Abstract
The repression of active engagement with alternative possible futures has given way in recent decades to wider consideration of utopia in sociology and social and political theory. These discussions have, however, been ambiguous. They feature repeated demands for ‘realistic utopias’. Some overtly positive discussions of utopia privilege particular models of the real and place severe limits on utopia’s alterity in ways that are anti-utopian in effect. Some writers who resist or oppose the terminology of utopia are more supportive of radical social transformation and affirmative of the potential role of the social imaginary. In most cases the institutional specificity and the holism implied by the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society are lacking. Science is still invoked as a brake on utopian thinking. There has also, of course, been a deluge of writing about the environmental crisis which has a future orientation and implicit utopian as well as dystopian themes. Some theoretical writing about the future, while not directly addressing utopia, helps to demonstrate the usefulness of taking a standpoint outside actually existing conditions.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
M. D. Higgins (2011) Renewing the Republic (Dublin: Liberties Press) p. 95.
See for example, C. el-Ojeili (2012) Politics, Social Theory, Utopia and the World System (London: Palgrave Macmillan);
C. el-Ojeili (2003) From Left Communism to Post-Modernism: Reconsidering Emancipatory Discourse (Lanham, MD: University Press of America);
J. C. Alexander (2001) ‘Robust Utopias and Civil Repairs’, International Sociology, 16: 579–91;
M. H. Jacobsen and K. Tester (2012) Utopia: Social Theory and the Future (Farnham: Ashgate).
D. Harvey (2010) The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (London: Profile Books) p. 231.
I. Wallerstein (1999) Utopistics, (New York: The New Press) p. 1.
J. Habermas (2010) ‘The Concept of Human Dignity and the Realistic Utopia of Human Rights’, Metaphilosophy, 41(4): 464–80;
D. Barenboim (2008) ‘Equal before Beethoven’, The Guardian, Saturday 13 December. See also D. Singer (1999) Whose Millennium? Theirs or Ours? (New York: Monthly Review Press).
K. Mannheim (1979) Ideology and Utopia (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul) p. 175.
E. Bloch (1988) The Utopian Function of Art and Literature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) p. 7.
This anti-utopian process can be seen in the work of Anthony Giddens and in recent educational theory. S. Groarke (2004) ‘Autonomy and Tradition: A Critique of the Sociological and Philosophical Foundations of Giddens’s Utopian Realism’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 7(3): 34–51;
D. Webb (2009) ‘Where’s the Vision? The Concept of Utopia in Contemporary Educational Theory’, Oxford Review of Education, 35(6): 743–60. See also
D. Halpin (2009) ‘Utopian Totalism versus Utopian Realism: A Reply to Darren Webb’, Oxford Review of Education, 35(6): 761–64;
D. Halpin (2003) Hope and Education: The Role of the Utopian Imagination (London: Routledge);
R. Levitas (2004) ‘Hope and Education’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 38(2): 269–73. Similar anti-utopian elements are present in the ‘realistic utopia’ by the American urban sociologist
Herbert Gans (2008) Imagining America in 2033: How the Country Put Itself Together after Bush (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press).
B. Adam and C. Groves (2007) Future Matters: Action, Knowledge, Ethics (Leiden: Brill) p. 200.
A. Bammer (1991) Partial Visions: Feminism and Utopianism in the 1970s (London: Routledge).
E. H. Carr (1995) The Twenty Years Crisis: An Introduction to the Study of International Relation (London, Macmillan) [1939] p. 85.
J. Rawls (1999) The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) p. 6.
E. Mendieta in R. Rorty (2006) Take Care of Freedom and Truth will Take Care of Itself: Interviews with Richard Rorty (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p. xii.
R. Rorty (1999) Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin Books) pp. 234, 231.
R. Rorty (1997) Achieving Our Country: Leftist Though in Twentieth Century America, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) p. 8.
Rorty, Interviews, p. 95. Rorty’s treatment of reality has been vigorously opposed: see for example, N. Geras (1995) Solidarity in the Conversation of Humankind: Ungroundable Liberalism of Richard Rorty (London: Verso).
L. Sargisson (2012) Fool’s Gold? Utopianism in the Twenty-First Century (Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan) pp. 22–24.
R. Unger (1998) Democracy Realised: The Progressive Alternative (London: Verso) p. 3.
R. Unger (2007) The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) p. 23.
J. Goode (1971) ‘William Morris and the Dream of Revolution’, in C. Swann (ed.) (1995) Collected Essays of John Goode (Keele: Keele University Press) p. 312.
E. O. Wright (2010) Envisioning Real Utopias (London: Verso) p. xiii.
P. Friere (1972) Cultural Action for Freedom (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books) p. 14.
W. Hudson (2003) The Reform of Utopia (Aldershot: Ashgate).
D. Cooper (2013) Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces (Durham: Duke University Press).
L. Sargisson (1999) Utopian Bodies and the Politics of Transgression (London: Routledge);
L. Sargisson and L. Sargent (1999) Living in Utopia: New Zealand’s Intentional Communities (Aldershot: Ashgate).
D. Hancox (2012) Utopia and the Valley of Tears: A Journey through the Spanish Crisis (Amazon Kindle) Hancox, 1. 890–7. (Kindle editions have location
J. Urry (2011) Climate Change and Society (Cambridge: Polity) p. 139.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Ruth Levitas
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Levitas, R. (2013). The Return of the Repressed. In: Utopia as Method. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314253_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314253_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-23197-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-31425-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)