker of contemporary political life, in addition to building a framework of ideas of language, culture, freedom and solidarity. One of his most recurrent banners was the primacy of literature over philosophy and freedom over truth. For the purposes of this article, we start with excerpts from Rorty's interview by Helmut Mayer and Wolfgang Ulrich, compiled in the text It's good to persuade, in Take care of freedom that the truth will take care (...) of itself. In addition to this text, we also use Philosophy and social hope, and, in particular, Education as socialization and individualization, a text in which the author, moving away from the enchantment of traditional philosophy and defending the adoption of a philosophizing, primacy of freedom the edifying truth, by dogmatic, over a markedly essentialist and anti-foundationist posture. (shrink)

The utopias found in Angry Planet tend to be spatially and temporally contingent. In Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange (1997), a Los Angeles homeless community takes over a section of the Harbor Freeway, calling it the "FreeZone."1 Evoking the Reclaim the Streets movement that made up a facet of 1990s anti-globalization protesting, the residents of the FreeZone garden build a barter economy and create performance art while shielded from police intervention by car pileups and fires burning at either (...) end of the occupied stretch of US route 110. The FreeZone's lifespan is temporarily extended when the sun gets caught in the sky at the peak of the summer solstice, but it is only a matter of time before the full... Read More. (shrink)

This introductory article discusses the contributions to this number in the light of some general issues arising out of recent writing on utopia. It notes the wide variety of views on the question of definition of utopia, ranging from the anti-utopian dismissal of it as totalitarianism to a broad and flexible vehicle of desire. It traces the shifting accents of utopia consequent on the move beyond modernity - a shift from time to space and from content (...) to process. Only a flexible approach reflected in the variety of articles in this collection can offer glimpses of the most elusive utopia, the transcendence of loss and longing. (shrink)

"The choice we have is not between reasonable proposals and an unreasonable utopianism. Utopian thinking does not undermine or discount real reforms. Indeed, it is almost the opposite: practical reforms depend on utopian dreaming."--Russell Jacoby, _Picture Imperfect_ Utopianism suffers from an image problem: A recent exhibition on utopias in Paris and New York included photographs of Hitler's _Mein Kampf_ and a Nazi concentration camp. Many observers judge utopians and their sympathizers as foolhardy dreamers at best and murderous totalitarians at worst. (...) However, as noted social critic and historian Russell Jacoby argues in this salient, polemical, and innovative work, not only has utopianism been unfairly characterized, a return to an iconoclastic utopian spirit is vital for today's society. Shaped by the works of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Gustav Landauer, and other predominantly Jewish thinkers, iconoclastic utopianism revives society's dormant political imagination and offers hope for a better future. Writing against the grain of history, Jacoby reexamines the anti-utopian mindset and identifies how utopian thought came to be regarded with such suspicion. He challenges standard readings of such anti-utopian classics as _1984_ and _Brave New World_ and offers stinging critiques of the influential liberal and anti-utopian theorists Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Karl Popper. He argues that these thinkers mistakenly equate utopianism with totalitarianism. The reputation of utopian thought has also suffered from the failures of, what Jacoby terms, the blueprint utopian tradition and its oppressive emphasis on detailing all aspects of society and providing fantastic images of the future. In contrast, the iconoclastic utopians, like those who follow God's prohibition against graven images, resist both the blueprinters' obsession with detail and the modern seduction of images. Jacoby suggests that by learning from the hopeful spirit of iconoclastic utopians and their willingness to accept new possibilities for society, we open ourselves to new and more imaginative ideas of the future. (shrink)

Post-anarchism poses a profound challenge to the fundamental tenets of traditional anarchism, particularly its veneration of science and reason, its overarching narrative of human emancipation, and its reliance on a sanguine conception of innate human goodness. However, this challenge inadvertently erodes the utopian aspirations inherent in traditional anarchism, leaving a conspicuous absence of a tangible alternative. Yet, a sense of utopia remains integral to the impetus for political engagement. This article seeks to address the implicit quandary of political engagement (...) within post-anarchism by examining the works of Max Stirner through the lens of existentialism. By juxtaposing Stirner's notions of involuntary egoism, ownness, the un-man, and insurrection with the philosophical perspectives of Sartre, Camus, and De Beauvoir, we discover that, despite its anti-political inclination, post-anarchism finds solace in the tragic and ceaseless nomadic pursuit of societal amelioration. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Theodor Herzl once contemptuously remarked that he regards Freiland as a joke. This statement surprises if one compares his novel Altneuland to Theodor Hertzka's Freiland. To say the least, both utopias share many themes and narratives structures. While Altneuland became the world-renowned manifesto of Zionism, Freiland cherished popularity only at the time of its publication. Both novels are products of Vienna's fin-de-siècle modernism. Herzl's utopia is set in Palestine, Hertzka places Freiland in the empty space of East Africa. (...) His vision of a new civilization in Africa coincided with European colonialism, nationalism and the surge of anti-Semitism in Vienna. In the following, the essay investigates if Hertzka merely criticizes the culture of fin-de-siècle Vienna, or, if he produces a unique alternative? (shrink)

This article reconstructs the personal and intellectual friendship between two cosmopolitan intellectuals: Andrea Caffi and Nicola Chiaromonte , who met while in exile in Paris in 1932. After a brief recapitulation of their previous biographies, and an overall presentation of their participation in the revolutionary antifascist group ‘Giustizia e Libertà’ in the thirties, this article provides a detailed analysis of their dialogues and disagreements in the forties and fifties on the topics of socialism and revolution, antifascism and anti-totalitarianism, (...) class='Hi'>utopia and history. Particular attention is devoted to their contribution to the debates in the antifascist journal of GL and in the radical journal of Politics . Examined closely, the friendship between Caffi and Chiaromonte appears as a sequence of convergences and divergences, understandings and ruptures, which reflect the tensions and lacerations of the European civil war and its post-war legacy . Looked at again from a distance, however, it reveals a fundamental intellectual unity—a profound apolitical affinity in a century of radical politics which had fed wars, revolutions and totalitarian regimes. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article discusses the politics of hope in N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. Drawing on scholarship in utopian studies, science fiction studies, and Africana studies, it discusses the ways in which Jemisin uses two intentional community experiments depicted in the trilogy as “critical utopias” in order to work through problems involved in collective living, including the potentially anti-utopian aspects of these communities’ shortcomings. Ultimately, despite the apocalyptic setting that has attracted the most attention from critics, this article (...) argues that The Broken Earth ultimately affirms the necessity of utopian hope, even amid anti-utopian circumstances, and as such is an important and timely political statement. In a historical moment marked by social and racial strife and, in the literary realm, by what Sean Guynes calls “dystopia fatigue,” Jemisin’s trilogy does not promise utopia, but insists on the need for hope in seemingly hopeless times, the “anti-anti-utopian” orientation described by Fredric Jameson. (shrink)

Within Marxist criticism the hunger of the vampire has thus far been read as a metaphorization of the violence of capitalist exploitation. This article offers an alternative Marxist reading of vampirism, which incorporates the vampire's simultaneous demands to be fed and refusals of work into an antiwork utopian politics. This article suggests that the hunger of the vampire is usefully connected to the utopian desire for a world without work that lies at the heart of Marxist utopianism. In this way (...) this article challenges the productivist valorization of work, which often accompanies denunciations of the vampire as an enemy of the worker, while demonstrating that such denunciations frequently align Marxism with racist, queerphobic, and anti-Semitic framings of the vampire in opposition to the white Christian family. Focusing on Bram Stoker's Dracula this article deploys the critical methodology of Ernst Bloch in order to excavate the utopian potential of Stoker's text. (shrink)

A discussion of José-Antonio Orosco’s new book, Star Trek’s Philosophy of Peace and Justice: A Global, Anti-Racist Approach. Orosco has been finding wisdom in Star Trek episodes since he watched late night reruns with his mother. Then, recently, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek’s debut, Orosco began to teach the series as source material for peace philosophy. Philosophical concepts can be brought to bear on Star Trek stories; but Orosco argues that the stories also assert philosophical (...) meanings that are instructive to peace studies. Martin Luther King Jr. was a fan of the first season, famously encouraging the late Nichelle Nichols (1932-2022) to persist in the role of Nyota Uhura after she had decided to resign. In our book discussion, Orosco centers the importance of Critical Race Theory as a tool for exploring Star Trek’s presentation of peace and justice. Andrew Fiala questions Orosco about Star Trek’s militarism. Jennifer Kling asks how the treatment of refugees intersects with Starfleet’s Prime Directive, which commands noninterference with intergalactic populations. (shrink)

Twenty-five years ago, communism, the political system dominant in Eastern Europe, collapsed. Two years later, in 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved. The People’s Republic of China remained the sole communist power, but throughout the 1990s its anti-capitalist party line was watered down through the introduction of market-oriented reforms. Today, only one country can be said to be truly communist: North Korea. Communism, in the 1980s a mighty geopolitical force holding half of Europe and roughly one third of the (...) world’s population in its grip, is today confined to an internationally isolated prison state, one of the poorest countries on the planet. How are we to remember the past of a utopia? By recounting the utopian dream? Or maybe by still dreaming the dream, hoping for it to come true? After all, as Alain Badiou puts it in his book The Communist Hypothesis,1 “Communism is [still] the right hypothesis”, and those who disagree “resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy” — the true evils of our time, in Badiou’s eyes. But was communism just a dream, just a hypothesis? (shrink)

ABSTRACT Capitalism on Edge aims to redraw the terms of analysis of the so-called democratic capitalism and sketches a political agenda for emancipating society of its grip. This symposium reflects critically on Azmanova’s book and challenges her arguments on methodological, thematic, and substantive grounds. Azar Dakwar introduces the book’s claims and wonders about the nature of the anti-capitalistic agency Azmanova’s ascribes to the precariat. David Ingram worries about Azmanova’s deposing of “economic democracy” and the impact of which on the (...) prospect of radical change she advocates. William Callison casts doubt over the empirical plausibility of Azmanova’s vision of crisis-free transition out of democratic capitalism. Eilat Maoz interrogates Azmanova’s emancipatory project from the historical standpoint of (de)colonization and global imperialism. In her reply to these criticisms, Azmanova accepts some and parries others, while bringing their points closer to her anti-capitalist vision. (shrink)

The western utopia has both classical and Judaeo-Christian roots. From the Greeks came the form of the ideal city, based on reason, from Jews and Christians the idea of deliverance through a messiah and the culmination of history in the millennium. The Greek conception placed utopia in an ideal space, the Christian conception in an ideal time. The modern utopia, dating from Thomas More's Utopia (1516), drew upon both these traditions but added something distinctive of its (...) own. Following More, the modern utopia has developed as a literary form whose closest relative is the novel. This, I argue, is its great strength. Unlike the abstract utopias of social and political philosophy, such as Marxism or anarchism, the `concrete utopia' of writers such as Edward Bellamy, William Morris and H. G. Wells paints `pleasing pictures of daily life' which both impel us to desire the good society and give us the tools by which to assess it. It is in this respect that utopia - and its mirror-image, the anti-utopia - developed as a distinct literary genre, separating it from other forms of picturing the ideal society in both east and west. (shrink)

Mary Midgley's book Utopias, Dolphins and Computers will be needed to recharge our more philosophical approach to life as new problems present themselves to humanity at an accelerated rate. The most dangerous attitude to these challenges, Midgley argues, is an anti-intellectualism that fails to see that all approaches presuppose tacit or hidden assumptions, that is a philosophy. One part of our tacit philosophy that is now breaking up is the social contract, according to Mary Midgley in Utopias, Dolphins and (...) Computers It needs tempering with a vision of people in relationships bordering on the organic—ideas with their roots in ecology—rather than as fundamentally isolated atoms in contractual union. (shrink)

Review of Doyne Dawson, Cities of the Gods: Communist Utopias in Greek Thought , pp. viii + 305, ?35.00 ISBN 0 19 5069838.

Starting from the author’s critique of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, this essay offers a comprehensive interpretation of Slavoj Žižek’s political theory. ŽiŽek’s position drives a wedge between two concepts foundational to Laclau and Mouffe’s ‘radical democratic theory’, namely ‘antagonism’ and ‘anti-essentialism’. Anti-essentialism, it is argued, carries with it a residual utopianism - i.e. a view of political theory as offering a vision of a desirable radicalized society or a ‘radical democratic imaginary’ - that the more radical concept (...) of antagonism forbids. Effectively, anti-essentialism is shown to produce a new kind of ideology, an ideology that Žižek, deeply critical, associates with the shortcomings of multi-culturalism and political correctness. The essay ends with a critical consideration of Žižek’s claim that he himself produced a systematic political theory based upon the insight of antagonism. Having constructed (by way of return to Marx and Engels) a version of Žižek’s project that makes sense of his derision for anti-utopianism by positing a utopian theory without any ‘imaginary’ support, the article closes with critical comments about the effectiveness of such a position. Žižek is seen to offer us a powerful political theory, one that unmasks the hypocrisy in much contemporary work, but also a theory whose limits must give us pause. (shrink)

In Human Nature and Politics in Utopian and Anti-Utopian Fiction, Nivedita Bagchi's purpose is primarily to examine "human nature" as a historical concept that can help us to make sense of the political theory of her chosen works of fiction within their authorial context. Bagchi does not use the term "Human nature" first and foremost as a category for analysing the present but rather to address historic texts on terms their authors would have understood.Following an introduction, the book's four (...) main chapters cover Thomas More's Utopia, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The conclusion also contains an analysis of... (shrink)