ABSTRACT

Dreams and fantasies can be treacherous, especially when they are regarded as innocent. As Foucault (1977: 194) makes clear, power produces reality, domains of objects and rituals of truth. The boundaries between reality and fantasy are thus precarious. They are the sites of discursive struggles where reality is sanctioned, while the ‘unreal’ is relegated to oblivion, or (when it stubbornly persists) to fantasy, madness, myth, the unscientific, the fake, the inauthentic, the superstitious or the less than sacred. In the utopian realm, however, fantasy can still be powerful, as a site of inspiration for would-be realities.