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Reclaiming the Utopian imaginary in IR theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2009

SHANNON BRINCAT
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Abstract

This article aims to reinvigorate the utopian imagination as a vital and necessary component in IR theory. Since the First Great Debate between the Realists and the Utopianists (or more accurately, the Liberal-Internationalists) the utopian tradition has been viewed as being both subjective and arbitrary, leading to its dismissal as vain idealism in world politics. This article re-interrogates the arguments of Carr and Morgenthau and finds that they have relevance today only as against closed systems of utopia and have little bearing against the open-dialectical utopianism which is advocated here as a viable alternative to the sterility of realism. The article also examines the historical nexus between realism's dismissal of utopianism and the wider movements in political philosophy via a critical engagement with the works of Popper, Berlin and Arendt. Finally, after exploring the limitations of Booth's idea of ‘Utopian Realism’, the article argues that utopianism should no longer be assumed to be a blueprint for a future, perfect society, a tradition fraught with the danger of proto-totalisation, but as a critical imaginary that acts as a heuristic device to reveal the fissures in existing reality and as an ideational motivating force for progressive change in world politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , July 2009 , pp. 581 - 609
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2009

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References

1 Immanuel Kant, ‘Review of Herder’s Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind’, in H.S. Reiss (ed.), Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 212.

2 Frederic R. White, Famous Utopias of the Renaissance (Vermont: Hendricks House, 1981), viii.

3 Ruth Levitas, ‘Looking for the blue: The necessity of utopia’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 12:3 (October 2007), p. 298.

4 See Aristotle, in J. Warrington (ed. and trans.), Politics (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1959), Book II.

5 Sir Thomas More, Utopia (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1997).

6 Lucy Sargisson, Contemporary Feminist Utopianism (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 1–2 and Ruth Levitas, The Concept of Utopia (Hertfordshire: Syracuse University Press, 1990).

7 Sargisson, pp. 1–2.

8 Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 173.

9 Barbara Goodwin and Keith Taylor, The Politics of Utopia (London: Hutchinson, 1982), pp. 213, 217, 221.

10 For reconstructions of the utopian tradition see Lewis Mumford, The Story of Utopias (New York: The Viking Press, 1974) and Marie Louise Berneri, Journey Through Utopia (London: Freedom Press, 1982) and E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World (New York: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979).

11 See H.G. Wells, In the Days of the Comet (London: Ariel Press, 1999).

12 See Rabelais, ‘Abbey of Theleme’, in Frederic R. White (ed.), Famous Utopias of the Renaissance, 123ff and xvii.

13 Plato, ‘The Republic’ in The Dialogues of Plato, trans. by B. Jowett (New York: Random House, 1974).

14 President Barack Obama, ‘Obama: Victory Speech’, (Acceptance Speech of President Elect Barack Hussein Obama), The New York Times, 5 November 2008, available at: http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/speeches/obama-victory-speech.html# accessed on 20 January 2009.

15 Tom Moylan, Demand the Impossible (New York: Methuen, 1986), p. 28.

16 Ibid., pp. 24, 26.

17 Raymond Ruyer, L’Utopie et les Utopies (Paris: Presses Universitairies de France, 1950), pp. 4–5.

18 Moylan, pp. 1, 211, 213.

19 See Judith N. Shklar, After Utopia (Princeton. N.J: Princeton University Press, 1957).

20 See Frank E. Manuel, ‘Introduction’, in Manuel (ed.), Utopias and Utopian Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), viii and Russell Jacoby, The End of Utopia: Culture and Politics in an Age of Apathy (New York: Basic Books, 1999), p. 158.

21 See Thomas Molnar, Utopia, the Perennial Heresy (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967).

22 Judith Schklar, ‘The Political Theory of Utopia: From Melancholy to Nostalgia’, in Manuel (ed.), Utopias and Utopian Thought, p. 102ff.

23 Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (London: Penguin, 1998), p. 174.

24 All references to Carr are taken from E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1919–1939 (Hong Kong: Macmillan, 1978), pp. 1–12, 21–27, 41–42, 53, 87, 97.

25 Levitas, ‘Looking for the blue’, p. 298.

26 See Scott Burchill, ‘Realism and Neo-Realism’, in S. Burchill, A Linklater et al (eds), Theories of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1996), p. 67.

27 See Richard Wyn Jones, ‘Introduction: Locating Critical International Theory’, in Critical Theory & World Politics (Boulder CO: Lynne Reiner, 2001), p. 26.

28 Frederic Jameson, ‘Towards Dialectical Criticism’, in M. Hardt, K. Weeks (eds), The Jameson Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), p. 69.

29 Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, p. 30.

30 Goodwin, Taylor, The Politics of Utopia, p. 214.

31 Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis’, pp. 2–3.

32 All passages from Mannheim are taken from Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966) pp. 4,54, 69, 79, 173, 177, 183–4, 196.

33 Ibid., pp. 4, 196.

34 Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis’, pp. 11–2.

35 Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 54, pp. 173–84. See also Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 17, 310.

36 Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, p. 69.

37 Ibid., p. 86.

38 For example, see Kenneth N. Waltz, ‘The Continuity of International Politics’, in K. Booth and T. Dunne (eds), Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of the Global Order (New York: Palgrave, 2002).

39 Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia. pp. 90–3.

40 See Robert W. Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Theory’, Millennium, 10 (1981) and Richard Ashley, ‘Political Realism and Human Interests’, International Studies Quarterly, 25:2 (June 1981).

41 My emphasis added. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia pp. 176–7.

42 See Roland Bleiker, ‘Forget IR Theory’, Alternatives, 22:1 (1997), p. 65.

43 My emphasis added. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, pp. 228–30, 236.

44 Ibid., p. 234.

45 Ibid., p. 177.

46 Ibid., p. 183.

47 Ibid., p. 185.

48 Ibid., p. 186.

49 Ibid., pp. 186, 216.

50 This should not be misconstrued as implying that utopian imagination only arises in opposition to something. As the reference to the Obama Campaign highlights, utopian imagination can elicit positive affirmations also. Monty Python, The Life of Brian, (T. Jones, Director), Python (Monty) Pictures, 1979.

51 Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, p. 27.

52 Ibid., pp. 8, 27.

53 My emphasis added. Ibid., pp. 5, 8, 7.

54 See Michael Cox, ‘Introduction to Carr’ in E.H. Carr (ed.), The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1919–1939, (New York: Palgrave, 2001), p. xxiii.

55 Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, p. 4.

56 For example, see Hans Rommen, ‘Realism and Utopianism in World Affairs’, The Review of Politics, 6:2 (April 1944), p. 198.

57 Scott Burchill, ‘Introduction’, in Theories of International Relations, p. 5.

58 Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, ch. 4.

59 Ibid., pp. 62, 51. It should be noted that elsewhere Carr explores the inter-war period in more detail but without condemning utopianism. See E.H. Carr, International Relations between the Two World Wars 1919–1939 (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1967).

60 Mearsheimer’s portrayal of the ‘tragedy’ in IR is symptomatic of this trend. See Mearsheimer’s ‘Bedrock Assumptions’ in John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton and Co, 2001), p. 30ff.

61 Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, p. 10.

62 Ibid., p. 12.

63 Ibid., pp. 9–13, 97.

64 Ken Booth, ‘Security in Anarchy: Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice’, International Affairs, 67:3 (July 1991), p. 531.

65 See Ibid., citing Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, pp. 223, 13, 97, 220, 93, 172, 89, 239.

66 Melvin J. Lasky, Utopia and Revolution (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 593.

67 Jeanne A. Schuler, ‘Reasonable Hope: Kant as Critical Theorist’, History of European Ideas, 21:4 (July, 1995), p. 531.

68 Tom Moylan, Demand the Impossible, pp. 18–9.

69 Jameson, ‘Utopianism and Anti-Utopianism’, in the Jameson Reader, p. 392.

70 Richard Ashley, ‘Political Realism and Human Interests’, pp. 216–7.

71 David Jason Karp, ‘The utopia and reality of sovereignty: social reality, normative IR and ‘Organised Hypocrisy’, Review of International Studies, 34:2 (April 2008), pp. 313–37.

72 Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, pp. 224–5.

73 Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, p. 5.

74 Ibid., pp. 3, 21 and 41–2, 87.

75 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), p. 34.

76 My emphasis added. See Morgenthau’s ‘First Principle of Political Realism’, in Hans. J. Morgenthau (ed.), Politics Among Nations (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985), p. 4.

77 Ibid., pp. 41–9.

78 Ibid., p. 13.

79 Crane Brinton, ‘Utopia and Democracy’, in Manuel (ed.), Utopias and Utopian Thought, p. 58.

80 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince and other Political Writings, trans. by S.J. Milner (London: Everyman, 1998), p. 130.

81 See Mark Chou, ‘Being as Chaos in the Tragedy of Hans J. Morgenthau’, (paper presented at the Oceanic Conference on International Studies, OCIS, Brisbane, 2–4 July 2008).

82 Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 35–7, 96–107.

83 Karl Marx, quoted in Cornel West, The Ethical Foundations of Marxist Thought (New York, 1991), pp. 82–4.

84 Buzan shows how realism and the Hobbesian imaginary are connected. See Barry Buzan, People, States & Fear, 2 (Sydney: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 37–8.

85 See Jean Bethke Elshtain, ‘On Never Reaching the Coast of Utopia’, International Relations, 22:2 (2008), pp. 158, 166.

86 Scott Burchill, ‘Realism and Neo-Realism’, pp. 77–8.

87 Goodwin, Taylor, The Politics of Utopia, p. 21.

88 Hans. J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, ‘Six Principles of Political Realism’, pp. 4–18.

89 My emphasis added. Hans J. Morgenthau, ‘The Intellectual and Political Functions of Theory’, in J. Der Derian, (ed.), International Theory: Critical Investigations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995),p. 50.

90 See Francis A. Boyle, World Politics and International Law (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1985), p. 70ff cited in Booth, ‘Security in Anarchy’, p. 532.

91 John H. Herz, ‘Letter to the Morgenthau Conference’, in C. Hacke, G-K. Kindermann, K. Schellhorn (eds), The Heritage, Challenge, and Future of Realism. In Memoriam Hans Morgenthau (1904–1980) (Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2005), p. 27. See also Christian Hacke, Jana Puglierin, ‘John H. Herz: Balancing Utopia and Reality’, International Relations, 21:3 (2007), p. 367ff.

92 Ashley, ‘Political Realism and Human Interests’, pp. 206, 208–9.

93 Booth, ‘Security in Anarchy:’, p. 533.

94 Terry Eagleton, ‘Utopia and its Opposites’, Socialist Register, 36 (2000), p. 31ff.

95 R.L. Rothstein, ‘On the Costs of Realism’, in M. Smith et al. (eds), Perspectives on World Politics (London, 1981), p. 392.

96 Robert Hanna, A.W. Moore, ‘Reason, Freedom and Kant: An Exchange’, Kantian Review, 12 (2007), p. 126.

97 Robert W. Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders’.

98 Martin Wight, ‘Why is there No International Theory?’ (1966), reprinted in J. Der Derian (ed.), International Theory: Critical Investigations (Basingtoke: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 15, 25–6.

99 This is a satirical extrapolation, a play on words, from a quote taken from Bloch and should not be mistaken for his actual words. See Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), p. 13.

100 Valerie Fournier, ‘Utopianism and Grassroots Alternatives’, in Shostak (ed.), Viable Utopian Ideas, p. 187.

101 Because Hayek’s opposition to utopianism is integrated with his neo-classical economic doctrines, it is far too large a topic to be explored here. For Hayek’s views on utopianism see Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1944).

102 See J.L. Talmon, Utopianism and Politics (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1957).

103 Jacoby’s excellent criticism of Popper, Berlin and Arendt is the basis for much of this discussion. See Russell Jacoby, Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-utopian Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), p. 50ff.

104 Karl Popper, The Open Society (New York: Princeton University Press, 1971).

105 Karl Popper, ‘Utopia and Violence’, in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 3 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 360.

106 Karl Popper, ‘Reason or Revolution?’, in T.W. Adorno et al. (eds), The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, trans. by G. Adey and D. Frisby (London: Heinemann, 1976), p. 298.

107 Karl Popper, ‘Die ‘politische’ Biographie’, in H. Marcuse and K. Popper, Revolution oder Reform? (F. Stark ed.), (Munich: Kösel-Verlag, 1971), p. 9.

108 Popper, ‘Utopia and Violence’, pp. 355–63. See also Popper, ‘Reason or Revolution?’, p. 291.

109 Ibid., pp. 293, 295–6, 299.

110 Isaiah Berlin cited in Martin E. Marty, ‘But Even So, Look at That: An Ironic Perspective on Utopias’, in E. Rothstein (ed.), Visions of Utopia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 52.

111 See Isaiah Berlin, ‘The Idea of Pluralism’, in W.T. Anderson (ed.), The Fontana Post-Modernism Reader (Hammersmith: Fontana Press, 1996), pp. 43, 45.

112 Lewis Carroll, ‘Letter to Daniel Biddle’, cited in H. Haughnton, ‘Notes to Through the Looking Glass’, in Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, Op. Cit., pp. 342–3.

113 See Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, H. Hardy (ed.), (New York: Vintage Books, 1992).

114 For a criticism of Berlin’s ‘messy pluralism’ see Jacoby, Picture Imperfect, p. 64.

115 The passage is exhumed from Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose in which Kant does not reject a perfectionist teleology in nature but in fact posits its radical opposite, the utopia of the Highest Good. See Immanuel Kant, ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose’, in Kant: Political Writings, pp. 46 and 51. See Perry Anderson, A Zone of Engagement (London: Verso, 1992), pp. 232–5 cited in Jacoby, Picture Imperfect, pp. 64–6, and Frank E. Manuel, Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World, p. 519.

116 Immanuel Kant, On Education, trans. by A. Churton (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1992), p. 8.

117 Immanuel Kant, ‘On the Common Saying: ‘This May be True in Theory, but it Does Not Apply in Practice’, in Reiss (ed.), pp. 61–63.

118 Plato, The Republic, trans. by D. Less (Penguin Classics, Oxford, 2003), p. 191.

119 My emphasis added. Kant, ‘On the Common Saying’ in Reiss (ed.), p. 89.

120 Isaiah Berlin, ‘The Pursuit of the Ideal’, in H. Hardy (ed.), The Proper Study of Mankind (New York: Farrat, Strauss and Giroux, 1997), p. 15.

121 Berlin, ‘The Idea of Pluralism’, pp. 46–7.

122 See Stefan Collini, English Pasts: Essays in History and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 203–4 cited in Jacoby, Picture Imperfect, pp. 68–9.

123 See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2 (New York: World Publishing, 1958), pp. 475, 468–9. See also Hannah Arendt, ‘Thoughts on Politics and Revolution – Commentary, in Crises of the Republic (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 187.

124 Jacoby, Picture Imperfect, p. 76.

125 Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 1 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951),pp. 431–2.

126 Jacoby, Picture Imperfect, pp. 81–2.

127 See Ruth Levitas, Lucy Sargisson, ‘Utopia in Dark Times’, in T. Moylan, R. Baccolini (eds), Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 13–28.

128 Arendt, ‘Thoughts on Politics and Revolution’, pp. 168, 188–90, 187, and 178.

129 Ernst Bloch, Traces, trans. By A.A. Nassar (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006),“Mingling”, p. 2.

130 See Ian Clark, ‘World Order Reform and Utopian Thought: A Contemporary Watershed?’, The Review of Politics, 41:1 (January, 1979), p. 109.

131 Two key examples of this type of thought were Camilleri and Falk. See Joseph Camilleri, Civilisation in Crisis: Human Prospects in a Changing World (Cambridge, 1976), and Richard Falk, This Endangered Planet (New York, 1971).

132 This was based on Giddens ‘utopian realism’ and Ashley’s ‘emancipatory realism’. See Booth, ‘Security in Anarchy’, p. 534.

133 Ibid., p. 534 citing Stanley Hoffman, Duties Beyond Borders: On the Limits and Possibilities of Ethical International Politics (Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press, 1981), p. 2.

134 It should be noted that this limited critique is based only on Booth's earlier work on utopian realism. Booth, ‘Security in Anarchy’, pp. 534–6.

135 Ken Booth, ‘International Relations Theory vs. The Future’, in K. Booth, S. Smith (eds), International Relations Theory Today (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), p. 329.

136 Booth, ‘Security in Anarchy’, Ibid., p. 536.

137 Ibid., p. 539.

138 Ibid., p. 542.

139 See Michael Nicholson, ‘Realism and Utopianism Revisited’, Review of International Studies, 24:5 (December 1998), p. 78.

140 The US Department of State has indicated an increasing number of human-beings trafficked globally. See US Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report 2008 at http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2008/ accessed on 5 January 2009.

141 Booth, ‘Security in Anarchy’, p. 545.

142 See Moylan, Demand the Impossible, p. 20.

143 See Booth, ‘Security in Anarchy’, p. 538.

144 See Thomas Pogge, ‘Recognised and Violated by International Law: The Human Rights of the Global Poor’, Leiden Journal of International Law, 18 (2005), pp. 717–45.

145 John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 126.

146 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, (revised edition), (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1999), pp. 52, 60.

147 Chris Brown, ‘The construction of a “realistic utopia” John Rawls and international political theory’, Review of International Studies, 28:2 (2002), p. 20.

148 Rawls, The Law of Peoples, p. 6.

149 Bertrand de Jouvenal, ‘Utopia for Practical Purposes’, in Manuel (ed.), Utopias and Utopian Thought, p. 229.

150 The dangers include the ‘hubris of imagination’, how we may sully the future with our own deformed and/or repressed sociality and ‘voluntarism’, how utopianism may over-estimate the capacity of humankind to actualize change. See Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, pp. 234–5; Jameson, ‘Utopianism and Anti-Utopianism’, in the Jameson Reader, p. 385; Goodwin, Taylor, The Politics of Utopia, p. 253.

151 Jameson, ‘Introduction/Prospectus’, in Jameson Reader, p. 363.

152 Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom (Alo Alto, CA: Cheshire Books, 1982), pp. 344–7, quoted in Moylan, Demand the Impossible, p. 203.

153 Hudson has identified four functions of utopian thought; the cognitive, educative, anticipatory, and causal. See W. Hudson, The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch (London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 51. Levitas has added another function, the ‘articulation of dissatisfaction’. See Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 101. See also Clark, ‘World Order Reform and Utopian Thought’, pp. 98–100.

154 On the symbolism of Proteus see George Kateb, ‘Utopia and the Good Life’, in Manuel (ed.), Utopias and Utopian Thought, pp. 240, 256.

155 See Arthur B. Shostak, ‘Introduction’, in A.R. Shostak (ed.), Viable Utopian Ideas (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2003), p. 3 and Bertrand de Jouvenal, ‘Utopia for Practical Purposes’, in F.E. Manuel (ed.),Utopias and Utopian Thought, p. 221.

156 Lewis Mumford, The Story of Utopias (New York: Viking Press, 1974), pp. 194, 254.

157 James Derrida, ‘Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility’, in R. Kearney, M. Dooley (eds), Questioning Ethics (London: Routledge, 1999).

158 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London, Tavistock Publications, 1984), pp. 56–7.

159 While I accept this aspect of ‘inventiveness’ identified by Tillich, I reject his account of a telos within utopianism and his transcendental ‘synthesis’. See Paul Tillich, ‘Critique and Justification of Utopia’, in F.E. Manuel (ed.), Utopias and Utopian Thought, pp. 296–302.

160 Kateb, Utopia and Its Enemies, p. 12.

161 Kant, ‘What is Orientation in Thinking’, in Reiss (ed.), Kant: Political Writings, p. 248.

162 See Lewis Mumford, ‘Utopia, The City and The Machine’ in F.E. Manuel (ed.), Utopias and Utopian Thought, p. 10.

163 Mumford, The Story of Utopias, p. 109.

164 Ibid., pp. 267–9.

165 Patrick Hayden, Chamsey el-Ojeili, Globalisation and Utopia, forthcoming, 1.

166 Ian Hall, ‘The Utopian International Society and its Enemies’, (paper presented at International Studies Association, San Francisco, 2008), p. 20.

167 For examples in political philosophy see Michael Kenny (ed.), ‘Special issue: Utopianism in western political ideology’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 12:3 (October 2007). For Marxian inspired accounts see Levitas, The Concept of Utopia. For game theory see Matthew Braham, Frank Steffen, ‘Power and Freedom in Utopia: A Parable of a Simple Game’, (paper submitted to the Annual Meeting of the European Public Choice Society, Belgirate, Italy, 4–7 April 2002).

168 See Eva Brann, ‘“An Exquisite Platform”: Utopia’, Interpretation: Journal of Political Philosophy, 3:1 (Autumn 1972), p. 9.

169 While all forms of satire imply an alternative world which the author intrinsically ascribes a certain ‘betterness’ to, to reduce utopianism merely to a satirical literary device would seem to confine the role of the utopian imaginary, to render utopianism obsolete and to limit the horizons of political possibility. Moreover, satire is thoroughly immanent, it criticises only existing forms and is culturally bound. On its own, satire projects an alternative only implicitly and negatively. Satire can reveal the absurdities in existing socio-political life, but it cannot project an alternative and is therefore bounded negativity.

170 Elshtain, ‘On Never Reaching the Coast of Utopia’, p. 163.

171 Carroy U. Ferguson, ‘The Conscious Use of the “Mirror Effect”: Co-Creating a Utopian World’,in Shostak (ed.), Viable Utopian Ideas, p. 84.

172 Frank E. Manuel, ‘Introduction’, in Manuel (ed.), Utopias and Utopian Thought, p. x, citing Raymond Ruyer, L’Utopie et les utopies, p. 9.

173 Jacoby, Picture Imperfect, p. xiv.

174 This analogy should not be taken seen as defining utopia as a ‘beyond’ but as something that is strived for and whose concept and content changes anew. Oscar Wilde quoted in Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 5.

175 Levitas has gone so far as to employ the phrase ‘Imaginary Reconstitution of Society’ (IROS) to avoid any ideological baggage that surrounds ‘utopianism’. Levitas, ‘Looking for the blue’, pp. 289, 300. There are considerable affinities with Hayden and el-Ojeili’s volume which also promotes utopian images that are ‘self-reflexive, pluralistic, explicitly politico-normative’ and which remain ‘committed to the utopian desire for radical social change, human emancipation, and the expansion of possibilities for world-creation.’ See Hayden, el-Ojeili, Globalisation and Utopia, p. 2.

176 See Mumford, ‘Utopia, The City and The Machine’, in Manuel (ed.), Utopias and Utopian Thought.

177 Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1975), p. 48.

178 Norman Geras, ‘Minimum Utopia: Ten Theses’, Socialist Register (2000), p. 3.

179 Valerie Fournier, ‘Utopianism and Grassroots Alternatives’, in Shostak (ed.), Viable Utopian Ideas, p. 187. See also Valerie Fournier, in M. Paker (ed.), Utopia and Organisation (London: Blackwell, 2002).

180 Ibid., pp. 182, 187.

181 Vincent Geohegan, ‘Utopia, Religion and Memory’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 12:3 (October 2007), p. 263.

182 David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), p. 195.

183 He elsewhere labels this as dialectical utopianism. Ibid., p. 182.

184 Ibid., p. 186.

185 Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, p. 181.

186 Ibid., p. 196.

187 Ibid., pp. 2, 7–8.

188 Ibid., pp. 178–80, 197.

189 Ibid., pp. 197–8.

190 Frank E. Manuel, ‘Introduction’, in F.E. Manuel (ed.), Utopias and Utopian Thought, p. xi, quoting Mucchielli, Le Mythe de la cite idéale (Paris: presses universitaires de France, 1961), pp. 7–8.

191 Søren Kierkegaard quoted in Edward Rothstein, ‘Utopia and Its Discontents’, in Rothstein (et al.)., Visions of Utopia, p. 14.

192 Frederick Engels, ‘Letter to Minna Kautsky’, in Marx and Engels on Literature and Art (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), p. 88.

193 Margaret Mead, ‘Towards More Vivid Utopias’, Science, 126 (1957), pp. 957–61.

194 See Ian Hall, ‘The Utopian International Society and its Enemies’, p. 19.

195 J.C. Davis, Utopia and the ideal society: A Study of English utopian writing, 1516–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 13.

196 Roger Paden, ‘Marx’s Critique of the Utopian Socialists’, Utopian Studies, 13:2 (Spring 2002), p. 83 and Harvey, Spaces of Hope, pp. 133–96.

197 Jameson, ‘World-reduction in Le Guin’, in Jameson Reader, p. 376.

198 Tillich, ‘Critique and Justification of Utopia’, in Manuel (ed.), Utopias and Utopian Thought,pp. 306–7.

199 See Maureen O’Hara, ‘Constructing Emancipatory Realities’, in W.T. Anderson (ed.), The Fontana Post-Modernism Reader (Hammersmith: Fontana Press, 1996), p. 151.

200 Mannheim, quoted in Rothstein, ‘Utopia and Its Discontents’, in Visions of Utopia, p. 14.

201 Manuel, ‘Introduction’, in Manuel (ed.), Utopias and Utopian Thought, p. xiv.

202 See Mumford, ‘Utopia, The City and The Machine’, in Ibid., p. 10.

203 Nicholson, ‘Realism and utopianism revisited’, p. 77.

204 See Axel Honneth, ‘The Possibility of a Disclosing Critique of Society’, in Disrespect, trans. by J. Farrell, S. Kattago (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), p. 50.

205 Hegel quoted in Mieczyslaw Maneli, ‘Three Concepts of Freedom: Kant – Hegel – Marx’, Interpretation, 7:1 (January, 1978), p. 28.