Utopia Beyond Capitalism in Contemporary Literature

Utopia Beyond Capitalism in Contemporary Literature PDF Author: Raphael Kabo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135028856X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book

Book Description
Featuring readings of contemporary utopian poetry and fiction from authors such as Juliana Spahr, Mohsin Hamid, Bong Joon-ho, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lidia Yukavitch, and Cory Doctorow, this book investigates the commons - a form of organisation based on collectivity, communalism and sharing - as a type of transition between capitalist precarity and crisis and anti-capitalist futures. Each of the texts under examination was written in opposition to a particular crisis of the capitalist present - inequality, political representation, mobility, and climate change - and develops a particular mode of utopian 'commoning'. Through its examination of these writers, crises and texts, this book reaffirms the use of utopianism as a tool for generating and representing alternative futures for a world in the midst of ongoing planetary crisis.

Utopia Beyond Capitalism in Contemporary Literature

Utopia Beyond Capitalism in Contemporary Literature PDF Author: Raphael Kabo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135028856X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book

Book Description
Featuring readings of contemporary utopian poetry and fiction from authors such as Juliana Spahr, Mohsin Hamid, Bong Joon-ho, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lidia Yukavitch, and Cory Doctorow, this book investigates the commons - a form of organisation based on collectivity, communalism and sharing - as a type of transition between capitalist precarity and crisis and anti-capitalist futures. Each of the texts under examination was written in opposition to a particular crisis of the capitalist present - inequality, political representation, mobility, and climate change - and develops a particular mode of utopian 'commoning'. Through its examination of these writers, crises and texts, this book reaffirms the use of utopianism as a tool for generating and representing alternative futures for a world in the midst of ongoing planetary crisis.

A World Beyond Work?

A World Beyond Work? PDF Author: Ana Cecilia Dinerstein
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1787691438
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book

Book Description
This book mounts a forceful critique of fashionable thinking on the possibility of a post-work, post-capitalist society achieved through automation, a basic income and the reduction of working hours to zero, suggesting this popular utopia is nothing of the sort.

Utopian Horizons

Utopian Horizons PDF Author: Zsolt Cziganyik
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633862434
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book

Book Description
The 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia has directed attention toward the importance of utopianism. This book investigates the possibilities of cooperation between the humanities and the social sciences in the analysis of 20th century and contemporary utopian phenomena. The papers deal with major problems of interpreting utopias, the relationship of utopia and ideology, and the highly problematic issue as to whether utopia necessarily leads to dystopia. Besides reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary utopian investigations, the eleven essays effectively represent the constructive attitudes of utopian thought, a feature that not only defines late 20th- and 21st-century utopianism, but is one of the primary reasons behind the rising importance of the topic. The volume’s originality and value lies not only in the innovative theoretical approaches proposed, but also in the practical application of the concept of utopia to a variety of phenomena which have been neglected in the utopian studies paradigm, especially to the rarely discussed Central European texts and ideologies.

Utopia, Equity and Ideology in Urban Texts

Utopia, Equity and Ideology in Urban Texts PDF Author: Michael G. Kelly
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303125855X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book

Book Description
Utopia, Equity and Ideology in Urban Texts: Fair and Unfair Cities explores the complex interrelations of three key critical topics across a diverse range of urban writing. Interrogating the links and tensions between aesthetic and political priorities in the representation and imagining of urban life, the volume engages with work from a wide variety of linguistic and cultural origins and across a range of textual practices having the urban phenomenon as a common framing concern. Individual contributions discussing genre and literary fiction, poetic writing, documentary and essayistic texts, planning manifestos and municipal communications materials serve to demonstrate that the nuanced treatments of urban experience and potential which may be gleaned from across this textual spectrum act as a pragmatic corrective to purely conceptual approaches. As such, the volume consolidates the emerging dialogue between the fields of utopian studies and literary urban studies, understanding these as complementary approaches to the reading of the city and its textual prolongations.

Envisioning Real Utopias

Envisioning Real Utopias PDF Author: Erik Olin Wright
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789601452
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 536

Get Book

Book Description
Rising inequality of income and power, along with recent convulsions in the finance sector, have made the search for alternatives to unbridled capitalism more urgent than ever. Yet few are attempting this task-most analysts argue that any attempt to rethink our social and economic relations is utopian. Erik Olin Wright's major new work is a comprehensive assault on the quietism of contemporary social theory. A systematic reconstruction of the core values and feasible goals for Left theorists and political actors, Envisioning Real Utopias lays the foundations for a set of concrete, emancipatory alternatives to the capitalist system. Characteristically rigorous and engaging, this will become a landmark of social thought for the twenty-first century.

Contemporary Capitalism, Crisis, and the Politics of Fiction

Contemporary Capitalism, Crisis, and the Politics of Fiction PDF Author: Roberto del Valle Alcala
Publisher: Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature
ISBN: 9780367426491
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Get Book

Book Description
Contemporary Capitalism, Crisis, and the Politics of Fiction: Literature Beyond Fordism proposes a fresh approach to contemporary fictional engagements with the idea of crisis in capitalism and its various social and economic manifestations. The book investigates how late-twentieth and twenty-first-century Anglophone fiction has imagined, interpreted, and in most cases resisted, the collapse of the socio-economic structures built after the Second World War and their replacement with a presumably immaterial order of finance-led economic development. Through a series of detailed readings of the words of authors Martin Amis, Hari Kunzru, Don DeLillo, Zia Haider Rahman, John Lanchester, Paul Murray and Zadie Smith among others, this study sheds light on the embattled and decidedly unstable nature of contemporary capitalism.

The Utopian Novel in America, 1886–1896

The Utopian Novel in America, 1886–1896 PDF Author: Jean Pfaelzer
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822974428
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book

Book Description
In the late 1800s, Americans flocked to cities, immigration, slums, and unemployment burgeoned, and America's role in foreign affairs grew. This period also spawned a number of fictional glimpses into the future. After the publication of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward in 1888, there was an outpouring of utopian fantasy, many of which promoted socialism, while others presented refined versions of capitalism. Jean Pfaelzer's study traces the impact of the utopian novel and the narrative structures of these sentimental romances. She discusses progressive, pastoral, feminist, and apocalyptic utopias, as well as the genre's parodic counterpart, the dystopia.

Utopia or Bust

Utopia or Bust PDF Author: Benjamin Kunkel
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781683271
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book

Book Description
After the financial crash and the great recession, the media rediscovered Karl Marx, socialist theory, and the very idea that capitalism can be questioned. But in spite of the publicity, the main paths of contemporary critical thought have gone unexplored outside of the academy. Benjamin Kunkel’s Utopia or Bust leads readers – whether politically committed or simply curious – through the most important critical theory today. Written with the wit and verve of Kunkel’s best-selling novel, Indecision, this introduction to contemporary Leftist thinkers engages with the revolutionary philosophy of Slavoj Žižek, the economic analyses of David Graeber and David Harvey, and the cultural diagnoses of Fredric Jameson. Discussing the ongoing crisis of capitalism in light of ideas of full employment, debt forgiveness, and “fictitious capital,” Utopia or Bust is a tour through the world of Marxist thought and an examination of the basis of Western society today.

Four Futures

Four Futures PDF Author: Peter Frase
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781688141
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 134

Get Book

Book Description
An exploration of the utopias and dystopias that could develop from present society Peter Frase argues that increasing automation and a growing scarcity of resources, thanks to climate change, will bring it all tumbling down. In Four Futures, Frase imagines how this post-capitalist world might look, deploying the tools of both social science and speculative fiction to explore what communism, rentism and extermininsm might actually entail. Could the current rise of the real-life robocops usher in a world that resembles Ender's Game? And sure, communism will bring an end to material scarcities and inequalities of wealth—but there's no guarantee that social hierarchies, governed by an economy of "likes," wouldn't rise to take their place. A whirlwind tour through science fiction, social theory and the new technologies are already shaping our lives, Four Futures is a balance sheet of the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful, and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if those movements fail.

Utopia in the Age of Globalization

Utopia in the Age of Globalization PDF Author: Robert T. Tally Jr.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230391907
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book

Book Description
The idea of "Utopia" has made a comeback in the age of globalization, and the bewildering technological shifts and economic uncertainties of the present era call for novel forms of utopia. Tally argues that a new form of utopian discourse is needed for understanding, and moving beyond, the current world system.