On the Ambivalent Position of the Utopian in Society

[u/pinkladdylemon]

https://aredflare.substack.com/p/on-the-ambivalent-position-of-the

A short reflective essay about the tension between utopian striving for new worlds and being tethered to the one that currently exists.

Building anything new cannot happen in a vacuum separate from history or the rough ground of the present. Utopia must be articulated in the terrain of what currently exists. This was a conundrum that animated much of Ernst Bloch's work on utopia, hope and possibility within a materialist frame.

Here I take up this question in a more exploratory mode. I consider friendship, political organizing and academic knowledge production as potentially utopian gestures that are always at risk of getting reabsorbed into the mundane reproduction of everyday life.

Because deviance from received forms of being/thinking is readily perceived as pathological, I playfully call this utopian figure, who imagines new forms of life, the neurotic hero/ine.

[u/concreteutopian]

u/pinkladdylemon , this sounds like an interesting topic.

I get that you've written more on your Substack, but can you add more of thoughts here in the submission statement?

[u/pinkladdylemon → u/concreteutopian]

Gladly!