Antonis Balasopoulos – författare

Reading Texts on Sovereignty charts the development of the concept from the classical period to the present day. Defined in antiquity as an absolute or supreme type of power, sovereignty’s history has been marked ever since by numerous moments of crisis and contestation through which its meaning has been redefined and reconfigured. Using extracts of key texts selected and analysed by leading contributors from the USA, the UK, New Zealand, Japan, Cyprus, Finland, France, Austria, Israel, and Italy, this volume examines these moments and how different societies have grappled with sovereignty through the ages.The book explores a diverse range of geographical and cultural contexts within which the issue of sovereignty became critical, including ancient China and medieval Islam. In addition, the book includes chapters that respond to the vital interplay between the development of the theory of sovereignty and such momentous historical events and developments as the birth of the democratic polis in the classical world, the legal and political developments that attended the rise of the Roman and Islamic empires, the bitter struggles over sovereign rights between the ‘temporal’ and ‘spiritual’ authorities of medieval and early modern Europe, the English Civil War, the French and American Revolutions, and the October Revolution.

Reading Texts on Sovereignty charts the development of the concept from the classical period to the present day. Defined in antiquity as an absolute or supreme type of power, sovereignty’s history has been marked ever since by numerous moments of crisis and contestation through which its meaning has been redefined and reconfigured. Using extracts of key texts selected and analysed by leading contributors from the USA, the UK, New Zealand, Japan, Cyprus, Finland, France, Austria, Israel, and Italy, this volume examines these moments and how different societies have grappled with sovereignty through the ages.The book explores a diverse range of geographical and cultural contexts within which the issue of sovereignty became critical, including ancient China and medieval Islam. In addition, the book includes chapters that respond to the vital interplay between the development of the theory of sovereignty and such momentous historical events and developments as the birth of the democratic polis in the classical world, the legal and political developments that attended the rise of the Roman and Islamic empires, the bitter struggles over sovereign rights between the ‘temporal’ and ‘spiritual’ authorities of medieval and early modern Europe, the English Civil War, the French and American Revolutions, and the October Revolution.

Reading Texts on Sovereignty charts the development of the concept from the classical period to the present day. Defined in antiquity as an absolute or supreme type of power, sovereignty''s history has been marked ever since by numerous moments of crisis and contestation through which its meaning has been redefined and reconfigured. Using extracts of key texts selected and analysed by leading contributors from the USA, the UK, New Zealand, Japan, Cyprus, Finland, France, Austria, Israel, and Italy, this volume examines these moments and how different societies have grappled with sovereignty through the ages. The book explores a diverse range of geographical and cultural contexts within which the issue of sovereignty became critical, including ancient China and medieval Islam. In addition, the book includes chapters that respond to the vital interplay between the development of the theory of sovereignty and such momentous historical events and developments as the birth of the democratic polis in the classical world, the legal and political developments that attended the rise of the Roman and Islamic empires, the bitter struggles over sovereign rights between the ''temporal'' and ''spiritual'' authorities of medieval and early modern Europe, the English Civil War, the French and American Revolutions, and the October Revolution.

Reading Texts on Sovereignty charts the development of the concept from the classical period to the present day. Defined in antiquity as an absolute or supreme type of power, sovereignty''s history has been marked ever since by numerous moments of crisis and contestation through which its meaning has been redefined and reconfigured. Using extracts of key texts selected and analysed by leading contributors from the USA, the UK, New Zealand, Japan, Cyprus, Finland, France, Austria, Israel, and Italy, this volume examines these moments and how different societies have grappled with sovereignty through the ages. The book explores a diverse range of geographical and cultural contexts within which the issue of sovereignty became critical, including ancient China and medieval Islam. In addition, the book includes chapters that respond to the vital interplay between the development of the theory of sovereignty and such momentous historical events and developments as the birth of the democratic polis in the classical world, the legal and political developments that attended the rise of the Roman and Islamic empires, the bitter struggles over sovereign rights between the ''temporal'' and ''spiritual'' authorities of medieval and early modern Europe, the English Civil War, the French and American Revolutions, and the October Revolution.

«Antonis Balasopoulos is to be heartily thanked for bringing back into print A. L. Morton’s marvelous book The English Utopia – and for providing us with not only a useful and insightful Introduction, but also a comprehensive bibliography of Leslie Morton’s many writings. We definitely need such works in these difficult times when democracy is under siege by authoritarian forces. Morton’s chapters may well truly serve both to empower our critical thinking and to inspire our radical-democratic imaginations.»(Harvey J Kaye, Professor Emeritus of Democracy & Justice, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay)«Antonis Balasopoulos describes his job as an ‘exercise in historical reclamation.’ He is due much gratitude for both the scrupulousness and the expertise he brings to his task. The Introduction is a model of its kind, positioning Morton in his own milieu as a committed intellectual. Morton’s book more than deserves this careful attention. In this new Ralahine edition, The English Utopia appears as the seminal text in utopian studies it should have been. »(Patricia McManus, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Brighton)A. L. Morton’s classic 1952 study of utopias in the context of British social history constitutes one of the earliest sustained engagements with the social and ideological sources of the utopian imagination, the importance of the class struggle for literary production and of literary production for cultural, if not political hegemony. Traversing English literary history from the medieval poem on the Land of Cockaygne to Sir Thomas More, to William Morris’s News from Nowhere and the subsequent decline of the genre and the eventual rise of anti-utopian and dystopian strains in the early twentieth century, The English Utopia remains provocative and critically engaging more than seventy years after its original publication. In addition to charting its significance as an intervention, the present edition also brings to light Morton’s complex role as Left political activist, historian, scholarly catalyst and cultural critic – a paradigmatic instance of the engaged and public intellectual.

«Through detailed, elegant interpretations of utopian novels produced in the United States and the Soviet Union, Pavla Veselá casts aside standard commonplaces about East / West cultural divergences and reveals the critical function of utopian fiction that is shared in the two national contexts.»(Michael Hardt, Professor of Literature, Duke University)«It is encouraging to read The Polyphony of Utopia in our cynical and desperate time. By discussing a number of Russian and American utopian novels in the light of ‘utopian realism,’ addressing the uncertainty, anxiety and doubt contained in their visions of hope, Pavla Veselá proves the importance and relevance of the transformation of today’s world toward Utopia.»(Thomas Lahusen, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto)Utopias – literary visions of better, more just and happier communities – have been misconceived as «mere fantasies» on the one hand and «models to implement» on the other. Building on the notion of «critical utopia» and elaborating on interpretations of literary works as contradictory and incomplete, the book analyses selected utopian and dystopian novels by five writers: Edward Bellamy, Alexander Bogdanov, Ivan Yefremov, Marge Piercy and Octavia E. Butler. It argues that departing from the conventions of realism, utopias advance credible visions of more perfect ways of living and being which are nevertheless destabilized through gothic and poetic generic elements. Unresolved issues are further explored in (utopian as well as dystopian) sequels and prequels. The novels analysed in detail include Bellamy’s Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888) and Equality (1897), Bogdanov’s Red Star: A Utopia (1908) and Engineer Menni: A Novel of Fantasy (1913), Yefremov’s Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale (1957) and The Hour of the Bull (1970), Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) and He, She and It (1991), and Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998).

«This relevant, clearly defined study isn’t constricted by its primary focus on late nineteenth-century American utopias, written when inequality flourished. Morris enriches this focus with chronological comparisons to well-known and lesser-known American utopias in other periods; international contexts from non-American authors; and interpretive perspectives by utopian specialists, political scientists, philosophers, and sociologists. But the book’s most striking quality is the variety of reforms identified and discussed. This variety greatly enhances our understanding of utopists’ war on inequality.»(Kenneth M. Roemer, Emeritus Fellow, University of Texas System Academy of Distinguished Teachers. Author of The Obsolete Necessity, Utopian Audiences, and (ed.) America as Utopia«Utopian alternatives to current, persistent and increasing inequality matter: as William Blake said, ‘What is now proved was once, only imagin’d’, and so Donald Morris examines a wealth of possibilities, some outlandish, but all conceivable, and many eminently feasible, from a tradition of literary and imaginative forms of political and social theory. A hopeful and invigorating read.»(Tom Boland, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University College Cork)This work explores what utopian writers have said about economic inequality. Its transdisciplinary focus is literary utopias—novels of social theory—by authors seeking solutions to the problems of economic inequality. The work challenges our moral assumptions about economic inequality—its potential for resolution—or its inevitability and the ultimate bifurcation of society. It is not an economic treatise but an exploration in social philosophy in its utopian expressions. Economic inequality sets arbitrary limits on whose contributions will benefit society, thereby squandering talent, limiting opportunities, and stifling competition—capriciously restricting the pool of competitors—by class or gender or race. As utopian writers envision a future where the extremes of poverty and wealth have been tempered, it is instructive to explore the instruments they employ; by what measures have they defeated poverty or diminished the threats boundless fortunes pose, thereby revitalizing society?

This volume examines the concept of the utopic figure, focusing on the textual procedures through which utopian texts negotiate the limits of the imaginable. Drawing from literary theory and criticism, political philosophy, social history, cartography and geography, urban studies and visual culture, it discusses utopian figuration in relation to classical, early modern, and (post)modern contexts, dwelling on the aversion to stasis or civil war and the import of animality in the classical philosophical context; anxieties about value, the transformation of the geographical imaginary, the social place of the humanist intellectual and the specter of surplus populations in early modernity; the literary engagement with the possibilities and risks involved in daydreaming, everyday life, and the strange dialectic between utopia and spectrality in modernity. Lastly, it examines the dialectic of utopianism and Marxism from the 19th century to the present.With surefooted dialectical rigor, Figures of Utopia proposes a narratologically and philosophically astute new accounting of utopia’s enigmatic figural labors. Revivifying foundational texts, theories, and constitutional antinomies alike, Balasopoulos’s lucid, timely, and sweeping study not only maps the allegorical dynamics of utopian form but also affirms the unique ways that utopia’s multivalent estrangements live in and contend with history. — Eric D. Smith, Professor of English, University of Alabama in HuntsvilleFigures of Utopia brims with literary and philosophical brilliance and establishes Balasopoulos as a preeminent scholar of both Utopian Studies and Marxist hermeneutics. With daunting conceptual rigor and lucid exegesis, the essays in this volume track a long history of utopian textuality stretching from the ancient to the contemporary, and in so doing, Balasopoulos makes the demands of the "not yet" more legible, felt, and relevant. — Sarah Hogan, Associate Professor of English, Wake Forest University