Readings

Utopian projects have mostly been discredited as idealistic and unrealizable or as preludes to dystopia. Yet they have been and continue to be a vital force in motivating political movements and social change. Combining readings and visual materials from art, literature, history and social theory, we will explore both imagined futures and actualized projects – from paradise to enlightenment notions of society and progress by design to utopian movements and communities of the 19th and 20th centuries to today’s intentional communities and everyday utopias. To engage utopias is also to engage alternative histories of Western thought and possible futures.

Intro: Utopian Alchemy in the 21st Century – How to Make Good Futures Out of a Bad One

Adorno, Theodor and Ernst Bloch. 1964. “Something’s Missing”: A Discussion Between Ernst Bloch and Theodor Adorno on the Contradictions of Utopian Longing.

Adorno, T. 2005 (1951). Minima Moralia. Selections, #18, #153

Butler, Judith. 2012. Can one lead a good life in a bad life. http://www.egs.edu/faculty/judith-butler/articles/can-one-lead-a-good-life-in-a-bad-life/

Misanthropology – Or Histories of the End of the Future

Rosenberg, Daniel and Susan Harding. 2005. Introduction: Histories of the Future. In Histories of the Future. Rosenberg, Daniel and Susan Harding. Duke University Press.

Appadurai, Arjun. 2013. Chapter 15: The Future as Cultural Fact. The Future as Cultural Fact: Essays on the Global Condition. Verso.

Harding, Susan and Kathleen Stewart. 1999. Bad Endings: American Apocalypsis. Annual Review of Anthropology 28: 285-310.

Fukuyama, Francis. 1989. The End of History? National Interest. (Or the book, 1992)

Edelman, Lee. 2004. Chapter 1: The Future is Kid Stuff. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Duke University Press.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2009. The Climate of History: Four Theses. Eurozine.

Jacoby, Russell. 1999. Intro + The End of the End of the End of Ideology. In The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture in an Age of Apathy. Basic Books.

Franco Bifardi. 2011. Chapter 1: The Century that Trusted in the Future. After the Future. Eds. Gary Genosko and Nicholas Thoburn. AK Press.

Shaviro, Steven. More on Accelerationism. http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=1174

Alex Williams, Nick Srnicek. Accelerate Manifesto. http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/14/accelerate-manifesto-for-an-accelerationist-politics/ 

Utopia in History, as History

Ank & Fritzie Manuel. 1972. Sketch for a Natural History of Paradise, Daedalus, Vol 101

Kosselleck, Rheinhardt. The Temporalization of Utopia. In The Practice of Conceptual History. Trans Todd Samuel Presner and others. Stanford University Press.

Manuel and Manuel. Heaven on Earth for the Common Man, In Utopias and Utopian Thought in the Western World.

Nadia Tazi. Celestial Bodies: A Few Stops on the way to Heaven. In Fragments for a History of the Body, vol 2

Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope. Vol II. Pp471-481, 523-548, 555-575, 611-624

Quandt, Jean B. 1973. Religion and Social Thought: The Secularization of Post-Millenialism. American Quarterly. 25(4): 390-409.

Mumford, Lewis. 1922. The Story of Utopias. Ch 12. http://www.sacred-texts.com/utopia/sou/sou15.html

Marquis de Condorcet, Outlines of an historical view of the progress of the human mind. Parts 9 and 10.

Durkheim, Emile. Socialism and Saint-Simon.

Utopia, The

Thomas More. Utopia.

Stephen Duncombe. Open Utopia Project. http://theopenutopia.org/about/

Marxism and Utopianism: Ideology and Imagination

Engels, Frederick. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm

Marx, Karl. Civil War in France. Ch 5: Paris Commune. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia. Part IV.

Bloch, Ernst. The Principle of Hope. Vol I. Introduction, pp 235-250, pp 115-158

Marcuse, Herbert. The End of Utopia. http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/pubs/60spubs/67endutopia/67EndUtopiaProbViol.htm

Paden, Roger. 2002. Marx’s Critique of the Utopian Socialists. Utopian Studies. 13(2):67-91

Robert P. Sutton. 2004. Communal Utopias and the American Experience: Secular Communities, 1824-2000. [Chapter 1]

Ranciere, J. The Journey of Icarus. Proleterian Nights: The Workers’ Dream in 19th Century France.

Ross, K. 2014. Communal Luxury.

Paul Ricoeur. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia.

Durkheim, Emile. Socialism and Saint-Simon.

Plekhanov, Georgi. Utopian Socialism in the Nineteenth Century. https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1913/utopian-socialism/#n44

Wallerstein, I. Unthinking Social Science. Marxisms as Utopias: Evolving Ideologies.

Appadurai, Arjun. “Disjuncture and Difference in Global Cultural Economy”. Theory Culture Society 1990; 7; 295

Suvin, Darko. 2976. “Utopian” and “Scientific”: Two Attributes for Socialism from Engels. Minnesota Review. Number 6. 59-70.

Utopia Americana

Nydahl, Joe. 1981 “From Millennium to Utopia Americana” in America as Utopia, Kenneth Roemer, ed. NY: Burth Franklin and Co.

Pitzer, Donald, ed. America’s Communal Utopias. Selections.

Robert Hine. California’s Utopian Colonies.

Mark Holloway. Heavens on Earth: Utopian Communities in America 1680-1880

Richard Fairfield, ed. The Modern Utopian: Alternative Communities of the 60s and 70s.

Lockwood, Maren. The Experimental Utopia in America. In Utopias and Utopian Thought, Frank Manuel, ed.

Ross, Andrew. Celebration.

Robert P. Sutton. 2004. Communal Utopias and the American Experience: Secular Communities, 1824-2000. [Chapters 2 and 3]

Fernando Coronil (2011), “The Future in Question: History and Utopia in Latin America (1989-2010)” in Business as Usual: The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown, eds. Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian. New York: NYU Press with SSRC.

Joel Sternfeld. Sweet Earth- Experimental Utopias in America [photographs]

Sterling Delano. 2004. Brook Farm – the dark side of utopia.

Michael Hardt Presents Thomas Jefferson, Introduction. http://www.amazon.com/Declaration-Independence-Revolutions-Thomas-Jefferson/dp/1844671577

Contemporary Variations: Intentional & Communal, Co- & Eco-

Lucy Sargisson. 2007. Strange Places: Estrangement, Utopianism, and Intentional Communities. Utopian Studies. 18( 3): 393-424

Sargisson, Lucy, and Lyman Tower Sargent. 2004. Living in Utopia: New Zealand’s Intentional Communities.

Sargisson, Lucy. 2012. Fool’s Gold? Utopianism in the 21st Century. Palgrave MacMillan. Chs 6, 7 on Green Utopias

De La Cadenas. 2015. Uncommoning Nature. E-Flux. Marisol. http://supercommunity.e-flux.com/texts/uncommoning-nature/

Bauman, Zygmunt. 2004. Utopia with no Topos. History of the Human Sciences February 16: 11–25…

Robert P. Sutton. 2004. Communal Utopias and the American Experience: Secular Communities, 1824-2000. [Chapters 5 and 6]

Damon Miller, 2009. “Where is the Why if the What is in How? The Issue of Intent in “Unintentional Ideal Communities.” Journal for Cultural Research 13(1): 29-52.

Iris MarionYoung, 1986. “The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference.” Social Theory and Practice 12(1):1-26.

Sylvia Cheuy, 2014. “A Community Conversation at Whole Village.” CommunitiesMagazine #164. http://www.ic.org/a-community-conversation-at-whole-village/

Diana Leafe Christian, 2014. “Radical Governance Changes in Two North American Ecovillages.” Communities Magazine #164. http://www.ic.org/radical-governance-changes-in-two-north-american-ecovillages/

Callenbach, E. Ecotopia.

Lucy Sargisson. 2012. Second-Wave Cohousing: A Modern Utopia? Utopian Studies. 23(1): 28-56.

Contemporary Variations: Labor, Capital, Horizontality

Michael Hardt & Anotnio Negri. 2009. Harvard Belknap. 3.2, 4.3, 5.3, 6.3, & De Singularitate 2:Instituting Happiness.

Sitrin, Marina. 2006. Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina. AK Press.=

Trigona, Marie. 2008. Fasinpat (Factory without a boss): An Argentine Experience in self-management. In Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century. Ed. Chris Spannos.

Franke, Richard. 2008. Local Planning: The Kerala Experiment. In Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century. Ed. Chris Spannos.

Wright, Erik Olin. 2010. Envisioning Real Utopias. Verso Books. […]

Kovel, Joel. 2013. The Enemy of Nature . Zed Books. Part III: Paths to Ecosocialism

Graeber, David
2004 Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm.

Rappaport, J. (2005) Intercultural Utopias, Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation, and Ethnic Pluralism in Colombia, Duke University Press, Durham.

Postero, Nancy. 2007. Andean utopias in Evo Morales’s Bolivia. Journal Latin American and Caribbean ethnic studies. Volume 2. Issue 1. Page 1 – 28.

Contemporary Variations: Futurism and Theory

Wark, McKenzie. 2015. Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene. Verso.

William J. Burling. 2005. The Theoretical Foundation of Utopian Radical Democracy in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Blue Mars. Utopian Studies. (pp. 75-96)

Steven Shapiro / Nick Land – Accelerationism, Take 2… http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=1174

Haraway, Donna. Cyborg Manifesto.

Stephen Shukaitis. “Space is the [non]place” IN Imaginal Machines. 2009. Autonomedia.

Kim Stanley Robinson. Red Mars Trilogy.

Jameson, Frederic. Archeologies of the Future. Ch 12.

Bogdanov. Tektology.

Guest Lecture: Ken Wark

Technological Utopias: An Alternative History of Science and Technology

Bloch, Ernst. Vol II. Chapter: Technological Utopias.

Fyodorov, Nikolai. Philosophy of the Common Task. Part I, secs. 1-10, 15-end https://sites.google.com/site/azoko09/nikolai-fyodorov

Benedict Singleton. Maximum Jailbreak. E-flux journal. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/maximum-jailbreak/JD Bernal. 1929. The World, the Flesh and the Devil. https://www.marxists.org/archive/bernal/works/1920s/soul/

Julian Huxley. 1968. Transhumanism. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. 73-6

Nick Bostrom. A History of Transhumanist Thought.

JB Haldane. Daedalus or Science and the Future.

HG Wells. A Modern Utopia.

HG Wells. The Shape of Things to Come.

Goertzel, Ben. Cosmist Manifesto. On-line.

Segal, Howard. 2006. Technology and Utopia.

Jonathan Etzler. The Paradise Within Reach of All Men…

Technology and Teleology: Utopias After the Human

Fred Turner. Counter culture to cyberculture. Chs 6, 7, 8

Nick Bostrom. Letter from Utopia.

Patrick McCray. The Visioneers. Intro, 3, 6, 8

Abou Farman. Re-Enchantment Cosmologies: Mastery and Obsolescence in an Intelligent Universe. In Battaglia, D., Valentine, D. and Olson, V., eds. Special Issue, Extreme: Humans at Home in the Cosmos. Anthropological Quarterly, 85(4): 1069-1088.

Hughes, James J. 2012. “The Politics Of Transhumanism And The Techno-Millennial Imagination, 1626-2030.” Zygon: Journal Of Religion & Science 47, no. 4: 757-776. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed August 25, 2015).

Teresa Botelho, “Reimagining the Body in Post-Singularity Techno-Utopias”, Spaces of Utopia: An Electronic Journal, 2nd series, no. 3, 2014, pp. 70-83. <letras.up.pt/uploads/ficheiros/13149.pdf >

Cybertopia, a documentary film, by Marije Meerman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQy0ZCx3UCY

Silver, Lee. Remaking Eden.

Drexler, Eric. Engines of Creation.

Kelley, Kevin. Out of Control. http://kk.org/kevinkelly/out-of-control-the-illustrated/

Kurzweil, Ray. Age of Spiritual Machines.

Kurzweil, Ray. The Singularity is Near.

Ettinger, Robert. Man into superman.

FM 2030. Are you a transhuman?

Chu, Ted. 2014. Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential: A Cosmic Vision of Our Future Evolution . Origin Press.

Steven J. Dick and Mark Lupisella, eds. Cosmos and Culture. NASA: US Government Printing Office. Part 1, Part 3…

These are important background (historical, theoretical) readings. Many of these books are held in a common library in the anthropology lounge.

Background Reading: History and Analysis

  1. Frank and Fitzie Manuel. Utopias and Utopian Thought in the Western World. Belknap-Harvard.
  2. Ernst Bloch. The Principle of Hope, Vols 1, 2, 3. MIT Press.
  3. Karl Mannheim. Ideology and Utopia. Martino Publishing.
  4. Ruth Levitas. The Concept of Utopia.

Original Utopian Texts

  1. Thomas More, Utopia.
  2. Francis Bacon, New Atlantis
  3. Campanella, City of Sun
  4. Marquis de Condorcet, Outlines of an historical view of the progress of the human mind.
  5. L’An 2440.
  6. Fourier, Charles. Design for Utopia: Selected Writings.
  7. Samuel Butler. Erewhon
  8. James Harrington. Commonwealth of Oceana
  9. Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backward
  10. Morris, William. News from Nowhere
  11. Owen, Robert. A New View of Society
  12. Etienne Cabet. Voyage to Icaria
  13. Paradise within reach of all men
  14. HG Wells. A Modern Utopia
  15. Huxley, Aldous. Island.
  16. BF Skinner. Walden Two
  17. Harold Loeb. Life in a Technocracy
  18. Ayn Rand. Atlas Shrugged.
  19. Ernest Callenbach. Ecotopia.
  20. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Herland.