Exploring the Utopian Impulse presents a series of essays by an international and trans-disciplinary group of contributors that explores the nature and 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.
Contents: Michael J. Griffin/Tom Moylan: Introduction: Exploring Utopia - Ruth Levitas: The Archive of the Feet: Memory, Place, and Utopia - Eugene O'Brien: «Towards Justice to Come»: Derrida and Utopian Justice - Susan McManus: Truth, Temporality, and Theorizing Resistance - Christopher Yorke: Three Archetypes for the Clarification of Utopian Theorizing - Vincent Geoghegan: Utopia and the Memory of Religion - Antonis Balasopoulos: The Fractured Image: Plato, the Greeks, and the Figure of the Ideal City - Geraldine Sheridan: Technological Utopia/Dystopia in the Plates of the Encyclopédie - Matthew Beaumont: The Party of Utopia: Utopian Fiction and the Politics of Readership 1880-1900 - Dan Smith: H.G. Wells's First Utopia: Materiality and Portent - Michael G. Kelly: Immanence and the Utopian Impulse: On Philippe Jaccottet's Readings of Æ and Robert Musil - Philip Schweighauser: Who's Afraid of Dystopia? William Gibson's Neuromancer and Fredric Jameson's Writing on Utopia and Science Fiction - Paula Murphy: Paradise Lost: The Destruction of Utopia in The Beach - Michael J. Griffin/Dara Waldron: Across Time and Space: The Utopian Impulses of Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker - Caitríona Ní Dhúill: «One loves the girl for what she is, and the boy for what he promises to be»: Gender Discourse in Ernst Bloch's Das Prinzip Hoffnung - Aidan O'Malley: Rhyming Hope and History in the «Fifth Province» - Timothy Keane: The Chartist Land Plan: An English Dream, an Irish Nightmare - Lucian M. Ashworth: The League of Nations as a Utopian Project: The Labour Party Advisory Committee on International Questions and the Search for a New World Order - Jenny Andersson: Beyond Utopia? The Knowledge Society and the Third Way - Andrew J. Brown: Witchcrafting Selves: Remaking Person and Community in a Neo-Pagan Utopian Scene - Barrie Wharton: From Shukri Mustafa to the Ashwaiyat: Utopianism in Egyptian Islamism.
