Tom Moylan – författare

First published in 2003. With essays by an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars, Dark Horizons focuses on the development of critical dystopia in science fiction at the end of the twentieth century. In these narratives of places more terrible than even the reality produced by the neo-conservative backlash of the 1980s and the neoliberal hegemony of the 1990s, utopian horizons stubbornly anticipate a different and more just world. The top-notch team of contributors explores this development in a variety of ways: by looking at questions of form, politics, the politics of form, and the form of politics. In a broader context, the essays connect their textual and theoretical analyses with historical developments such as September 11th, the rise and downturn of the global economy, and the growth of anti-capitalist movements.

First published in 2003. With essays by an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars, Dark Horizons focuses on the development of critical dystopia in science fiction at the end of the twentieth century. In these narratives of places more terrible than even the reality produced by the neo-conservative backlash of the 1980s and the neoliberal hegemony of the 1990s, utopian horizons stubbornly anticipate a different and more just world. The top-notch team of contributors explores this development in a variety of ways: by looking at questions of form, politics, the politics of form, and the form of politics. In a broader context, the essays connect their textual and theoretical analyses with historical developments such as September 11th, the rise and downturn of the global economy, and the growth of anti-capitalist movements.

Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) is now recognized as a philosopher and cultural critic of the greatest importance, his subtle and profound developments of utopian Marxism as influential for the student New Left of the 1960s and 1970s as they were for the leftist movements of the twenties. Today, in the United States and Britain, his enormous body of work is attracting new generations of readers: more translations are appearing, and his utopian thought is finding a new resonance in many different contexts.Several of the authors here address the centrality of a radically unconventional concept of utopia to Bloch's thought; others write on the question of memory and pedagogical theory. There is a Blochian reading of crime fiction, illuminating overviews of Bloch's work and an exploration of the stylistics of hope in Bloch's Spuren, as well as a translation of excerpts from that extraordinary book.The essays gathered here are intended, above all, to recommend Bloch's work as a challenge to older models of historical materialism and utopian emancipation, and to give specific examples of how that work can contribute to current debates about utopia, nationalism and collective memory, the liberatory content of popular cultural forms, and the complex relationship between ideology and everyday life. Together they provide a timely introduction to one of the most untimely and inspiring thinkers of the twentieth century.

A dream of a better world is a powerful human force that inspires activists, artists, and citizens alike. In this book Tom Moylan – one of the pioneering scholars of contemporary utopian studies – explores the utopian process in its individual and collective trajectory from dream to realization. Drawing on theorists such as Fredric Jameson, Donna Haraway and Alain Badiou and science fiction writers such as Kim Stanley Robinson and China Miéville, Becoming Utopian develops its argument for sociopolitical action through studies that range from liberation theology, ecological activism, and radical pedagogy to the radical movements of 1968. Throughout, Moylan speaks to the urgent need to confront and transform the global environmental, economic, political and cultural crises of our time.

A dream of a better world is a powerful human force that inspires activists, artists, and citizens alike. In this book Tom Moylan – one of the pioneering scholars of contemporary utopian studies – explores the utopian process in its individual and collective trajectory from dream to realization. Drawing on theorists such as Fredric Jameson, Donna Haraway and Alain Badiou and science fiction writers such as Kim Stanley Robinson and China Miéville, Becoming Utopian develops its argument for sociopolitical action through studies that range from liberation theology, ecological activism, and radical pedagogy to the radical movements of 1968. Throughout, Moylan speaks to the urgent need to confront and transform the global environmental, economic, political and cultural crises of our time.

Through autobiographical and theoretical reflections, as well as literary and cultural essays from across his career, Tom Moylan reviews his personal, political and professional trajectory of choosing, and becoming, utopian. An exploration of the relationship between vocation and activism, in Choosing Utopia Moylan offers a threaded narrative composed of memoir and theoretical and methodological explication. Beginning with an account of his reading practice and its relationship to an increasingly self-conscious use of interpretation, the book then traces the entwined activities of writing and political activism across three decades. Following up this review, Moylan presents an integrated series of literary and cultural essays exemplifying the utopian quest. With an emphasis on the development of a utopian hermeneutic practice and how it can offer a barrier to, and opportunity for, radical utopian agency, Choosing Utopia is a timely, holistic reflection on how humanity can confront and transform the conditions produced by environmental, economic, political, and cultural crises.

Although published in 1986, Demand the Impossible was written from inside the oppositional political culture of the 1970s. Reading works by Joanna Russ, Ursula K. Le Guin, Marge Piercy, and Samuel R. Delany as indicative texts in the intertext of utopian science fiction, Tom Moylan originated the concept of the «critical utopia» as both a periodizing and conceptual tool for capturing the creative and critical capabilities of the utopian imagination and utopian agency. This Ralahine Classics edition includes the original text along with a new essay by Moylan (on Aldous Huxley’s Island) and a set of reflections on the book by leading utopian and science fiction scholars.

This is a reissue of an influential text that was first published in 1987, to which the author has added an introduction reflecting on the work twenty years after publication. The grounding assumption of the book is that an element of utopianism is a necessity in any political thinking, and that a self-conscious utopianism can generate a richer level of theory and practice. The text then follows the chequered career of utopianism in the Marxist tradition, arguing that Marxism has been unable to do without a utopian dimension but for various reasons has often resisted acknowledging this fact. It examines the origins of the Marxist critique of utopianism, and the various ways, either covertly or overtly, in which the utopian was reinserted into the tradition. It looks at the utopian socialist predecessors of Marxism, the ambiguous critique of the utopian developed by Marx and Engels, the complex debate over utopianism in the Second International, the authoritarian socialism that emerged in the Soviet bloc, and the consciously utopian thought of Ernst Bloch, Herbert Marcuse, Rudolf Bahro, and André Gorz. Throughout, the book seeks to combine rigorous scholarship with a commitment to a utopian frame of mind.