Utopian Vision Research Articles

Everything but Restraint: Aldo van Eyck and Constant Nieuwenhuys’ Visions of Post-War Society in Light of Their Lived Experience

This essay investigates how Aldo van Eyck and Constant Nieuwenhuys’ respective visions of post-war society were influenced by their lived experiences. Rejecting the functionalism prevalent in society, both found a guiding principle for their post-war visions in the relation-based thinking found in Johan Huizinga’s 1938 book Homo Ludens. Seeking to reintroduce play into daily life to counter the societal rigidity prevalent prior to the Second World War, they developed visions of societal structures that facilitated and reflected new societal relations. Their respective wartime experiences influenced these visions. Van Eyck, who spent the war years in neutral Switzerland, developed a humane structuralist architecture while Constant, who lived under German occupation in Amsterdam, zeroed in on an all-encompassing utopian vision which surpassed Van Eyck’s, in everything but restraint. Through a comparative analysis, this essay will illustrate how Constant’s more extreme experiences pushed him to take a more radical stance than his spared counterpart.

Spectrum of AI futures imaginaries by AI practitioners in Finland and Singapore: The unimagined speed of AI progress

AI teases our imagination: People have created various dystopian and utopian imaginaries of the era of AI. Although the key group creating and realizing AI-related futures imaginaries are the technology practitioners who research, develop, and apply AI, empirical research has focused on collective rather than individually interpreted imaginaries. Empirical research on individual practitioners’ futures imaginaries is necessary, as well as fine-tuning the related vocabulary to support individual and non-linear perspectives. We present an empirical study in which we interviewed 35 AI and robotics practitioners based in Finland and Singapore. We asked (1) what kind of best and worst futures imaginaries the practitioners of AI and robots envision and (2) how the practitioners imagine likely futures will emerge. As a result, we present three continuums. Along these continuums, the practitioners consider variations of likely futures: (1) the best, (2) in between, and (3) the worst. Our analysis reveals decisive questions behind the continuums regarding the agent in control, relations in practitioner communities and society, and justified concentration of power.

Making Post-Dystopian Future Possible: Alternative Policies for Bytom

This article follows the argument that urban dystopia is reserved not only for the sphere of the fictional but also as a state of reality that academic methods can capture and describe. Taking the example of the city of Bytom, a traditional centre of coal mining in Southern Poland, the article discusses four spheres where the dystopian present is clearly visible – namely, the four elements that led Bytom to a socio-economic and spatial collapse: depopulation, social polarisation and ghettoisation, degradation of the urban fabric and mining damage. Apart from showing empirical evidence, the article critically considers the possibilities of a post-dystopian urban future for the city. A discussion of possible policy answers to these dystopian trends is based on two possible visions of how the urban future could look. First, the semi-dystopian vision assumes that the expected direction and the results of current policies will lead to some improvement in the quality of the urban environment and the residents’ quality of life. Second, the post-dystopian future is based on an optimistic vision, which assumes that a post-dystopian future is possible. However, the desired salvation from the dystopian present will not come about through the search for new utopian visions. It will rely instead on the improvement and mitigation of some of the substantial social, economic and environmental problems that exist and continue to present an unbreakable social image.

Utopia against the welfare state: rethinking utopia in an age of reproductive crises

ABSTRACT This essay uses the work the easiness and the loneliness (2013) by the Danish author Asta Olivia Nordenhof to examine the relationship between utopian imaginings and representations of everyday life. It also attempts to develop an alternative to the American literary theorist Fredric Jameson’s influential theories on the form and function of utopian writing. The context for Jameson’s theory of utopia is a diagnosis of our present characterised by our inability to conceive of any alternative; for Jameson, the principal function of utopian writing is its capacity to open the future as a site of alterity. Arguing that the last decade has seen our historical moment theorised as one incapable of sustaining itself, rather than characterised by the impossibility of imagining the future, the essay uses, among others, the French philosopher Miguel Abensour to articulate how the connection between utopia and the everyday might foster a new and more timely understanding of utopia.

The Tyranny of Bread: Utopian Visions in Dostoevsky's "The Grand Inquisitor" and Zola's Germinal

Abstract: This study examines the treatment of socialism in Zola's Germinal and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov . Their views towards socialism represent a striking contrast: Dostoevsky condemned the utopian vision of a perfected and scientifically organized humanity, while Zola increasingly supported socialist ideals through both his novels and his activism. One point of contact, however, occurs in the symbolic use of bread. The role of bread in Germinal echoes its meaning in the story of the Grand Inquisitor, the most famous episode within The Brothers Karamazov . Zola portrays hunger and appetite from a deterministic perspective and ties this force to utopian political visions. Both authors portray a "tyranny of bread" where human needs are met at the cost of individual liberty.

Max Klinger's Beethoven (1902), Nietzsche's Übermensch and the Anti-fascist Poetics of T.S. Eliot's Coriolan I "Triumphal March" (1931)

Abstract: Eliot's Beethoven-inspired Coriolan I Triumphal March (1931) responds to and challenges the right-wing reception of Beethoven and Nietzsche in interwar Germany. Parodying the fascist interpretation of both composer and philosopher as military heroes, Eliot's poem instead invokes Beethoven in the idealist spirit of the Vienna Secession's 1902 Beethoven art exhibition. In particular, Triumphal March reveals itself as an ekphrastic response to Max Klinger's 1902 Beethoven sculpture , which portrayed the composer as a Promethean artist-hero aligned with Nietzsche's Übermensch. Resisting a militarist interpretation of Nietzsche's "superman" and a fascist discourse of Beethoven-Führer, Eliot follows Klinger's utopian vision of a "Third Kingdom" as suggesting peace, reconciliation, and inner transformation.

Notas para o enraizamento da Utopia na imaginação da política através da performance

Abstract One can easily argue that since Marx and Engels demise of nineteenth century Utopian socialism, characterizing Utopianism as an “idealism deeply and structurally averse to the Political”, utopia has migrated into fiction. With no surprise, Alain Badiou has famously declared the “passion for the real” as the twentieth century’s “major subjective trait”. The (early) twenty first century has also succumbed helplessly to the eruption of the real. But the times we live today seem to be claiming for something else. Over the past two decades utopian thinking seems to have resurfaced. The severity and monumentality of the issues that afflict the world today are inciting a central question for artists: in the face of an imminent catastrophe, what is the use of utopian imagination at the end of times? What is the purpose of artistic endeavours in a finite world. Utopian (or dystopian) fiction and has always dealt with the envisioning of a future anchored in possible or impossible scenarios, helping the world to correct its wrong doings, to improve, to transform, to threat with dreadful outcomes or to denounce present inequalities. However, if we consider that the world needs to start a new narrative, performing arts can help us to expand imagination, freeing political thinking from the constraints of the real world and wide open to “social dreaming”. In this paper, I aim to combine a speculative reflection grounded on utopian studies and in political theatre considering that performing arts are in a particularly good position to intervene in “social imaginary. This frame incites us to rethink the possibilities of political theatre today and its ontology, fighting for the rooting of (artistic) utopia in the imagination of politics, trusting that art and theatre will be able to help us to invent scenarios that today seem impossible or that we have not yet managed to conceive.

Eugen Sandow and eugenics

ABSTRACT Eugen Sandow gained renown in fin de siecle Britain as a strongman and bodybuilder and in the early twentieth century as a publicist, entrepreneur, and crusader for physical fitness on the international scene. Much less is known about his underlying zeal for eugenics, a movement that coincided with Social Darwinism as an evolutionary theory and practice that culminated during his most productive years. A pioneer in the burgeoning field of physical culture, Sandow sought to use his celebrity status to propagate his universal health doctrine as a means to address widespread public concerns about degeneration or suicide of the race. What made Sandow’s system unique was his neo-Lamarckian belief that acquired characteristics of health and fitness could be transmitted to the next generation of humanity by physical training. Fuelled by ongoing recruitment crises in the South African War and World War I, it was an ulterior agenda of environmental eugenics that Sandow promoted not only through public and official channels but to the four corners of the earth. Ultimately his utopian vision could not be sustained by the 1920s either through science, public opinion, or by political efforts to reconstruct a society fit for heroes.

How are practices of care sometimes not fair? The case of parenting and private car use

ABSTRACT How is it that the intention to care can produce and reproduce a practice that is quintessentially unjust? This conceptual piece uses the everyday transport practices of families to explore the paradox between individual practices of care and aspirations to just and care-full cities. In doing so, it encounters a fundamental barrier to the melding of care with notions of justice. While structurally and culturally, care and justice must fuse as aspirations, from the perspective of the individual in practice, care motivates actions that are anything but inclusive and equitable. Indeed, care in practice undermines aspirations to justice in a way that needs to be accounted for if utopian visions of more care-full and just cities can be realised. Tools and concepts from social practice theory are deployed to reveal how care melds with infrastructure and ‘ways of doing’ to entrench the mobile stratifications that both represent and perpetuate injustice.

Teaching About Democratic Socialism, American Style

Democratic socialism has experienced a resurgence in the past decade. According to a 2019 Gallup poll, 43% of all Americans, and 58% of those between 18 and 34, believe that socialism would be a “good thing” for the country. A 2021 Gallup poll found that 65% of Democrats, compared with 14% of Republicans, have a positive view of socialism. Democratic Socialists of America has grown from about 6,000 members to about 100,000 members. A growing number of self-identified socialists have been elected to public office. But when people say they support the idea of socialism, what do they mean? Or do they even know what they mean? In 2000, I taught a new course called “Democratic Socialism, American Style” for the first time and have offered it several times since. The course examines democratic socialism in America from several angles – as a utopian vision, as a social and political movement, as a set of practical public policies, and in contrast to more progressive social democracies in other countries.

The Salvific City

Abstract This exploratory essay examines the cultural assumptions at the intersection of our multi-sensory lived experience in contemporary urban built environments, the impact of that experience on our imaginative world for our assumptions about a normative urban environment – what I call a moral imaginary – , how imagination guides urban construction, and the Christian West’s most normative utopian vision of urbanity, the New Jerusalem. This exploration takes place within an eclectic amalgam of theory focused on environmental ethics. The overall goal, using ecological hermeneutics, is to retrieve the voice of the Earth from beneath the streets of gold. Can the New Jerusalem be imagined as a city that offers salvation to the Earth?

Suzuki Izumi’s Escape from the World of Women

Suzuki Izumi’s (1949–1986) short story “Onna to onna no yo no naka” (A World of Women and Women) was published in 1976, at the time when the genre of separatist feminist utopia was flourishing in the West. Worlds of women in the context of Western literature have been viewed as part and parcel of the feminist movement and debates of the 1970s and 1980s and some attempts have been made to look at Suzuki’s story through the same lens. However, this essay claims that “A World of Women and Women” should be examined as an expression of discomfort experienced by women in society rather than as a possible blueprint for a better social order or utopian feminist vision. I contend that Suzuki’s work reflects the contemporary cultural atmosphere of disappointment both with the state and with protest movements, with what the philosopher Yoshimoto Takaaki called “communal illusion.” The story is a critique of a discursive space near and dear to Suzuki’s heart – the world of shōjo narratives (narratives aimed at girls and young women), constructed as an insular space that precludes real engagement with the reality of having to live in a world in which men do exist.

Seeing the pen as a bayonet: The extremities of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s utopian imagination

When examined retrospectively, some poetry can be seen as using scandal and rebellion to defy social norms. Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poetry criticised the repression and conservatism ingrained in the fabric of Tsarist Russia; a society defined by bourgeois, capitalistic and heteronormative values. As a passionate Bolshevik, the alienation induced by the restrictive external world caused Mayakovsky to use poetry for its most extreme, subversive means in inciting revolution. While viewing Mayakovsky as a political voice for the proletariat is a commonly held view, an often overlooked aspect is how poetry was used to convey his sexual expression. When considered amidst the repressive views on sexuality that were characteristic of both Tsarist and even Soviet Russia, the flamboyant poet was consistently prone to controversy.

The Utopian Vision of the Temple Scroll

Abstract Although the Temple Scroll’s divinely-commanded temple plan has frequently been described as “utopian,” there has been no sustained attempt to analyze the scroll in light of other texts that have been described as utopias/utopian, or in connection with utopian studies. This article aims to start that conversation, considering what insights about the purpose and function of the Temple Scroll might be gained from approaching it as a utopia. Such an approach demonstrates that the scroll’s temple is best understood not as a concrete plan for direct reform, but as an imagined counterfactual world, constituted through legal discourse, through which the composers sought to reflect on and respond to their current realities.

Young people's perspectives on addressing UK health inequalities: utopian visions and preferences for action.

It is increasingly recognised by UK researchers and population health advocates that an important impetus to effective policy action to address health inequalities is activation of public dialogue about the social determinants of health and how inequalities might be addressed. The limited body of existing scholarship reaches varying conclusions on public preferences for responding to health inequalities but with consensus around the importance of tackling poverty. Young people's perspectives remain underexplored despite their increasingly visible role in activism across a range of policy issues and the potential impact of widening inequalities on their generation's health and wellbeing. Six groups of young people (39 in total) from two UK cities (Glasgow and Leeds) were engaged in online workshops to explore views on health inequalities and potential solutions. Inspired by calls to employ notions of utopia, artist-facilitators and researchers supported participants to explore the evidence, debating solutions and imagining a more desirable society, using visual and performance art. Drawing together data from discussions and creative outputs, we analysed participants' perspectives on addressing health inequalities across four domains: governance, environment, society/culture and economy. Proposals ranged from radical, whole-systems change to support for policies currently being considered by governments across the United Kingdom. The consensus was built around embracing more participatory, collaborative governance; prioritising sustainability and access to greenspace; promoting inclusivity and eliminating discrimination and improving the circumstances of those on the lowest incomes. Levels of acceptable income inequality, and how best to address income inequality were more contested. Individual-level interventions were rarely presented as viable options for addressing the social inequalities from which health differences emanate. Young people contributed wide-ranging and visionary solutions to debates around addressing the enduring existence of health inequalities in the United Kingdom. Their reflections signal support for 'upstream' systemic change to achieve reductions in social inequalities and the health differences that flow from these. An advisory group of young people informed the development of project plans. Participants shaped the direction of the project in terms of substantive focus and were responsible for the generation of creative project outputs aimed at influencing policymakers.

Utopia, Breakdown, Repair: Failure and Success in Social Dreaming

A common charge against utopianism is that any attempt to create blueprints for a better future disregards a basic fact: humans’ proclivity for failure. In response, defenders of social dreaming have argued that failure can become generative, once we abandon the perfectionism that ostensibly inheres in utopian visions. Building on this revaluation, the paper applies a crucial lesson from engineering and design studies—that often artificial failure modes are required to enhance the safety of tools and machines. To flesh out this point, I turn to utopian fiction and discuss Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital-trilogy, which rejects techno-optimism about our climate-changed world, yet hails the transformative potential of an anti-capitalist scientific community. Ultimately, the paper claims that, if we cannot have success in addressing the climate emergency without committing serious mistakes, then one (but clearly not the only) path forward is to imaginatively prefigure the faultlines along which ecomodernist dreams for a “good Anthropocene” might rupture.

Atomville: Architects, Planners, and How to Survive the Bomb.

In the post-Hiroshima era, atomic cities-designed to survive a nuclear attack-remain in the science fiction realm. Yet Hungarian émigré Paul Laszlo, a successful architect in Southern California suburbia, had a utopian vision for a futuristic, paradoxically luxurious atomic city he called "Atomville," never built but nonetheless seriously proposed. Laszlo was one of the very few architects known to venture into atomic survival on this scale. This article focuses on why the architectural profession for the most part ignored the issues raised by the atomic bomb, and on Laszlo's role as an outlier. It also deals with the genesis of Atomville and its place among the many unrealized ideas put forward in the 1940s and 1950s for urban survival, including underground buildings, urban dispersal, linear cities, and cluster cities.

김정은 통치이념과 담론

This study aims to examine the ruling ideology of Kim Jong-un in North Korea, specifically focusing on the element of “manipulation” within his ruling discourse. To achieve this goal, the study employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), a theoretical trend that highlights the importance of language use in shaping social reality. The study operates on the premise that the North Korean regime is characterized by totalitarianism, with power centralized around Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. As a result, the governing ideology is produced and distributed uniformly through propaganda.
 The analysis concentrates on the ruling discourse during the Kim Jong-un period, and uses editorials and articles published in the Rodong Sinmun from January 2021 to April 2023 as primary data sources. The content of these articles is classified into macroscopic and microscopic aspects, with an emphasis on identifying the expression methods and manipulation techniques used to control public thinking and attitudes.
 The results of the discourse analysis reveal that the ruling ideology during the Kim Jong-un period in North Korea is characterized by leader absolutism, collectivism centered on the leader, patriotism, and a utopian vision of equality, welfare, and human rights. However, with the faster spread of marketization, individualism and capitalist thinking have become prevalent in North Korea, making it challenging to control the public's thoughts with outdated governance discourse.
 The ruling discourse during the Kim Jong-un period elevates the people to a higher position while imposing more political, economic, and social duties and roles to induce loyalty. The development of this discourse appears to be a phenomenon that emerged as part of a system stabilization strategy, rather than a new change in the North Korean system. Ultimately, the ruling discourse during the Kim Jong-un period is a manipulated message of power that controls the thoughts of the people, legitimizes Kim Jong-un's authority and policies, and contributes to the maintenance and stability of the system.

A Second Life for Educators: A Hybrid Extended Reality Education Between Zuckerberg’s Vision and Educational Researchers’ Imaginary

While Extended Reality (XR) education is a contested future that consists of diverse discourses, Meta’s monopoly of XR technology leads to the misconception that Mark Zuckerberg’s vision will be the only future of Metaverse education. To address this discursive power imbalance, this paper draws on the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse to analyze the interests and significance behind different discourses on XR education. In particular, through an exhaustive comparison between Zuckerberg’s vision for Metaverse education and educational researchers’ imaginary of XR education, I identify that the primary difference between these discourses is the extent of users’ digital autonomy. This difference unveils the two parties’ grasping motivations: whereas Zuckerberg uses his utopian vision to cover Meta’s recent economic crisis and to secure Meta’s power in the future education market, educational researchers employ their decentralized imaginary to maximize their degree of freedom to create in the future learning environment. Lastly, I argue that the two radical dreams should learn from one another about digital governance. Thus, a hybrid XR education is proposed.

<em>Roblox</em> and Meta Verch

<em>Roblox</em> and Meta Verch