Political uses of Utopia : new marxist, anarchist, and radical democratic perspectives / edited by S.D. Chrostowska and James D. Ingram.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Utopia has long been banished from political theory, framed as an impossible--and possibly dangerous--political ideal, a flawed social blueprint, or a thought experiment without any practical import. Even the "realistic utopias" of liberal theory strike many as wishful thinking. Can politics think utopia otherwise? Can utopian thinking contribute to the renewal of politics?

In Political Uses of Utopia , an international cast of leading and emerging theorists agree that the uses of utopia for politics are multiple and nuanced and lie somewhere between--or, better yet, beyond--the mainstream caution against it and the conviction that another, better world ought to be possible. Representing a range of perspectives on the grand tradition of Western utopianism, which extends back half a millennium and perhaps as far as Plato, these essays are united in their interest in the relevance of utopianism to specific historical and contemporary political contexts. Featuring contributions from Miguel Abensour, Étienne Balibar, Raymond Geuss, and Jacques Rancière, among others, Political Uses of Utopia reopens the question of whether and how utopianism can inform political thinking and action today.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Chrostowska and Ingram seek to argue for the continuing political relevance of utopia, and to introduce North American readers to important writing on utopian studies from other countries and in other languages. Such an introduction was badly needed; the opening historical treatment by Miguel Abensour, for example, was first published in French in 1973-74, and has served as a focal point--most of the other essays cite Abensour's work--but has not been well known, at least in the US. As Ingram says in his introduction, the idea is not to support a particular thesis but to make the discussion known. However, there is agreement on two points. First, utopia is not a mere literary fantasy, but is politically relevant today. Second, utopia can and should be democratic; despite some bad examples in the past (some blame Stalinism on the utopianism of communists), the full development of human potential requires freedom and full participation in politics. In a period when the slogan "another world is possible" unites and motivates many social movements, this detailed examination of how such possible worlds affect our own is timely. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --John C. Berg, Suffolk University