This paper explores the nature of utopia in the context of our apocalyptic present. Drawing on Evan Calder Williams' concepts of salvagepunk, it interprets the city of Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon ...as a (post)apocalyptic metropolis. It excavates the origins of Iquitos in genocidal violence and extractivist destruction, deconstructs the modernising megaprojects designed to rescue the city from its isolated status, and explores the subaltern forms of its everyday production. In doing so, the paper problematises accelerationist and pluriversal fantasies of escape from planetary socioecological breakdown, and discerns an apocalyptic utopia emerging at the urban cutting edge of the Anthropocene.
How can we understand the concept of utopia when looking at a religious social utopia in practice? To unpack this question, the article retraces the motif of the 'Christian Town' or 'Salem' in the ...Apenkwa congregation of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana through more than a century of narratives and practices. Drawing on historical and ethnographic data, the article demonstrates how the utopian religious ideal can function as a powerful symbol for the self-identification of a religious group in practice. It shows how this motif is perpetuated by actors across different cultural and religious backgrounds and over several generations. Most significantly, it shows that all this is quite independent of the 'success' or 'failure' of the utopian social project itself. Based on these observations, the paper proposes to theorize utopia, in the case of lived social utopias, as both a vision and a process.
Interview by Roberto Colonna with the philosopher and translator Sossio Giametta in which the theme of utopia is addressed both in a critical sense and in relation to some areas such as politics, ...religions, history and literature. Furthermore, part of the discussion also dealt with the question of dystopia and its function of critical analysis of reality.
Love, and the different manifestations of it, is a common theme in literature around the world. In Cosmopolitan Love , Sijia Yao examines the writings of D. H. Lawrence, a British writer whose ...literature focused primarily on interpersonal relationships in domestic settings, and Eileen Chang, a Chinese writer who migrated to the United States and explored Chinese heterosexual love in her writing. While comparing the writings of a Chinese writer and an English one, Yao avoids a direct comparison between East and West that could further enforce binaries. Instead, she uses the comparison to develop an idea of cosmopolitanism that shows how the writers are in conversation with their own culture and with each other. Both D. H. Lawrence and Eileen Chang wrote stories that are influenced by—but sometimes stand in opposition to—their own cultures. They offer alternative understandings of societies dealing with modernism and cultural globalization. Their stories deal with emotional pain caused by the restrictions of local politics and economics and address common themes of incestuous love, sexual love, adulterous love, and utopian love. By analyzing their writing, Yao demonstrates that the concept of love as a social and political force can cross cultural boundaries and traditions to become a basis for human meaning, the key to a cosmopolitan vision.
Utopian futurism is not often discussed as a motivating factor behind social science research, and in this article Colombian linguist Felix Manuel Burgos and US anthropologist Les W. Field take up ...that motivation in re‐assessing one period in the history of Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). Founded in 1964 and impelled by events that exploded in 1948, FARC's history offers a window into a movement marked by a deeply dystopian trauma at its very start. In this article, with their utopian imaginations to one side, Burgos and Field dialogically consider the period of the Zona de Despeje (the demilitarized zone FARC dominated from 1998 to 2002), animated by the memory narratives of Félix Manuel Burgos who lived in that zone as a primary school‐teacher during those years. Through their dialogue, they consider the idea of “anti‐utopia” as potentially descriptive of the ZDD, specifically, as well as the FARC's overall historical character.
Resumen
En este artículo el lingüista colombiano Félix Burgos y el antropólogo estadounidense Les W. Field retoman el futurismo utópico al reevaluar un período de la historia de Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). Fundadas en 1964 e impulsadas por los acontecimientos que estallaron en 1948, la historia de las FARC ofrece una ventana a un movimiento marcado por un trauma profundamente distópico desde sus inicios. En este artículo, dejando a un lado su imaginación utópica, Burgos y Field consideran dialógicamente el período de la Zona de Despeje (la zona desmilitarizada dominada por las FARC entre 1998 y 2002), animados por las narrativas de la memoria de Félix Burgos que vivió en esa zona como maestro de escuela primaria durante esos años. A través de su diálogo, consideran que la idea de “antiutopía” es potencialmente descriptiva de la ZDD, así como del carácter histórico general de las FARC.
El utopismo tradicional se ha dedicado a llevar a cabo la imaginación y perfeccionamiento de una sola comunidad idílica para todos, fallando una y otra vez en el emprendimiento a causa de las ...diferencias. ¿Más qué pasaría, si las diferencias pasaran de significar un obstáculo del proyecto para utopía, a ser defendidas y valoradas por este, como su base de origen y éxito? Nozick (1974) con su concepto de meta-utopía como marco para la utopía, rompe así con la universalidad que cada una de las utopías particulares pretende y exige para si. El Buen Vivir legitimiza, reivindica y reclama la diferencia como intrínseca a todo proceso de producción de conocimiento y todo proceso político. El Estado mínimo se presenta como la estructura política equivalente a meta-utopía, mas el Buen Vivir es implementado como marco del Estado plurinacional. Esto lleva a cuestionar la relación entre meta-utopía y Estado, en este artículo.
Traditional utopianism has been dedicated to carrying out the imagination of a perfect single idyllic community for all, failing repeatedly in the aim because of difference. Though, what would happen, if difference went from being an obstacle of the project to utopia, to being defended and valued by it, as its base of origin and success? Nozick (1974) with his concept of meta-utopia as a framework for utopia, thus breaks with the universality that each of the particular utopias intends and demands for itself. The concept of Buen Vivir (“Good Living”) legitimizes, makes visible and claims difference as intrinsic to every process of knowledge production and every political process. The minimal State is presented as the political structure equivalent to meta-utopia, though the Buen Vivir is implemented as a framework for the plurinational State. This leads to the questioning of the relationship between meta-utopia and the State in this article.
Desnudando las formas que ganan el espacio y el tiempo cuando lo real deviene imagen, y el modo singular que adopta nuestro pensamiento cuando se abre a lo que las imágenes dan a pensar, la ...fenomenología de la experiencia estética da cuenta, no apeans de las relaciones que establecen nuestras facultades cuando contemplamos sin objeto ni fin lo que se ofrece a nuestra sensibilidad, sino también de la utopía que abre los modos en que vemos, pensamos y hacemos el mundo a un futuro sin determinación. Utópicas parecen ser, de hecho, las coordenadas que la definen: la suspensión de cualquier interés que vaya más allá de las dimensiones aspectuales de los objetos de la experiencia, la momentánea puesta entre paréntesis de cualquier saber previo que pueda facilitar su aprehensión, la irresolución de la actividad teleológica que gobierna nuestros impulsos cognitivos. El presente artículo pretende demostrar que esas determinaciones trascendentales son, en todo caso, algo más que una idea abstracta o un ideal teórico, y que nuestras prácticas contemplativas y creativas se encuentran siempre, en mayor o menor medida, atravesadas por ellas, perteneciendo manifiestamente al orden de lo común.
