Political Uses of Utopia

New Marxist, Anarchist, and Radical Democratic Perspectives

S. D. Chrostowska, James D. Ingram, S. Chrostowska, James Ingram

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9780231544313
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Critical Theory

Utopia has long been banished from political theory, framed as an impossible—and possibly dangerous—political ideal, a flawed social blueprint, or a thought experiment without any practical import. Even the "realistic utopias" of liberal theory strike many as wishful thinking. Can politics think utopia otherwise? Can utopian thinking contribute to the renewal of politics?

In Political Uses of Utopia, an international cast of leading and emerging theorists agree that the uses of utopia for politics are multiple and nuanced and lie somewhere between—or, better yet, beyond—the mainstream caution against it and the conviction that another, better world ought to be possible. Representing a range of perspectives on the grand tradition of Western utopianism, which extends back half a millennium and perhaps as far as Plato, these essays are united in their interest in the relevance of utopianism to specific historical and contemporary political contexts. Featuring contributions from Miguel Abensour, Étienne Balibar, Raymond Geuss, and Jacques Rancière, among others, Political Uses of Utopia reopens the question of whether and how utopianism can inform political thinking and action today.

INDEX

Page numbers refer to the print edition but are hyperlinked to the appropriate location in the e-book.

Abbey of Thélème (Rabelais), 74, 89, 281

Abensour, Miguel, xiii, xviii, 105–6, 199, 212, 263, 289, 294n19, 297n18, 303n37, 306n46, 309n59; on Marx, 179, 263; utopia defined by, 205–06, 257–59; utopianism revived by, xxiv; on utopian spirit, xxiv–xxvi, 284

Abstract utopia, xx, 126, 132, 203, 209; Bloch on, 102, 153n1, 302–03n32; versus concrete utopia, 102, 132, 153n1, 302–3n32

Académie Française, 27

Action utopia (Gordon), 198

“Act of association” (Rousseau), 136

Adorno, Theodor W., 52n28, 98, 106, 172, 234, 246, 280, 282, 304n3738

Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants (Luther), 88

Age of Absolutism, 70, 74

Amaurot (More), 81, 84–86, 88

America, 75–76, 80–81, 89–90, 231; idea of, 82–84

Amerindians, 89, 91–94

Anarchism, xxiv, xxv, 119, 180, 286; chiliasm and, 299n23, 305n43; commitment to, 199; historical, 206, 209; political uses of utopia and, 209–13; practice of, 200–205; prefiguration relating to, 198–202, 306n48; revolutionary, 304n43; systems of, 200–207; utopian element of, 207–8; Weber on, 200

Anarchism and Its Aspirations (Milstein), 203

Anarchistic model of utopian thinking (Voigt), 65–68

Anarchy, decade of, 273

Ancients, 66, 251, 254

Anders, Günther, 98, 109, 113n31

Anticapitalist/ism, xiv, 123, 201, 211

Anticommunism, 126

Antiesse...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Statement
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Utopia and Politics
• I. Reviving Utopia
• II. Questioning Utopia
• III. Utopia and Radical Politics
• IV. Permanence of Utopia
• Coda
• Contributors
• Index
• Series List