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List of contents
Preface, Ruth Levitas
Introduction: Becoming Utopian
1. Strong Thought in Hard Times: Utopia, Pedagogy, Agency
2. Bloch Against Bloch: The Theological Reception of Das Prinzip Hoffnung and the Liberation of the Utopian Function
3. Denunciation/Annunciation: The Utopian Methodology of Liberation Theology
4. Look Into the Dark: On Dystopia and the Novum
5. Making the Present Impossible: On the Vocation of Utopian Science Fiction
6. N-H-N: Kim Stanley Robinson's Dialectics of Ecology
7. "To Live Consciously is to Sow the Whirlwind": Reflecions on the Utopian Standpoint of Nonviolence
8. Steps of Renewed Praxis: Tracking the Utopian Method
9. Still Demanding the Impossible: '68 and the Critical Utopian Imagination
Afterword, Philip E. Wegner (University of Florida, USA)
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Tom Moylan is Glucksman Professor Emeritus at the University of Limerick, Ireland. Founder of the Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies and an internationally recognised scholar and teacher, his previous books inclide Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Uropian Imagination (1986).
Summary
A dream of a better world is a powerful human force that inspires activists, artists, and citizens alike. In this book Tom Moylan – one of the pioneering scholars of contemporary utopian studies – explores the utopian process in its individual and collective trajectory from dream to realization. Drawing on theorists such as Fredric Jameson, Donna Haraway and Alain Badiou and science fiction writers such as Kim Stanley Robinson and China Miéville, Becoming Utopian develops its argument for sociopolitical action through studies that range from liberation theology, ecological activism, and radical pedagogy to the radical movements of 1968. Throughout, Moylan speaks to the urgent need to confront and transform the global environmental, economic, political and cultural crises of our time.
Foreword
One of the pioneers of contemporary utopian studies explores the relationship between the utopian imagination, human identity and political agency in 21st century theory and science fiction.
Additional text
In Becoming Utopian, preeminent utopian studies scholar Tom Moylan explores a broad terrain of utopian expression. Refusing the division between the personal and the political, Moylan masterfully illuminates connections among utopian texts, political practices, and processes of subjectivization. This is politicized utopianism and militant optimism of the highest order.
