Ralahine Utopian Studies – serie

This collection brings together for the first time Peter Fitting’s writings about the utopian impulse as expressed in science fiction, fantasy, cinema, architecture, and cultural theory. These wide-ranging essays trace the constant reconsideration of the utopian project itself over the past four decades, from its mid-twentieth century period of decline to its revival in counter-cultural science fiction of the 1960s and ‘70s, its second decline with the «dystopian turn» in film, and the rise of feminist pessimism in the 1980s. These pages reveal what popular utopian, dystopian, and science-fiction narratives tell us about today’s most pressing political issues, including gender equity, education reform, technological change, capitalist excess, state-sanctioned violence, and the challenges of effecting lasting political change. Through analyses of various popular genres and media, the author demonstrates how utopian visions written from particular political perspectives transcend narrowly partisan concerns to stoke our collective desire for another world and a more adequate human future, teaching us how to become the citizens and subjects that a utopian society demands.

«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.

In 2014, when Lucy Sargisson was promoted to professor in the School of Politics and International Relations, at the University of Nottingham, she became the first and, so far, only, professor of utopian studies. This choice symbolized the centrality of utopianism to her life, thought, and educational practice. In three books, each in their own way groundbreaking, a fourth book co-authored by one of us, and in important articles, her work falls into four primary areas: political theory, feminism, environmentalism, and intentional communities, with much of her work intersecting two, three, or even all four. And in all her work, she brings the lens of utopianism to bear on the subject and, in doing so, illuminates both utopianism and the subject at hand. The volume honors Sargisson’s contributions to the field of utopian studies, with contributions by Ibtisam Ahmed, Raffaella Baccolini, David M. Bell, Suryamayi Clarence-Smith, Chris Coates, Elena Colombo, Davina Cooper, Rhiannon Firth, Ruth Levitas, Sarah Lohmann, Almudena Machado-Jiménez, Dunja M. Mohr, Tom Moylan, Robyn Muir, José Reis, Lyman Tower Sargent, Lucy Sargisson, Simon Spiegel, Maria Varsam, and Laura Winter.

This major two-volume collection presents Darko Suvin’s critical meditations on sciencefiction and utopia from the late 1960s through the early years of the new millennium,excluding only the landmark monographs Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, VictorianScience Fiction, and Defined by a Hollow. From essential programmatic statementscharting the parabolic logic of science fiction and establishing the parameters ofa theoretically supple and rigorously historical SF criticism to confrontations withboth a postmodernist abdication of politics and a “neutral” sociology of literature,these writings reflect the evolving thought of the preeminent contemporary theorist ofscience fiction. Underpinned by a method of heretical cognition and the steadfastinsistence of utopian possibility, the varied essays, interviews, poems, and polemicspresented here—encompassing four decades of sustained thought on the topic—offer up the affirmation of freedom as the truest horizon of science fiction.

This major two-volume collection presents Darko Suvin’s critical meditations on sciencefiction and utopia from the late 1960s through the early years of the new millennium,excluding only the landmark monographs Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, VictorianScience Fiction, and Defined by a Hollow. From essential programmatic statementscharting the parabolic logic of science fiction and establishing the parameters ofa theoretically supple and rigorously historical SF criticism to confrontations withboth a postmodernist abdication of politics and a “neutral” sociology of literature,these writings reflect the evolving thought of the preeminent contemporary theorist ofscience fiction. Underpinned by a method of heretical cognition and the steadfastinsistence of utopian possibility, the varied essays, interviews, poems, and polemicspresented here—encompassing four decades of sustained thought on the topic—offer up the affirmation of freedom as the truest horizon of science fiction.

«Kilpeläinen’s engaging journey through Baldwin’s postcategorical utopian thought shows how this writer’s under-appreciated later works foresee today’s heated ideological and philosophical debates. From political unconscious to Afrofuturism, this book maps Baldwin’s Black queer wisdom: Labels and essentialized identities easily ‘become instruments of power,’ dividing and alienating societies, cultures, and individuals.»(Magdalena J. Zaborowska, Professor of American Studies and Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan)«This study is an important and timely analysis of Baldwin’s later novels. Kilpeläinen’s writing is sophisticated and eloquent, and his critical framework is startlingly clear and illuminating. Seizing on Baldwin’s ‘incessant urgency,’ he advances an authoritative, convincing argument that will add enduringly to our collective appreciation of America’s prophetic witness.»(D. Quentin Miller, Professor of English, Suffolk University, Boston)This book examines the dialectic of ideology and utopia in three novels by James Baldwin. Taking Fredric Jameson’s seminal theory of the political unconscious as its point of departure, Dr Pekka Kilpeläinen conceptualizes Baldwin’s writing in terms of the impulse of postcategorical utopia, where the ideological categorizations based on race and sexuality, in particular, are challenged by the utopian impulse to imagine alternative futures. The readings of three of Baldwin’s novels probe into the questions of ideological and utopian spatialities, transgressive interracial and same-sex relationships, and critiques of both Western modernity and its black counterculture. Baldwin’s denouncement of the oppressive effects of identity categories penetrates his entire oeuvre, from his early, critically acclaimed work to his later, often ignored novels. Seen through the lens of postcategorical utopia, the urgency of Baldwin’s vision gains a new sense of immediacy and relevance.

«This book elaborates a structure for the general family of utopian genres with marvelous clarity, and with it established, Popov can pursue all kinds of further insights about the relationships between these texts. As the world’s situation becomes more desperate, and the need for a new political economy more obvious, this complicated canon is becoming increasingly important: no longer just a minor literary genre, but rather a crucial aid to thinking about our social systems. The better we understand utopian narrative strategies, the more fully we can put them to use, so Popov’s excellent study is timely and interesting.»(Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars Trilogy and The Ministry for the Future)«Alexander Popov’s Zone Theory deftly guides us through the thickets of utopian theory and shows us why we should care, with fresh and convincing readings of a variety of science fictional texts. The writers explored here range from the usual suspects—Le Guin, Delany, Kim Stanley Robinson—to some not usually classed as utopian or dystopian, such as John Crowley and Brooke Bolander. Popov builds on the work of Tom Moylan and Fredric Jameson while adding important perspectives such as considering utopia as a hyperobject and using utopian theory to read the incongruous, unresolvable Zones of science fiction such as the Strugatskys’ Roadside Picnic and Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy. I am happy to do as Popov suggests: to read utopias not only as ongoing processes rather than finished blueprints, as Moylan has taught us, but also to see them as a way of learning about the world. Utopia, says Popov, is "an apparatus for registering difference at the level of societal organization" and thus is always open to new discoveries and new antinomies: anti-utopias lead to anti-anti-utopias and so on without end.»(Brian Attebery, Emeritus Professor of English and Philosophy at Idaho State University, author of Stories about Stories: Fantasy & the Remaking of Myth)Zone Theory reinterprets utopia as an unceasing dialectic between totality and novelty which keeps on discovering new subjectivities and genres. Through close readings within a wide corpus of SF works, it meditates on utopian forms such as critical utopia, critical dystopia, heterotopia, atopia and ecotopia, ultimately tying them to the notion of anti-anti-utopia: a form of forms capacious enough to house a permanently open multiplicity of beings.

«Given that most scholarship on cinema and utopia focuses on the subgenre of dystopia and its pessimistic discourses, Mónica Martín’s volume could not be more timely. It is a pioneering work; arguably the first book in English devoted to systematically analysing the utopian impulse as a textual feature in contemporary Anglophone cinema. Discussing a wide range of films, from mainstream blockbusters to independent, low-budget productions, this is a fascinating comparative study on the potential for cinema to engage with the phenomenon of social dreaming and the search for a better society. This is not only a theoretical intervention, but a political one.»(Mariano Paz, University of Limerick)Thinking across the boundaries of utopian studies, film studies, and the sociology of globalisation, this book argues that 21st-century cinema illustrates the rebirth of utopia as an open method grounded in cosmopolitan worldviews and aspirations. Rather than negating hope, promoting a fixed agenda, or depicting an exemplary status quo, contemporary movies such as Children of Men, The East, and The Hunger Games series articulate a cosmopolitan utopianism that vindicates egalitarian and sustainable futures. Re-inscribing the utopian within the political, many 21st-century films challenge existing geopolitical borders and the social barriers imposed by class, gender, race, sexuality, and birthplace. Ecocritical film spaces, caring protagonists, non-mainstream survivors, ecofeminist leaders, and cooperative networks prompt spectators to develop integrating dialogical imaginaries that contest patriarchal traditions, ecocidal progress, and neoliberal definitions of the global. Contemporary with climate change, economic recession, and global social movements, the films explored in this book re-stage utopia as a cosmopolitan method of critical resistance and transformative action—a process in the making that evokes a fairer world to be as much as it speaks of a world that is: one in which global interdependence has shaped not only risks, hostilities, and inequalities, but also inclusive horizons, holistic thinking, intersectional activism, and nurturing affects for others that have become part of us.

«These influential essays by one of the world’s leading experts in the field revisit the central methodological debates in Utopian Studies over the past half century. They include recent commentary on the development of key disagreements respecting the concepts of utopia, eutopia and dystopia, as well as the relations between the three ‘faces’ of the subject, literature, ideas or theory, and intentional communities. Sargent’s encyclopaedic knowledge of utopianism is deployed throughout to illuminate many areas of concern. This collection provides an essential starting-point for any student of this vibrant, controversial, increasingly popular, and ever-mutating subject.»(Gregory Claeys, Professor Emeritus of History, University of London)«Utopia is about change, and how better to promote it than to model it? Here a world-leading bibliographer and scholar reconsiders his considerable opus with an open mind but no less passion for his urgently timely topic. The imperfect, critical utopia – whether in fiction, practice, or theory, whether as dystopian warning or eutopian inspiration – is the only one we can trust. Sargent rejects the naysaying of cynics and anti-utopians, urging us to envision and struggle for betterment. ‘Utopias will not go away,’ he contends. ‘They will always remain the conscience of the world.’ Indeed they won’t, and indeed they will.»(Michael S. Cummings, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus ofPolitical Science, University of Colorado, Denver)«This collection makes available Professor Sargent’s most important essays on utopia, particularly those dealing with attempts to define and delimit the genre. This is an absolutely essential work which reveals the full breath of Sargent’s contributions to the study of utopia.»(Peter Fitting, Professor Emeritus of French, University of Toronto)«Sargent’s contribution to the emergence of Utopian Studies as a distinct field is unparalleled. It comprises encyclopaedic knowledge, theoretical rigour, and tireless support of new work. This volume contains seminal essays notable for their impact, but also for their clarity, originality, and erudition. To have them together in one place, with his reflections on them, is an invaluable resource for both young and established scholars – and essential reading for anyone working in the field.»(Ruth Levitas, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Bristol)Utopianism envisions a significantly different society than the current one and includes utopian literature, intentional communities, and utopian social theory. This volume reprints some of the author’s articles on utopianism together with two not previously published and notes on how they came to be written and his reflections from 2021.

«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?

«Valentina Romanzi’s study is a welcome addition to the body of scholarship on dystopia, utopia science fiction, and speculative fiction. It provides a comprehensive and updated review of the complex and rich debate on the question of genres and subgenres, while at the same time offering a fresh perspective. Eloquent and very well written, this volume reveals America’s fascination with catastrophic future scenarios, including the post-apocalyptic, delving into the issues that surround critical dystopia, progress, hope and fear. The close readings offer lucid, insightful interpretations of texts that range from SF literary ancestor, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Margaret Atwood’s award winning The Testaments, sequel to the acclaimed The Handmaid’s Tale.»(Eleonora Rao, Università degli Studi di Salerno)　This volume investigates dystopia in twenty-first-century US fiction. Using a methodological framework based on sociology, it theorizes a correlation between the crisis of the Frontier myth and of American exceptionalism and a renewed interest in dystopian worlds.　Part One illustrates the methodological framework, exploring the concept of dystopia, offering an overview of the American myths and of their current status and spotlighting some relevant sociological theories.　Part Two applies the proposed methodological framework to four texts, investigating the sub-genres of political, technological and environmental dystopia. The primary works, chosen to show both the relevance of the abovementioned American myths to dystopian narratives and the pervasiveness of the genre across the media, are Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments (2019), Dave Eggers’s The Circle (2013), David Cage’s video game Detroit: Become Human (2018), and the Hughes Brothers’ 2010 movie The Book of Eli.

«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.

«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?

«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.

Utopian Variations is a comparative critical study of a variety of kinds of utopia and utopian discourse. Rather than focusing on more familiar forms of utopia, the book considers utopia in relation to a range of topics that have received less attention within utopian studies, including literary modernism, postsecularism, transhumanism, antihumanism, xenofeminism, the Covid-19 pandemic, recent speculation about postcapitalism, and utopianism since the 2007–8 financial crisis. The book also makes an entirely original argument for a re-evaluation of the concept of the utopian blueprint that breaks with academic orthodoxy in this area. As well as drawing on literature, film, and popular culture, there is extensive engagement with social theory, cultural theory, and queer theory, resulting in a rich, wide-ranging study.A small book on very big ideas. The title tells us there’ll be variety, and Sean Seeger delivers that variety not just in terms of the forms discussed but of the texts explored too. Utopian Variations is both accessible and interesting. The writing is clear and to the point but there’s no sacrificing on the detail. Seeger focuses his attention on the forms of utopia and utopianism that have received less attention in academic work to date, and his chronological approach makes it easy to track the evolution of the central ideas explored. I learnt a lot reading this book and have been introduced to a great many new texts.– Matthew Leggatt, University of Winchester

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

Although the association between architecture and utopia (the relationship between imagining a new world and exploring how its new conditions can best be organized) might appear obvious from within the domain of utopian studies, architects have long attempted to dissociate themselves from utopia. Concentrating on the difficulties writers from both perspectives experience with the topic, this collection interrogates the meta-theoretical problematic for ongoing intellectual work on architecture and utopia. The essays explore divergent manifestations of the play of utopia on architectural imagination, situated within specific historical moments, from the early Renaissance to the present day. The volume closes with an exchange between Nathaniel Coleman, Ruth Levitas, and Lyman Tower Sargent, reflecting on the contributions the essays make to situating architecture and utopia historically and theoretically within utopian studies, and to articulating utopia as a method for inventing and producing better places. Intriguing to architects, planners, urban designers, and others who study and make the built environment, this collection will also be of interest to utopian studies scholars, students, and general readers with a concern for the interrelationships between the built environment and social dreaming.

This volume explores the connection between two phenomena usually thought to be utterly incongruous, even antithetical: ‘utopia’ and ‘everyday life’. It presents a series of essays, written over the last twenty years, which rethink the nature and prospects of utopianism in a world that has grown increasingly sceptical as to the possibility of systemic socio-political transformation in a positive direction. Through critical interdisciplinary engagements with a wide variety of thinkers ranging from Mikhail Bakhtin to Henri Lefebvre and beyond, many of whom are often read as anti-utopian figures, the essays argue that it is possible to locate utopian promises buried deep within the embodied rituals, practices and symbolic forms associated with everyday existence, in a manner that reveals the essential openness of the present day to momentous future change.

In the late nineteenth century, a spectre haunted Europe and the United States: the spectre of utopia. This book re-examines the rise of utopian thought at the fin de siècle, situating it in the social and political contradictions of the time and exploring the ways in which it articulated a deepening sense that the capitalist system might not be insuperable after all. The study pays particular attention to Edward Bellamy’s seminal utopian fiction, Looking Backward (1888), embedding it in a number of unfamiliar contexts, and reading its richest passages against the grain, but it also offers detailed discussions of William Morris, H.G. Wells and Oscar Wilde. Both historical and theoretical in its approach, this book constitutes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the utopian imaginary, and an original analysis of the counter-culture in which it thrived at the fin de siècle.

Shockwaves of Possibility explores the deep utopianism of one of the most significant modern cultural practices: science fiction. The author contends that utopianism is not simply a motif in SF, but rather is fundamental to its narrative dynamics. Drawing upon a rich array of theory and criticism in SF and utopian studies, the book opens with a global periodizing history that shows the inseparability of SF from developments in other cultural fields. It goes on to examine literature, film, television, comics, and animation in order to demonstrate SF’s unique effectiveness for grappling with the upheavals brought about by globalization. Shockwaves of Possibility proves SF’s vitality in the brave new world of the twenty-first century, as it illuminates the contours of the present and educates our desire for a radically other future.

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.

Upon its original publication in 1970, Robert C. Elliott’s The Shape of Utopia influenced both some of the major scholars of an emerging utopian and science fiction studies, including Darko Suvin, Louis Marin and Fredric Jameson, and authors of new utopian fiction ranging from Ursula K. Le Guin to Kim Stanley Robinson. The book establishes a deep genetic link between utopia and satire, and offers scintillating readings of classic works by Thomas More, Jonathan Swift, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Aldous Huxley and others. It charts the rise of an insidious «fear of utopia» that comes to characterize the first half of the twentieth century and investigates some of the aesthetic problems raised by the efforts to portray a utopian society, before concluding with brilliant speculations on the emerging practice of «anti-anti-utopia» – the reinvention of utopia for contemporary times. This Ralahine Classics edition also includes a new introduction by Phillip E. Wegner which situates the book in its context and argues for its continued significance today; a 1971 review of the book by the late author of utopian science fiction, Joanna Russ; and an opening tribute by one of Elliott’s former students, Kim Stanley Robinson.

What would a good world for women look like? How would we get there from where we are and how would we have to change ourselves in the process? This book examines a critical moment in recent American and western European history when the utopian dimension of political movements was particularly generative and feminism was at their core. The imaginative literature that emerged out of American, French, and German feminisms of the 1970s engaged the dialectic between the actual and the possible in radically new and creative ways. Ranging from conventional utopian and science fictions to avant-garde and experimental texts, they countered the idea of utopia as a pre-set goal with the idea of the utopian as a process of «dreaming forwards.»This book explores the transformative potential of feminist visions of change, even as it sees their ideological blind spots. It does more than simply look back to the 1970s. Instead, it looks ahead, anticipating some of the shifts and changes of feminist thought in the following decades: its transnational scope, its critique of identity politics and the gendered politics of sexuality, and its embrace of affect as an analytical category. The author argues that the radical utopianism of second wave feminisms has not lost its urgency. The transformations they envisioned are still our challenge, as the vital work of social change remains undone.

Gazing in Useless Wonder focuses on utopias as self-referential texts that literally have to constitute themselves as imaginary or intentional entities before they can work as vehicles for socio-political ideas. Foregrounding the construction of utopian fictions defines both the perspective and the differentiation of the analytically significant elements, so that the traditionally dominant topics such as the nature and origins of the ideologies behind the construction of the ideal model are taken into account only insofar as they contribute to the aesthetic effect of the utopian construct as a whole. The organising principle of the early modern utopia involves two different modes of presentation: the narrative frame and the ekphrastic description of the ideal state, each possessing an aesthetic function realised according to different principles, with the ideal image constructed in accordance with the dominant aesthetic norms of the period pertaining to the visual arts, such as harmony, symmetry, alleged perfection, and timelessness. Despite variations, especially in the thematic-ideological domain, the dominant genre pattern that emerged as a result of the simplification of the complex semantics of Thomas More’s Utopia in the early modern period is taken here as forming a single synchrony in the history of utopian fiction-making.

Race and utopia have been fundamental features of US American culture since the origins of the country. However, racial ideology has often contradicted the ideals of social and political equality in the United States. This book surveys reimaginings of race in major late twentieth-century US American utopian novels from the 1970s to the 1990s. Dorothy Bryant, Marge Piercy, Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler and Kim Stanley Robinson all present radical new configurations of race in a more ideal society, yet continually encounter an ideological blockage as the horizon beyond which we cannot rethink race. Nevertheless, these novels create productive strains of thinking to grapple with the question of race in US American culture. Drawing on feminist theory and critiques of democracy, the author argues that our utopian dreams cannot be furthered unless we come to terms with the phenomenology of race and the impasse of the individual in liberal humanist democracy.

Is the official political silencing of children in a democracy rational and just, or is it arbitrary and capricious? How might democratic polities benefit from the political engagement and activism of young people? Michael Cummings argues that allowing children equal political rights with adults is required by the basic logic of democracy and can help strengthen the weak democracies of the twenty-first century. A good start is for governments to honor their obligations under the ambivalently utopian UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Children’s political views differ from those of adults on issues such as race, sex, militarism, poverty, education, gun violence, and climate change. Young activists are now sparking change in many locations around the globe.

Returning to print for the first time since the 1980s, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction is the origin point for decades of literary and theoretical criticism of science fiction and related genres. Darko Suvin’s paradigm-setting definition of SF as «the literature of cognitive estrangement» established a robust theory of the genre that continues to spark fierce debate, as well as inspiring myriad intellectual descendants and disciples. Suvin’s centuries-spanning history of the genre links SF to a long tradition of utopian and satirical literatures crying out for a better world than this one, showing how SF and the imagination of utopia are now forever intertwined. In addition to the 1979 text of the book, this edition contains three additional essays from Suvin that update, expand and reconsider the terms of his original intervention, as well as a new introduction and preface that situate the book in the context of the decades of SF studies that have followed in its wake.