Утопия в поисках субъекта, субъект в поисках утопии

Abstract

The central concept of this article is the idea of utopia as an optimistic image of a societal order achievable in the distant future. Tracing the process of gradual decline in the emergence of new positive utopias through examples of literary dystopias over the last century, the author proceeds to discuss the topic of the end of utopia. The idea is that, despite its long existence, it is only recently that the absence of new models for a happy future becomes critical, that utopia begins to be recognized as a problem. In this regard, the author proposes to temporarily shift researchers' attention from the already fairly well developed matters of the characteristic features, signs, and functions of utopias of past centuries to factors contributing to the formation of social utopias in culture. Most theorists point to active transformational processes in societal structures and relationships as a factor stimulating the emergence of new utopian ideas, which the author admits to being true, but insufficient. An equally important factor is the obligatory presence of a certain subject of utopia. At closer examination, it seems that the status of the subject of utopia in the contemporary world is largely problematic for many reasons, unlike the subject of classical utopias of the modern era. Firstly, the idea that any utopian project could be brought to fruition raises serious concerns. Secondly, the tendency to perceive utopia as a naive project significantly reduces the degree of its possible influence on the way of thinking and the direction of social change. Thirdly, the lack of clarity about the subject's qualities required to create utopias hinders active creativity regarding new utopian projects. This, in turn, is directly related to the ongoing unresolved problem of the “death” of the subject, brought forth by postmodern philosophers. Against this background, there is a notable inconsistency of contemporary attitudes, which are focused, on the one hand, on the debunking of the subject as an exclusively rational being, and, on the other, on the rationalization of utopian impulses. In conclusion, the author puts forward a thesis about the need to regard the absence of utopia and the absence of a subject as causally interrelated situations. Finally, an idea is proposed about the priority of solving the problem of the subject in comparison with the problem of the end of utopia, or, in other words, about the impossibility of starting the process of forming new utopias until there is clarity about the figure of the new subject and the image of the new person.