ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three of the strands. Civilizational utopianism, following from the idea that any remotely coherent idea of a global order faces the challenge of converting, or, in secular terms, 'civilizing', those who remain attached to traditional ideals that run counter to the universalist vision. Obscurantist approach to representing the future, which gives itself free rein to imagine far-reaching conspiracies of domination and hegemony in a global empire and to correspondingly imagine away the ills of modernity in a soon-to-emerge Cosmopolis. Primordial utopianism is a genre of future idealism based on the possibilities inherent in a kind of reconstituted primitivism, the idea of a future world populated by intimate communities, inspired all by romantically inclined accounts of existing or past societies. The postcolonial utopian imagination is especially fraught with dilemmas and improbabilities. The recognition of planetary social integration as an unavoidable condition of an ideal future introduces a civilizing dimension to the utopian imagination.
