Further Reflections on Being a Utopian in These Times

Abstract

In this essay (a revision of my contribution at the closing session of the Imaginaries of the Future Leverhulme Network held in London in September 2017), I offer a situated commentary (by ‘me’) on ‘ourselves’ (and I know that category has to be deconstructed, complicated, exploded, erased, and yet retained) as utopians and on the work ‘we’ do, and can do (for this was a utopian conference). I begin with a reflection on the current mobilization of the term dystopia as a signifier for our times, and as I do so I offer a counterpoint to the ideological appropriation of dystopia by way of my own argument in Scraps of the Untainted Sky ( Westview 2000) for the militant pessimism of the critical dystopia. I then comment on several interrelated matters: the role of the utopian as scholar and as intellectual; the context and import of our work, in the academy and in the world; the utopian problematic (in its inclusion of the utopian object of study and utopia as method); and the necessity, indeed urgency, of ‘our’ work in these critical times. My aim is tease out the utopian surplus within the utopian formation.