Becoming Utopian:The Culture and Politics of Radical Transformation
A dream of a better world is a powerful force that inspires activistis, artists, and citizens alike.
Working as a theoretical intervention, Becoming Utopian is my articulation of the utopian process, from the formation of the personal and collective utopian subject to the exercise of the utopian exercise of the utopian program (itself mediated by the utopian impulse and the leading edge of a utopian horizon). Working as an intellectual memoir, it offers my narration of personal formation as one metonym for that holistic process. I hope this entire process will speak to those experiencing an initial utopian break and seeking to locate themselves on the longer path as well as those working to contextualize their own development beyond the utopian turn.
Review
“This is an academic text that is also a personal political intervention, and so much more powerful and engaging for it...what Moylan gives us in this book is a politically charged exploration of the individual and collective process of Becoming Utopian.” -Darren Web.“Pedagogy, politics and the formation of the utopian subject.” Review of Becoming utopian: the culture and politics of radical transformation, by Tom Moylan. Pedagogy, Culture and Society (2021) Ahead of print.
Additional Titles
Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination
(Ralahine Classic Edition)
Although published in 1986, Demand the Impossible was written from inside the oppositional political culture of the 1970s. Reading works by Joanne Russ, Ursula K. Le Guin, Marge Piercy, and Samuel R. Delany as indicative texts in the intertext of utopian science fiction. Tom Moylan originated the concept of the “critical utopia” as both a periodizing and conceptual tool for capturing the creative and critical capabilities of the utopian imagination and utopian agency. This Ralahine Classics edition includes the original text along with a new essay by Moylan (on Aldous Huxley’s Island) and a set of reflections on the new book by leading utopian and science fiction scholars.
(Ralahine Utopian Studies Series, Peter Lang)
Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia
In Scraps of the Untainted Sky, Tom Moylan delivers a critical investigation of the history, aesthetics, and politics of dystopia. To situate this work, he recaps the methodological paradigm that developed within the interdisplinary fields of science fiction studies and utopian studies as they grew out of the oppositional political culture of the 1960s and the 1970s (the context that also produced the project of cultural studies). He then presents a new and comprehensive account of the textual structure and formal operations of the dystopian text. From there he focuses on the science fictional dystopias that emerged in the context of the conservative restoration and corporate restructuring of the 1980s and 1990s, and he closely examines the “critical dystopias” of Kim Stanley Robinson, Octavia Butler, and Marge Piercy.
(Routledge)
Not Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch (with Jamie Owen Daniel)
Ernst Bloch (1885-1977) is now recognized as a philosopher and cultural critic of the greatest importance, his subtle and profound developments of utopian Marxism as influential for the student New Left of the 1960s and 1970s as they were for the leftist movements of the twenties. Today, in the United States and Britain, his enormous body of work is attracting a new generation of readers: more translations are appearing, and his utopian though is finding a new resonance in many different contexts.
The essays gathered here are intended, above all, to recommend Bloch’s work as a challenge to older models of historical materialism and utopian emancipation, and to give specific examples of how that work can contribute to the current debates about utopia, nationlism, and collective memory, the liberatory content of popular cultural forms, and the complex relationship between ideology and everyday life. Together they provide a timely introduction to one of the most untimely and inspiring thinkers of the twentieth centruy.
(Verso)
Utopia Method Vision: The Use Value of Social Dreaming (with Raffella Baccolini)
Informed by feminist, Marxist, ethnographic, and post-structuralist frameworks, Utopia Method Vision makes a unique contribution to international debates in cultural, literary, sociological, and political studies of utopia theory, texts, and practices. The collection addresses the ways in which the contributors approach their study of the objects and practices of utopianism (understood as social anticipations and visions produced through texts and social experiements) and how, in turn, those objects and practices have shaped their intellectual work in general and their research perspectives in particular. In so doing, the contributors develop a larger, self-critical look at the limits and potential of the entire paradigm by which utopianism is known, studies, critiqued, created, and received.
(Ralahine Utopian Studies Series, Peter Lang)
Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination (with Raffaella Baccolini)
Dark Horizons examines the “dystopia turn” in Anglo-American cultures at the end of the twentieth century as expressed in novels such as Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Pat Cadigan’s Synners and films such as Fight Club and The Matrix. In these narratives of societies that are worse than even the contemporary reality produced by the neo-conservative backlash of the 1980s and the neo-liberal hegemony of the 1990s, new utopian horizons emerge that stubbornly anticipate a different and more just world. This extensive exploration of the theory and practice of the critical dystopian imagination in literature, film, and political culture will be of interest to scholars, students, and concerned citizens alike.
(Routledge)
Exploring the Utopian Impulse (with Michael J. Griffin)
Exploring the Utopian Impulse presents a series of essays by an international and trans-disciplinary group of contributors that explores the nature and the extent of the utopian impulse. Working across a range of historical periods and cultures, the essays investigate key aspects of utopian theory, texts, and socio-political practices. Even as some critique Utopia, others extend its reach beyond the limits of the modern western tradition within which utopianism has usually been understood. The explorations offered herein will take readers over familiar ground in new ways as well as carry them into new territories of hope and engagement.
(Ralahine Utopian Studies Series, Peter Lang)