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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.
About the author
S. D. Chrostowska teaches humanities and social and political thought at York University and is the author of the critical-philosophical fragments Matches (2015), the novel Permission (2013), and Literature on Trial: The Emergence of Critical Discourse in Germany, Poland, and Russia, 1700-1800 (2012). James D. Ingram teaches political theory at McMaster University. He is the author of Radical Cosmopolitics: The Ethics and Politics of Democratic Universalism (Columbia, 2013).
Summary
Contemporary political theorists from Europe and North America open an overdue debate on the ties between politics and utopianism.
Report
"This is a remarkable collection of essays on the critical import and significance of utopia and utopianism for politics. The range and depth of the contributions in this carefully curated collection is simply peerless.Antonio Y." Vázquez-Arroyo, Rutgers University-Newark
