What Is Anti-Utopianism? Gray, Jacoby, Jameson
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21188957 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stefan Skrimshire (Perfect Harmony Health, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 231-248 |
| Publication date | 2008-07-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cultural Politics an International Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1743-2197 • E-ISSN: 1751-7435 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2752/175174308x310929 |
| OpenAlex | W1965571397 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 7 |
The subject of utopianism in contemporary political life has experienced a revival of interest in the last few years. One of the most polemical contributions is John Gray’s Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. One of the greatest benefits of this book is to paint for us an accurate picture of what a contemporary anti-utopian looks like. For Gray’s position, it appears, is that utopian beliefs lead to ridicule at best and totalitarian violence at worst. In this essay I shall argue that this position ignores many nuances of utopian thought that operate today in, among other places, nonviolent movements of political resistance. As a means of critiquing Gray’s pessimism, I refer to two recent works that attempt to tease out this complexity within utopian thought itself: Russell Jacoby’s Future Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age (2005) and Frederic Jameson’s Archaeologies of the Future: Utopia and other Science Fictions (2005)
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Dystopia · Epistemology · Imperfect · Literature · Pessimism · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Utopia · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory
| Citations per year | 0.29 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2019 - 2022 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |