ABSTRACT

Central to the idea of a perfect society is the idea that communities must be strong and bound together with shared ideologies. However, while this may be true, rarely are the individuals that comprise a community given primacy of place as central to a strong communal theory. This volume moves away from the dominant, current macro-level theorising on the subject of identity and its relationship to and with globalising trends, focusing instead on the individual’s relationship with utopia so as to offer new interpretive approaches for engaging with and examining utopian individuality. Interdisciplinary in scope and bringing together work from around the world, The Individual and Utopia enquires after the nature of the utopian as citizen, demonstrating the inherent value of making the individual central to utopian theorizing and highlighting the methodologies necessary for examining the utopian individual. The various approaches employed reveal what it is to be an individual yoked by the idea of citizenship and challenge the ways that we have traditionally been taught to think of the individual as citizen. As such, it will appeal to scholars with interests in social theory, philosophy, literature, cultural studies, architecture, and feminist thought, whose work intersects with political thought, utopian theorizing, or the study of humanity or human nature.

part |105 pages

Contextualizing the Individual and Utopia

chapter |16 pages

The Individual's Place in Paradise

The Limits, Promise, and Role of Reason in Modern Conceptions of Utopia 1

chapter |18 pages

Fundamental Oppositions

Utopia and the Individual

chapter |22 pages

The Individual and the City

Abstract and Concrete

chapter |18 pages

“Between the Utopian and the Primitive Horns of His Dilemma”

Aldous Huxley's Selection of Peter Kropotkin over T.H. Huxley for the Savage's "Third Alternative" in a Revised Brave New World

chapter |16 pages

Mrs Atwood and the Utopian Tradition

A Nineteenth-Century Alchemist as Utopian Theorist 1

part |107 pages

Mind, Body, Soul, and the Utopian Individual

chapter |16 pages

The Empathetic Turn

The Relationship of Empathy to the Utopian Impulse

chapter |16 pages

Solipsism and Utopia

Fredric Brown, Charles Yu, Ludwig Wittgenstein

chapter |14 pages

Etherotopia or a Country in the Mind

Bridging the Gap between Utopias and Nirvanas

chapter |22 pages

City of God

On the Longing for Architectonic Perfection, a Reminder by Uriel Birnbaum

chapter |22 pages

Theosis

Between Personal and Universal Utopia

part |107 pages

Marginalized and Alternative Interpretations of the Individual and Utopia

chapter |18 pages

Eutopias and Dis-Topias

Re-Imagining the Citizen of Ideal Societies

chapter |16 pages

Abject Utopianism

On the Silence, Apathy, and Drifting of Psychic Life in Samuel R. Delany's Hogg

chapter |20 pages

The New Mobile Subject

Space, Agency, and Ownership in the Techno-Utopian Age

chapter |20 pages

Ubuntu is Utopia

The Individual and the Community in the Work of Nelson Mandela