The Utopian Impulse & Its Trouble With Postmodernity

Céline Keller We seem to drown in dystopias reflecting our surrender to the idea that there really is no alternative to capitalism or neoliberalism in particular. All these critical dystopias seem to extrapolate our current situation and what the persistence of this system (the economization of everything) holds in store for us in the future to come. It seems clear that if we want to escape this hopeless outcome we need new ideas for how a future globalized world might work differently. Yet, to generate those ideas using the Utopian impulse seems to be a door closed shut. So how do we get out of this dilemma? I will present to you Fredric Jameson's vision of how to burst that door wide open, with one of the oldest, archaic utopian ideas ever stated.