Writing a positive account of utopias has always been a difficult and risky task. Utopias have always already been out of fashion and outside of time. Since 1989 at the latest, visions of utopia appear to have come to an end. Twenty years after Fukayama’s ‘end of history’, this article re-assesses the potentially fruitful roles for utopia’s out-of-timeness. Focusing on the critical potential of utopias through the concept of tension, it argues that utopian thought must be conceptualized through its tensile connections both to the status quo of a given society and to its possible futures.
Keywords: atopos; Engels, Friedrich; Marx, Karl; eutopos; outopos; Owen, Robert; utopia
Title
The Topoi of Utopia
Subtitle
A Topology of Political Tensions
Author(s)
Martin Doll
Identifier
Description
Writing a positive account of utopias has always been a difficult and risky task. Utopias have always already been out of fashion and outside of time. Since 1989 at the latest, visions of utopia appear to have come to an end. Twenty years after Fukayama’s ‘end of history’, this article re-assesses the potentially fruitful roles for utopia’s out-of-timeness. Focusing on the critical potential of utopias through the concept of tension, it argues that utopian thought must be conceptualized through its tensile connections both to the status quo of a given society and to its possible futures.
Is Part Of
Place
Vienna
Publisher
Turia + Kant
Date
2010
Subject
atopos
Engels, Friedrich
Marx, Karl
eutopos
outopos
Owen, Robert
utopia
Rights
© by the author(s)
This version is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Bibliographic Citation
Martin Doll, ‘The Topoi of Utopia: A Topology of Political Tensions’, in Tension/​Spannung, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey, Cultural Inquiry, 1 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2010), pp. 207–26 <https://doi.org/10.25620/ci-01_11>
Language
en-GB
page start
207
page end
226
Source
Tension/​Spannung, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey, Cultural Inquiry, 1 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2010), pp. 207–26
Format
application/pdf

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Cite as: Martin Doll, ‘The Topoi of Utopia: A Topology of Political Tensions’, in Tension/​Spannung, ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey, Cultural Inquiry, 1 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2010), pp. 207–26 <https://doi.org/10.25620/ci-01_11>