Michael G Kelly – författare

This book outlines certain durable properties of multi-layered practice of artistic and intellectual invention by confronting it with the complex theoretical and spatial metaphor of utopia. It encourages understandings of the poetic and the utopian in the twentieth-century French literary context.

"The poetic is an abiding yet elusive qualification within the discursive system of twentieth-century French literature. No longer amenable to formal assignment, its recurrences delimit a shifting, multi-layered practice of artistic and intellectual (self-) invention. This study attempts to outline certain durable properties of that practice by confronting it with the complex theoretical and spatial metaphor of utopia. Drawing, in particular, upon the oeuvres of Victor Segalen (1878-1919), Rene Daumal (1908-44) and Yves Bonnefoy (b. 1923), it traces poetic work - work done in support of poetic difference - along the social, physical and textual axes of what is argued to be a sustained and radically inclusive utopian practice within the literary field. The complex utopian quality of poetic work is linked to the cultural persistence of the poetic as a simple attribute within literary practice. In uncovering this link, the study encourages revised understandings of both the poetic and the utopian in the modern French literary context."

"The poetic is an abiding yet elusive qualification within the discursive system of twentieth-century French literature. No longer amenable to formal assignment, its recurrences delimit a shifting, multi-layered practice of artistic and intellectual (self-) invention. This study attempts to outline certain durable properties of that practice by confronting it with the complex theoretical and spatial metaphor of utopia. Drawing, in particular, upon the oeuvres of Victor Segalen (1878-1919), Rene Daumal (1908-44) and Yves Bonnefoy (b. 1923), it traces poetic work - work done in support of poetic difference - along the social, physical and textual axes of what is argued to be a sustained and radically inclusive utopian practice within the literary field. The complex utopian quality of poetic work is linked to the cultural persistence of the poetic as a simple attribute within literary practice. In uncovering this link, the study encourages revised understandings of both the poetic and the utopian in the modern French literary context."

«A piercing critique of imperial culture and climate doomism. Alberro’s Terrestrial Ecotopias is a compelling and penetrating corrective, sketching an ecology of hope beyond the Capitalocene.»(Jason W. Moore, author, Capitalism in the Web of Life)«Utopia is here and now, with our feet on the ground alongside paws, claws and roots. Heather Alberro brings together eco-fictional, radical environmental activist, and Indigenous struggles for an urgent appeal to jointly build better, more-than-human tomorrows — starting today. Artfully weaving intricate analysis and sweeping connections into a passionate book brimming with life, Terrestrial Ecotopias provides us with the blueprints we need for bringing multispecies flourishing into the world through stories and action.»(Christoph Rupprecht, Associate Professor in Sustainability and Global Environmental Studies, Ehime University, co-editor of Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures and Solarpunk Creatures)This book offers transdisciplinary critical analyses of select contemporary manifestations of ecotopianism, asking in particular: whither the otherthan- human? To what extent do these visions and strivings for ecologically sustainable futures actively foreground the needs and wellbeing of our terrestrial kin rather than consign them to a mute backdrop overshadowed by a predominantly human drama?

«The republication of Ken Roemer’s 1976 classic reaffirms how necessary, and non-obsolete, this book and expressions of utopia remain. Roemer’s engaging introduction reviews the career of a foundational scholar-teacher, and reassesses the life of a book, written during times of national unrest, that captured the aspirations of American modernity. This fine reissue is timely as, of necessity, u/dystopian speculation flourishes anew.»(Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor, Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Penn State University, Editor, Utopian Studies)«Ken Roemer’s Obsolete Necessity is simply foundational for scholars of utopias and utopianism. I’ve learned from it and assigned it countless times in courses from first-year writing to graduate seminars, and will continue to do so forever. There is no better, clearer introduction to America-as-utopia or to ways of thinking through national identity formation in utopian literature from its most fertile two decades at the end of the nineteenth century.»(Peter Sands, Director UWM Honors College, University of Wisconsin / Milwaukee, Editor, H-UTOPIA)The Obsolete Necessity expanded the canon of American utopias during their print-culture Golden Era from 40 to more than 160 works. What were the natures and impacts of these fictions? Were they accurate indices to the desires and fears of Americans? Roemer uses a combination of biographical research, innovative statistical content analyses, and cultural/historical contextualizations to address these questions. He demonstrates how the utopists’ concepts of time, space, and the potential to transform individuals shaped their visions of economies, religion, cities, and women, as well as daily life. Throughout, Roemer emphasizes tense combinations of old and new, and hopes and fears. The new Introduction defines how the utopias are relevant/irrelevant today, incorporates insights from Lyman Tower Sargents’s further expansion of the canon, articulates a theory of culture, and concludes with speculations about the creation of «influential» scholarship.

«This unique volume takes the reader on an extraordinary journey through flights of the political and social imagination across Iberia and Latin America from the conquest of the Americas, via insurgent and reactionary modern movements, to the Cold War and on to contemporary dreams and dystopias. The Western notion of utopia was born of Iberian imperialism in the Americas: Hispanic Utopias traces its complex, contradictory destinies from the origins of the Hispanic empire through waves of revolution and resistance among the diverse peoples and beliefs of those vast territories. This is an engaging read, offering a fascinating array of translated texts; concise, clear introductions to orientate the reader; and many provocations to thought.»(Andrew Ginger, Professor of Comparative Studies, Vice Provost for International Engagement, Northeastern University. Oficial de la Orden de Isabel la Católica)«This judiciously edited and much-needed volume succeeds in its ambitious aim of reconstructing the utopian tradition of Spanish-speaking peoples over the past five centuries. Students and scholars alike will find much in its pages to delight and to provoke vigorous and thoughtful political and historical debate. Warmly recommended.»(Laurence Davis, Senior Lecturer in Government and Politics, University College Cork and co-editor of Anarchism and Utopianism and The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed)This historical reader offers a survey and an anthology of utopian speculation written in Spanish and other Hispanic languages since the 16th century. It not only provides further proof that this genre has been a key intellectual tool for imagining and debating the modern world, but also dismantles the cliché that Hispanic societies have been refractory to utopia by illustrating both the fertility of utopian writing in Hispanic languages and the links of that writing with local archetypes such as Don Quixote. The present volume expands the utopian canon and the very concept of utopian literature in two directions: incorporating the rich and as yet little studied work of authors writing in Spanish, Catalan and Galician, it simultaneously draws attention to the speculative and anticipatory content of a variety of non-fictional texts which have tended to be overlooked by existing scholarship.

«New media determine our dystopian situation. Miguel Sebastián-Martín maps the new media hell. Read this book to understand how SF reproduces our dystopian present and to find the cracks where the light gets in.»(J. Jesse Ramírez, Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences)«In Thinking through High-Tech Hell, Miguel Sebastián-Martín defines a ‘dystopian structure of feeling’ among SF and new media that, contrary to much recent theorizing, is ambivalent about its sense of dystopianness. Through a series of textual examples, Sebastián-Martín demonstrates how the dystopian structure of feeling both critiques and embraces the current neoliberal capitalist state of technology and new media. The book is impressively researched and thoughtfully written, moving easily from broad theoretical/philosophical discussions to pinpoint analysis, making it a relevant new contribution to new media studies and SF research.»(Liz W. Faber, Assistant Professor of English and Communication, Dean College)Examining a cluster of British and Anglo-American series from the 2010s, this book theorizes them — and, indirectly, the epochal reality that they represent — as «new media dystopias.» With this term, the author conceptualizes an emergent sub-genre of audio-visual SF which is thematically concerned with the worst effects of developments in media technologies under digital capitalism and is, ironically, produced for and distributed through digital-capitalist platforms. Across the book’s chapters, the new media dystopia is approached as an epochal structure of feeling, as a narratively reflexive sub-genre, as an aesthetically ambivalent form, and as a locale for a new kind of quixotism. Combining these perspectives, the book’s interest lies in gauging the ways and the extent to which these dystopias contribute to the historical hopelessness that seems to define the terms of our relationship with new media technologies — as well as our position within and towards contemporary capitalism.

Utopia, Equity and Ideology in Urban Texts: Fair and Unfair Cities explores the complex interrelations of three key critical topics across a diverse range of urban writing. Interrogating the links and tensions between aesthetic and political priorities in the representation and imagining of urban life, the volume engages with work from a wide variety of linguistic and cultural origins and across a range of textual practices having the urban phenomenon as a common framing concern. Individual contributions discussing genre and literary fiction, poetic writing, documentary and essayistic texts, planning manifestos and municipal communications materials serve to demonstrate that the nuanced treatments of urban experience and potential which may be gleaned from across this textual spectrum act as a pragmatic corrective to purely conceptual approaches. As such, the volume consolidates the emerging dialogue between the fields of utopian studies and literary urban studies, understanding these as complementary approaches to the reading of the city and its textual prolongations.

Utopia, Equity and Ideology in Urban Texts: Fair and Unfair Cities explores the complex interrelations of three key critical topics across a diverse range of urban writing. Interrogating the links and tensions between aesthetic and political priorities in the representation and imagining of urban life, the volume engages with work from a wide variety of linguistic and cultural origins and across a range of textual practices having the urban phenomenon as a common framing concern. Individual contributions discussing genre and literary fiction, poetic writing, documentary and essayistic texts, planning manifestos and municipal communications materials serve to demonstrate that the nuanced treatments of urban experience and potential which may be gleaned from across this textual spectrum act as a pragmatic corrective to purely conceptual approaches. As such, the volume consolidates the emerging dialogue between the fields of utopian studies and literary urban studies, understanding these as complementary approaches to the reading of the city and its textual prolongations.

The comparative gesture performs both the act and the question of transition between the terms compared. Understood as an intercultural practice, comparative literature may thus also be understood as both a transitive and a transnational process, creating its own object and form of knowledge as it identifies and analyses lines of relation and exchange between literary cultures. When navigating between languages, the discipline becomes critically engaged with the possibility and methods of such navigation. Interdisciplinary and intermedial versions of comparative studies likewise centre around transitions that may themselves remain under-analysed.This collection of essays, with contributions ranging from medieval literature to digital humanities, seeks to illuminate and interrogate the very diversity of comparative situations, with their attendant versions of comparative discourse. The volume as a whole thereby reflects, however fragmentedly, a field of study that is itself faced with the reality of transition. As both a thematic and formal concern in comparative work, transition emerges, within any historical period or other configuration in which it is charted and analysed, as key to the renewed relevance of comparative literary scholarship and study today.