Exploring the Utopian Impulse

The Editors: Michael J. Griffin (Lecturer in English Studies, University of Limerick) has published several articles on eighteenth-century, utopian, and Irish studies, in journals such as the Review of English Studies, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, the Field Day Review, and Utopian Studies. Tom Moylan (Glucksman Professor and Director, Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies, University of Limerick) has published Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination; Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia; Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination; and Utopia Method Vision: The Use Value of Social Dreaming (with Raffaella Baccolini).

«As the second volume in the Ralahine Utopian Studies series, this volume is notable for the quality of the individual essays and for its clear and useful organization (into theory, texts, and polities). The essays will be useful to both established and new scholars for research as well as teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. What particularly impresses me is the set of theoretical interventions with which the volume begins. These opening essays take off from the ground-breaking work of Darko Suvin, Lyman Tower Sargent, and Fredric Jameson and break out into new and challenging directions. The overall effect of this volume is to demonstrate in all its pages how vital utopian thinking has become in our contemporary, fragmented, disintegrating world.» (Professor Toby Widdicombe, Department of English, University of Alaska, Editor, ‘Utopian Studies’)«This timely book broadens our view of the central issues in utopian studies today. By discussing the transformative energy of Utopia from a threefold perspective – theory, texts, and polities – it sets out to prove the validity and the growing importance of this field of study and of utopian thought and practice itself. Carefully edited, the book gathers essays which interact in a multidisciplinary dialogue. Drawing on a wide range of critical resources, it offers new and important insights into known and unexplored territories. ‘Exploring the Utopian Impulse’ is destined to become a standard reference for all those interested in rethinking the utopian impulse.» (Professor Fátima Vieira, Department of Anglo-American Studies, University of Porto, Chair, Utopian Studies Society (Europe))

• Contents: Michael J. Griffin/Tom Moylan: Introduction: Exploring Utopia – Ruth Levitas: The Archive of the Feet: Memory, Place, and Utopia – Eugene O’Brien: «Towards Justice to Come»: Derrida and Utopian Justice – Susan McManus: Truth, Temporality, and Theorizing Resistance – Christopher Yorke: Three Archetypes for the Clarification of Utopian Theorizing – Vincent Geoghegan: Utopia and the Memory of Religion – Antonis Balasopoulos: The Fractured Image: Plato, the Greeks, and the Figure of the Ideal City – Geraldine Sheridan: Technological Utopia/Dystopia in the Plates of the Encyclopédie – Matthew Beaumont: The Party of Utopia: Utopian Fiction and the Politics of Readership 1880-1900 – Dan Smith: H.G. Wells’s First Utopia: Materiality and Portent – Michael G. Kelly: Immanence and the Utopian Impulse: On Philippe Jaccottet’s Readings of Æ and Robert Musil – Philip Schweighauser: Who’s Afraid of Dystopia? William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Fredric Jameson’s Writing on Utopia and Science Fiction – Paula Murphy: Paradise Lost: The Destruction of Utopia in The Beach – Michael J. Griffin/Dara Waldron: Across Time and Space: The Utopian Impulses of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker – Caitríona Ní Dhúill: «One loves the girl for what she is, and the boy for what he promises to be»: Gender Discourse in Ernst Bloch’s Das Prinzip Hoffnung – Aidan O’Malley: Rhyming Hope and History in the «Fifth Province» – Timothy Keane: The Chartist Land Plan: An English Dream, an Irish Nightmare – Lucian M. Ashworth: The League of Nations as a Utopian Project: The Labour Party Advisory Committee on International Questions and the Search for a New World Order – Jenny Andersson: Beyond Utopia? The Knowledge Society and the Third Way – Andrew J. Brown: Witchcrafting Selves: Remaking Person and Community in a Neo-Pagan Utopian Scene – Barrie Wharton: From Shukri Mustafa to the Ashwaiyat: Utopianism in Egyptian Islamism.