Disaster utopia and the state

Success, failure and the fear of co-option

Bibliographic Data

ID3436701
AuthorsDeepika Swain (0000-0002-3941-6973, Czech Academy of Sciences, corresponding author)
Year2025
Publication date2025-09-23
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Social Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1368-4310 • E-ISSN: 1461-7137
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/13684310251379192
OpenAlexW4414449801
LanguageEN
References cited39

This article explores disaster utopias in relation to two interconnected questions regarding utopian and prefigurative political projects. The first question concerns assessments of success and failure: Disaster utopias complicate assessment in these terms because they appear more effective at achieving immediate practical goals than existing systems, while this very effectiveness raises the spectre of a distinct kind of failure , in the form of co-option. The second question concerns the relationship of such projects to existing states: Fears of co-option tend to treat the state's entrance onto the scene as simply neutralising utopian potential. While such fears are well-grounded, it is important to also consider how such encounters might change the state itself. Moreover, these two questions inform each other: the question of how the state (and ideas of it) might be transformed can also inform assessments of success or failure

Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Political Economy and Marxism

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