Utopianism

The aim of this chapter is to construct critical utopianism as a theoretical approach. This offers new possibilities for politics and for citizenship, which are the subject of the substantive chapters of this book. Like most interesting political concepts utopia is difficult to define, and contested definitions range from the very narrow to the very broad, and also differ qualitatively. The task of definition is approached from historical, theoretical and exegetical perspectives throughout this chapter. However, by way of a preliminary etymology, ‘utopia’ is a neologism that was coined by Sir Thomas More in the sixteenth century in his literary work of the same title (More 2004 [1516]). The term comes from a pun on the Greek eutopia meaning ‘good place’ and outopia meaning ‘no place’ (Taylor 2003: 554), thus ‘the primary characteristic of the utopian place is its non-existence combined with topos – a location in time and space – to give verisimilitude’ (Sargent 1994: 5). ‘Utopianism’ denotes various traditions of ideas and practices that have developed around this ambiguous concept. The chapter begins with an overview of the anti-utopian sentiment that has tended to permeate political theory through an outline of some key historical texts. Criticisms are usually levelled against utopians from two fronts: the epistemological status of their claims and their proposed means of social transformation. Through defending utopianism from these claims I then attempt to develop critical utopianism as both an epistemological and transformative position, whilst recognizing that these aspects are intertwined. The defence of utopianism as an epistemological position comes largely from utopian studies theorists who illustrate that the utopian impulse is not something that is confined to social engineers but that multiple expressions of different utopias are endemic to everyday life and culture. Rather than taking a static form- or content-based approach to defining utopias – as portrayals of ‘ideal society’ – function-based approaches emphasize utopians‘ articulations of dissatisfaction and desires as an epistemological practice of critique. From this perspective, the anti-utopian sentiments shared historically by classical Marxists and liberals are imbued with their own utopian visions. A distinction is thus drawn not between utopian and non-utopian theory, but between those utopias which disguise their utopian visions through a discourse of science or truth, and those which are explicit and critical in their utopianism. It is argued that this distinction can be used as a basis for differentiating between two traditions of utopianism. Epistemologies have political implications, and the distinction is also useful in formulating a critical utopian theory of social change which is propulsive, immanent and prefigurative and runs counter to totalizing and hegemonic forms of utopianism. This approach has a long history in anarchism, a brief overview of which is given towards the end of the chapter. The critical utopian approach as both an epistemology and model for social change is later taken as a basis for the substantive chapters – Chapter 4,Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 – which consider its applications at the level of political practice.