Dystopias matter because they make us think. They help us to imagine and envisage how the present can change into something very nasty. … Dystopias thus interrogate the now and offer warnings and sometimes prophecies about the future; they are often the jeremiads of utopianism. But sometimes they offer glimmers of hope.One way of being anti-anti-utopian is to be utopian. It's crucial to keep imagining that things could get better, and furthermore to imagine how they might get better. … So (...) by force of will or the sheer default of emergency we make ourselves have utopian thoughts and ideas. This is the necessary next step following the dystopian moment, without which dystopia is stuck at a level of political quietism... (shrink)

The essays gathered here recommend the work of Ernest Bloch as a challenge to older models of historical materialism and utopian emancipation and give specific examples of how Bloch's work can contribute to current debates about utopia, nationalism, collective memory, and the complex relationship between ideology and everyday life.

A series of essays by an international and trans-disciplinary group of contributors which explores the nature and extent of the utopian impulse. Working across a range of historical periods and cultures, the book investigates key aspects of utopian theory, texts, and socio-political practices.

Darko Suvin's Communism, Poetry: Communicating Vessels teases out the dialectical connection between poetry and revolution. The book is comprised of an amalgam of essays and poems that constitute a “series of epistemological probes.” In their totality, they inform as a book-length essay on the politics of form that focuses on equally revolutionary ways of knowing and being in the terrible world of the present and of anticipating what is to be done to break through the conditions of exploitation and terror (...) and into the realm of Freedom. (shrink)

Lyman Tower Sargent stands at the core of contemporary utopian studies. While the utopian proclivity to reach for a better world, and to reflect on how we think about and engage in that hope-ful practice, has been with us in most cultures for centuries, the scholarly field of utopian studies dates back to the 1960s; and from the beginning Lyman has been formative to its development. To situate this accomplishment, I believe he can be counted as one of a few (...) singular intellectuals who have had such an impact on an entire field. (shrink)