Bücher der Reihe Ralahine Utopian Studies

«Through detailed, elegant interpretations of utopian novels produced in the United States and the Soviet Union, Pavla Veselá casts aside standard commonplaces about East / West cultural divergences and reveals the critical function of utopian fiction that is shared in the two national contexts.»(Michael Hardt, Professor of Literature, Duke University)«It is encouraging to read The Polyphony of Utopia in our cynical and desperate time. By discussing a number of Russian and American utopian novels in the light of ¿utopian realism,¿ addressing the uncertainty, anxiety and doubt contained in their visions of hope, Pavla Veselá proves the importance and relevance of the transformation of today¿s world toward Utopia.»(Thomas Lahusen, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto)Utopias ¿ literary visions of better, more just and happier communities ¿ have been misconceived as «mere fantasies» on the one hand and «models to implement» on the other. Building on the notion of «critical utopia» and elaborating on interpretations of literary works as contradictory and incomplete, the book analyses selected utopian and dystopian novels by five writers: Edward Bellamy, Alexander Bogdanov, Ivan Yefremov, Marge Piercy and Octavia E. Butler. It argues that departing from the conventions of realism, utopias advance credible visions of more perfect ways of living and being which are nevertheless destabilized through gothic and poetic generic elements. Unresolved issues are further explored in (utopian as well as dystopian) sequels and prequels. The novels analysed in detail include Bellamy¿s Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888) and Equality (1897), Bogdanov¿s Red Star: A Utopia (1908) and Engineer Menni: A Novel of Fantasy (1913), Yefremov¿s Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale (1957) and The Hour of the Bull (1970), Piercy¿s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) and He, She and It (1991), and Butler¿s Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998).

«Antonis Balasopoulos is to be heartily thanked for bringing back into print A. L. Morton¿s marvelous book The English Utopia ¿ and for providing us with not only a useful and insightful Introduction, but also a comprehensive bibliography of Leslie Morton¿s many writings. We definitely need such works in these difficult times when democracy is under siege by authoritarian forces. Morton¿s chapters may well truly serve both to empower our critical thinking and to inspire our radical-democratic imaginations.»(Harvey J Kaye, Professor Emeritus of Democracy & Justice, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay)«Antonis Balasopoulos describes his job as an ¿exercise in historical reclamation.¿ He is due much gratitude for both the scrupulousness and the expertise he brings to his task. The Introduction is a model of its kind, positioning Morton in his own milieu as a committed intellectual. Morton¿s book more than deserves this careful attention. In this new Ralahine edition, The English Utopia appears as the seminal text in utopian studies it should have been. »(Patricia McManus, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Brighton)A. L. Morton¿s classic 1952 study of utopias in the context of British social history constitutes one of the earliest sustained engagements with the social and ideological sources of the utopian imagination, the importance of the class struggle for literary production and of literary production for cultural, if not political hegemony. Traversing English literary history from the medieval poem on the Land of Cockaygne to Sir Thomas More, to William Morris¿s News from Nowhere and the subsequent decline of the genre and the eventual rise of anti-utopian and dystopian strains in the early twentieth century, The English Utopia remains provocative and critically engaging more than seventy years after its original publication. In addition to charting its significance as an intervention, the present edition also brings to light Morton¿s complex role as Left political activist, historian, scholarly catalyst and cultural critic ¿ a paradigmatic instance of the engaged and public intellectual.

«Given that most scholarship on cinema and utopia focuses on the subgenre of dystopia and its pessimistic discourses, Mónica Martín¿s volume could not be more timely. It is a pioneering work; arguably the first book in English devoted to systematically analysing the utopian impulse as a textual feature in contemporary Anglophone cinema. Discussing a wide range of films, from mainstream blockbusters to independent, low-budget productions, this is a fascinating comparative study on the potential for cinema to engage with the phenomenon of social dreaming and the search for a better society. This is not only a theoretical intervention, but a political one.»(Mariano Paz, University of Limerick)Thinking across the boundaries of utopian studies, film studies, and the sociology of globalisation, this book argues that 21st-century cinema illustrates the rebirth of utopia as an open method grounded in cosmopolitan worldviews and aspirations. Rather than negating hope, promoting a fixed agenda, or depicting an exemplary status quo, contemporary movies such as Children of Men, The East, and The Hunger Games series articulate a cosmopolitan utopianism that vindicates egalitarian and sustainable futures. Re-inscribing the utopian within the political, many 21st-century films challenge existing geopolitical borders and the social barriers imposed by class, gender, race, sexuality, and birthplace. Ecocritical film spaces, caring protagonists, non-mainstream survivors, ecofeminist leaders, and cooperative networks prompt spectators to develop integrating dialogical imaginaries that contest patriarchal traditions, ecocidal progress, and neoliberal definitions of the global. Contemporary with climate change, economic recession, and global social movements, the films explored in this book re-stage utopia as a cosmopolitan method of critical resistance and transformative action¿a process in the making that evokes a fairer world to be as much as it speaks of a world that is: one in which global interdependence has shaped not only risks, hostilities, and inequalities, but also inclusive horizons, holistic thinking, intersectional activism, and nurturing affects for others that have become part of us.

«Valentina Romanzi¿s study is a welcome addition to the body of scholarship on dystopia, utopia science fiction, and speculative fiction. It provides a comprehensive and updated review of the complex and rich debate on the question of genres and subgenres, while at the same time offering a fresh perspective. Eloquent and very well written, this volume reveals Americäs fascination with catastrophic future scenarios, including the post-apocalyptic, delving into the issues that surround critical dystopia, progress, hope and fear. The close readings offer lucid, insightful interpretations of texts that range from SF literary ancestor, Mary Shelley¿s Frankenstein to Margaret Atwood¿s award winning The Testaments, sequel to the acclaimed The Handmaid¿s Tale.»(Eleonora Rao, Università degli Studi di Salerno)¿This volume investigates dystopia in twenty-first-century US fiction. Using a methodological framework based on sociology, it theorizes a correlation between the crisis of the Frontier myth and of American exceptionalism and a renewed interest in dystopian worlds.¿Part One illustrates the methodological framework, exploring the concept of dystopia, offering an overview of the American myths and of their current status and spotlighting some relevant sociological theories.¿Part Two applies the proposed methodological framework to four texts, investigating the sub-genres of political, technological and environmental dystopia. The primary works, chosen to show both the relevance of the abovementioned American myths to dystopian narratives and the pervasiveness of the genre across the media, are Margaret Atwood¿s The Testaments (2019), Dave Eggers¿s The Circle (2013), David Cage¿s video game Detroit: Become Human (2018), and the Hughes Brothers¿ 2010 movie The Book of Eli.

This collection brings together for the first time Peter Fitting's writings about the utopian impulse as expressed in science fiction, fantasy, cinema, architecture, and cultural theory.

.This volume honors Lucy Sargisson's contribution to the field of utopian studies.

Race and utopia have been fundamental features of US American culture since the origins of the country. However, racial ideology has often contradicted the ideals of social and political equality in the United States. This book surveys reimaginings of race in major late twentieth-century US American utopian novels from the 1970s to the 1990s. Dorothy Bryant, Marge Piercy, Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler and Kim Stanley Robinson all present radical new configurations of race in a more ideal society, yet continually encounter an ideological blockage as the horizon beyond which we cannot rethink race. Nevertheless, these novels create productive strains of thinking to grapple with the question of race in US American culture. Drawing on feminist theory and critiques of democracy, the author argues that our utopian dreams cannot be furthered unless we come to terms with the phenomenology of race and the impasse of the individual in liberal humanist democracy.

What would a good world for women look like? How would we get there from where we are and how would we have to change ourselves in the process? This book examines a critical moment in recent American and western European history when the utopian dimension of political movements was particularly generative and feminism was at their core. The imaginative literature that emerged out of American, French, and German feminisms of the 1970s engaged the dialectic between the actual and the possible in radically new and creative ways. Ranging from conventional utopian and science fictions to avant-garde and experimental texts, they countered the idea of utopia as a pre-set goal with the idea of the utopian as a process of dreaming forwards. This book explores the transformative potential of feminist visions of change, even as it sees their ideological blind spots. It does more than simply look back to the 1970s. Instead, it looks ahead, anticipating some of the shifts and changes of feminist thought in the following decades: its transnational scope, its critique of identity politics and the gendered politics of sexuality, and its embrace of affect as an analytical category. The author argues that the radical utopianism of second wave feminisms has not lost its urgency. The transformations they envisioned are still our challenge, as the vital work of social change remains undone.

Returning to print for the first time since the 1980s, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction is the origin point for decades of literary and theoretical criticism of science fiction and related genres. Darko Suvin's paradigm-setting definition of SF as the literature of cognitive estrangement established a robust theory of the genre that continues to spark fierce debate, as well as inspiring myriad intellectual descendants and disciples. Suvin's centuries-spanning history of the genre links SF to a long tradition of utopian and satirical literatures crying out for a better world than this one, showing how SF and the imagination of utopia are now forever intertwined. In addition to the 1979 text of the book, this edition contains three additional essays from Suvin that update, expand and reconsider the terms of his original intervention, as well as a new introduction and preface that situate the book in the context of the decades of SF studies that have followed in its wake.

Gazing in Useless Wonder focuses on utopias as self-referential texts that literally have to constitute themselves as imaginary or intentional entities before they can work as vehicles for socio-political ideas. Foregrounding the construction of utopian fictions defines both the perspective and the differentiation of the analytically significant elements, so that the traditionally dominant topics such as the nature and origins of the ideologies behind the construction of the ideal model are taken into account only insofar as they contribute to the aesthetic effect of the utopian construct as a whole. The organising principle of the early modern utopia involves two different modes of presentation: the narrative frame and the ekphrastic description of the ideal state, each possessing an aesthetic function realised according to different principles, with the ideal image constructed in accordance with the dominant aesthetic norms of the period pertaining to the visual arts, such as harmony, symmetry, alleged perfection, and timelessness. Despite variations, especially in the thematic-ideological domain, the dominant genre pattern that emerged as a result of the simplification of the complex semantics of Thomas More's Utopia in the early modern period is taken here as forming a single synchrony in the history of utopian fiction-making.

In reaction to the spread of globalization, recent years have seen considerable growth in the number of intentional communities established across the world. In this collection of articles and lectures, many of them previously unpublished in English, the author analyzes various aspects of the philosophy of the kibbutz and draws parallels with other societies and philosophical trends, in the hope that a close look at the ways of thought of the kibbutz - arguably the best-established communalist society - may help other communalists crystallize their own social philosophies. Utopian thought and communal experience are brought to life through the extensive use of the voices of some of the most influential thinkers and kibbutz members of the past hundred years, including Martin Buber and David Ben Gurion.

This volume is an experiment: an enquiry into the possibilities and potentialities of a prospective anthropology of utopia. With different ethnographic contributions studying «empirical utopias» across the world (from ecotopias to religious havens, transnational policies, retirement homes and community agriculture), it looks beyond the commonsense understanding of utopia as a desire, an expectation, a form of imagination stemming from Western political thought. In the process, the volume explores the dynamic dialectic between human imagination and concrete action.

Raymond Williams was an enormously influential figure in late twentieth-century intellectual life as a novelist, playwright and critic, British Sartre, as "The Times" put it. This volume brings together a complete collection of Williams' critical essays on science fiction and futurology, utopia, and dystopia, in literature, film, and politics.

Defined by a Hollow

This is a reissue of an influential text that was first published in 1987, to which the author has added an introduction reflecting on the work twenty years after publication. The grounding assumption of the book is that an element of utopianism is a necessity in any political thinking, and that a self-conscious utopianism can generate a richer level of theory and practice. The text then follows the chequered career of utopianism in the Marxist tradition, arguing that Marxism has been unable to do without a utopian dimension but for various reasons has often resisted acknowledging this fact. It examines the origins of the Marxist critique of utopianism, and the various ways, either covertly or overtly, in which the utopian was reinserted into the tradition. It looks at the utopian socialist predecessors of Marxism, the ambiguous critique of the utopian developed by Marx and Engels, the complex debate over utopianism in the Second International, the authoritarian socialism that emerged in the Soviet bloc, and the consciously utopian thought of Ernst Bloch, Herbert Marcuse, Rudolf Bahro, and André Gorz. Throughout, the book seeks to combine rigorous scholarship with a commitment to a utopian frame of mind.

Re-examines the rise of utopian thought at the fin de siecle, situating it in social and political contradictions of the time and exploring the ways in which it articulated a deepening sense that the capitalist system might not be insuperable after all. This book constitutes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the utopian imaginary.

Concentrating on the difficulties writers from both perspectives experience with the topic, this title interrogates the meta-theoretical problematic for ongoing intellectual work on architecture and utopia. It is suitable for scholars, and general readers with a concern for the interrelationships between the built environment and social dreaming.

This book is a series of essays, written over the last twenty years, which rethink the nature and prospects of utopianism in a world that has grown increasingly sceptical as to the possibility of systemic socio-political transformation in a positive direction.

Demand the Impossible was written from inside the oppositional political culture of the 1960s and 1970s. The Ralahine Classics edition of this groundbreaking work reissues the original text along with a new essay on Aldous Huxley's Island and a set of reflections on the book by leading utopian and science fiction scholars.