Political Uses of Utopia: New Marxist, Anarchist, and Radical Democratic Perspectives

370 Pages·2017·2.59 MB·English

by  S.D. Chrostowska

POLITICAL USES OF UTOPIA
NEW DIRECTIONS IN CRITICAL THEORY
Amy Allen, General Editor
New Directions in Critical Theory presents outstanding classic and contemporary texts in the
tradition of critical social theory, broadly construed. The series aims to renew and advance
the program of critical social theory, with a particular focus on theorizing contemporary
struggles around gender, race, sexuality, class, and globalization and their complex
interconnections.
POLITICAL USES OF UTOPIA
NEW MARXIST, ANARCHIST, AND RADICAL
DEMOCRATIC PERSPECTIVES
EDITED BY S. D. CHROSTOWSKA AND JAMES D. INGRAM
Columbia University Press
New York

Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2016 Columbia University Press All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-54431-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Chrostowska, S. D. (Sylwia
Dominika), 1975-editor. | Ingram, James D., 1972-editor.
Title: Political uses of Utopia / edited by S.D. Chrostowska and James D. Ingram.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2016] | Series: New directions in
critical theory | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016041212| ISBN 9780231179584 (cloth : acid-free paper) | ISBN
9780231179591 (pbk. : acid-free paper) Subjects: LCSH: Utopias—Political aspects. |
Political science—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC HX806 .P64 2016 | DDC 321/.07—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016041212
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-
[email protected].
Cover design: Rebecca Lown
CONTENTS
Introduction: Utopia and Politics
James D. Ingram
I. REVIVING UTOPIA
1. THE HISTORY OF UTOPIA AND THE DESTINY OF ITS CRITIQUE
MIGUEL ABENSOUR
2. IS THE CLASSIC CONCEPT OF UTOPIA READY FOR THE FUTURE?
RICHARD SAAGE
3. UTOPIA AND NATURAL ILLUSIONS

FRANCISCO FERNÁNDEZ BUEY
II. QUESTIONING UTOPIA
4. MARX AND UTOPIA
FRANCK FISCHBACH
5. GENERAL WISH OR GENERAL WILL? POLITICAL POSSIBILITY AND COLLECTIVE
CAPACITY FROM ROUSSEAU THROUGH MARX
PETER HALLWARD
6. AFTER UTOPIA, IMAGINATION?
ÉTIENNE BALIBAR
7. A STRANGE FATE FOR POLITICS: JAMESON’S DIALECTIC OF UTOPIAN THOUGHT
JOHN GRANT
III. UTOPIA AND RADICAL POLITICS
8. THE REALITY OF UTOPIA

MICHÈLE RIOT-SARCEY
9. NEGATIVITY AND UTOPIA IN THE GLOBAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT

MICHAËL LÖWY
10. UTOPIANISM AND PREFIGURATION
RUTH KINNA
IV. PERMANENCE OF UTOPIA
11. THE SENSES AND USES OF UTOPIA
JACQUES RANCIÈRE
12. REALISM, WISHFUL THINKING, UTOPIA
RAYMOND GEUSS
13. DESIRE AND SHIPWRECK: POWERS OF THE VIS UTOPICA
ÉTIENNE TASSIN
CODA
UTOPIA, ALIBI

S. D. CHROSTOWSKA
Contributors
Index
INTRODUCTION
Utopia and Politics
JAMES D. INGRAM
U
topia, we might think, is nothing if not political. Its best-known
examples, from Plato via More, Campanella, and Bacon to
Owen, Morris, and Bellamy, present cities, the political form of life
par excellence, organized to remedy the defects their authors perceived
in their own. To this extent they offer up political solutions to political
problems. At the same time, however, utopias are forever being criticized
for seeking to escape or eliminate politics, and not without reason. For if
utopias present solutions to political problems, by building the common
good into the design of the worlds they depict, they do away with the
need to contest it. Such contestation of the common good—along with its
less high-minded correlates, like fighting for power, advantage,
recognition, and resources—is precisely what makes up what is ordinarily
regarded as politics. Ergo, utopias are inherently antipolitical. We may
want to object that the fact that the cities described in utopias tend to do
away with politics is not to say that the genre or activity of inventing or
reflecting on them does. As interventions into public life, as literary or
theoretical acts, utopias are political through and through, written to raise
political questions and even to advance political causes, even if the
worlds they depict belie this by presenting imagined answers to these
very questions.1
In view of this tangled intimacy, it may seem odd that the question of
utopia’s relationship to politics and political thought should have been
mostly absent from the revival of utopian studies in recent decades. As
no less an authority than Lyman Tower Sargent—a pioneer in the field,