Opposition to utopianism on ontological and political grounds has seemingly relegated it to a potentially dangerous form of antiquated idealism. This conclusion is based on a restrictive view of utopia as excessively ordered panoptic discursive constructions. This overlooks the fact that, from its inception, movement has been central to the utopian tradition. The power of utopianism indeed resides in its ability to instantiate the tension between movement and place that has marked social transformations in the modern era. This tension continues (...) in contemporary discussions of movement-based social processes, particularly international migration and related identity formations, such as open borders transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. Understood as such, utopia remains an ongoing and powerful, albeit problematic instrument of social and political imagination. (shrink)

Recently, there has been much debate about the role and nature of political theories. Jeremy Waldron has argued that we misconstrue a theory’s purpose if we summarize it in terms of ‘What Plato Would Allow’, because a normative theory is a conceptual exploration and should not be reduced to a policy wish list. To make sense of such phrases beyond Waldron’s critique, this paper provides some conceptual tools to clarify the practical purpose of normative political theories. First, it draws on (...) Bernard Williams’ distinction between the enactive and structural models in political theory. Second, it seeks to reconstruct normative political theories as sets of speech acts having an illocutionary point that expresses the relation between theory and practice. Third, the paper outlines five types of illocutionary points (Intervention, Justification, Reconciliation, Critique, and Imagination of alternatives). The idea of an illocutionary point can make sense of the practical import of a theory in a multifaceted manner and without subscribing to a specific conception of practicality. (shrink)

ABSTRACT How can we understand the term ‘utopia’ and does the adjective ‘utopian’ discredit the social thought to which it refers? The author discusses the role of utopia in the emergence of social sciences and alludes to Immanuel Wallerstein and his analysis of utopistics. He also defends the hypothesis that in the times of political, economic and ecological crisis which is sweeping through Europe and the world in the first decades of the twenty-first century, utopian thinking may be reborn not (...) only as a way of showing possible social alternatives, but also as a means of democratizing public debate and the existing status quo. In this perspective, utopianism can be invigorating not only for democracy, but also for independent and critical social thought. Social utopias, which contributed to the rise of the mass workers’ movement in the nineteenth century, today may become a force mobilizing human imagination and sensitivity to the struggles for a more emancipatory and democratic social order. (shrink)

The significance of utopian thought for education can be made evident through reconceptualizing utopia and approaching it alongside the notion of dystopia. Awareness of dystopian elements of reality radicalizes the kind of critique that assists utopian thought and makes engagement with it more pressing. Awareness of the lurking danger of future dystopia goes hand in hand with a utopia that is cautious and vigilant of its own possible turn into catastrophe. If education is not just an institution of the unreflective (...) socialization and social integration of the young immersed in technicist and prudentialist goals, if it is about futurity and vision of a better world, it has to rely on, and renegotiate, utopian thought. Yet, all this presupposes a new descriptive account of the self and the world that breaks with the kind of anthropology and ethics that generated a particular conception of utopia as impossible and purely oneiric. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article draws on utopian and posthumanist theory in order to critically assess the contemporary resurgence of green utopianism in the form of contemporary radical environmental activists mobilizing against the socioecological perturbations of the Anthropocene. Featuring empirical data in the form of twenty-six semi-structured interviews with REAs from groups such as Earth First! and Sea Shepherd, the article critically examines the singular modality of ecotopianism exhibited by REAs, and explores the degree to which their post-anthropocentric worldviews—and crucially the widespread (...) annihilation of cherished Earth kin amidst the Anthropocene era of climate and ecological breakdown—influences their imaginative reconstitutions of human–animal–nature relations. REAs exhibit a distinctively earthbound or terrestrial ecotopianism that disavows future-oriented modalities of hope and closure around particular notions of the “good” in light of the intrusion of ecological decline into the present, instead emphasizing the need to disrupt the present and live better alternatives in the here and now. The article concludes with reflections on the value of some closure for necessary socioecological transformations, and on what REA ecotopianism suggests about the potential for posthuman utopian modalities that decenter the human in their projections of more livable worlds. (shrink)

The early decades of the twentieth century were marked by widespread optimism about biology and its ability to improve the world. A major catalyst for this enthusiasm was new theories about inheritance and evolution (particularly Hugo de Vries's mutation theory and Mendel's newly rediscovered ideas). In Britain and the USA particularly, an astonishingly diverse variety of writers (from elite scientists to journalists and writers of fiction) took up the task of interpreting these new biological ideas, using a wide range of (...) genres to help their fellow citizens make sense of biology's promise. From these miscellaneous writings a new and distinctive kind of utopianism emerged – the biotopia. Biotopias offered the dream of a perfect, post-natural world, or the nightmare of violated nature (often in the same text), but above all they conveyed a sense that biology was – for the first time – offering humanity unprecedented control over life. Biotopias often visualized the world as a garden perfected for human use, but this vision was tinged with gendered violence, as it became clear that realizing it entailed dispossessing, or even killing, ‘Mother Nature’. Biotopian themes are apparent in journalism, scientific reports and even textbooks, and these non-fiction sources shared many characteristics with intentionally prophetic or utopian fictions. Biotopian themes can be traced back and forth across the porous boundaries between popular and elite writing, showing how biology came to function as public culture. This analysis reveals not only how the historical significance of science is invariably determined outside the scientific world, but also that the ways in which biology was debated during this period continue to characterize today's debates over new biological breakthroughs. (shrink)

In 1890, Ricardo Mella—one of the foremost theorists of Spanish anarchism—published the short novel La Nueva Utopía [The New Utopia], which had been awarded a prize in Barcelona's Second Socialist Contest the previous year. It was a time of resurgence for the utopian novel in the western world with numerous proposals for different models of socialism. In particular, there were three works in quick succession which were well received and eventually became classics: Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888), Hertzka's Freiland (1889), and (...) Morris's News from Nowhere (1890). This article analyzes Mella's novel as the major example of the utopian genre in Spain at the end of the nineteenth century and as an effective means of spreading his model of anarchist collectivism (as opposed to anarchist communism). In it, he shows the future libertarian society in glowing colors. In addition, the article compares the model of social organization developed in La Nueva Utopía with those proposed in the three famous contemporary works (by Bellamy, Hertzka, and Morris). (shrink)