Topos in Utopia: A peregrination to early modern utopianism’s space

Topos in Utopia: A peregrination to early modern utopianism’s space PDF Author: Sotirios Triantafyllos
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1648892868
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
'Topos in Utopia' examines early modern literary utopias' and intentional communities' social and cultural conception of space. Starting from Thomas More's seminal work, published in 1516, and covering a period of three centuries until the emergence of Enlightenment's euchronia, this work provides a thorough yet concise examination of the way space was imagined and utilised in the early modern visions of a better society. Dealing with an aspect usually ignored by the scholars of early modern utopianism, this book asks us to consider if utopias' imaginary lands are based not only on abstract ideas but also on concrete spaces. Shedding new light on a period where reformation zeal, humanism's optimism, colonialism's greed and a proto-scientific discourse were combined to produce a series of alternative social and political paradigms, this work transports us from the shores of America to the search for the Terra Australis Incognita and the desire to find a new and better world for us.

Topos in Utopia: A peregrination to early modern utopianism’s space

Topos in Utopia: A peregrination to early modern utopianism’s space PDF Author: Sotirios Triantafyllos
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1648892868
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
'Topos in Utopia' examines early modern literary utopias' and intentional communities' social and cultural conception of space. Starting from Thomas More's seminal work, published in 1516, and covering a period of three centuries until the emergence of Enlightenment's euchronia, this work provides a thorough yet concise examination of the way space was imagined and utilised in the early modern visions of a better society. Dealing with an aspect usually ignored by the scholars of early modern utopianism, this book asks us to consider if utopias' imaginary lands are based not only on abstract ideas but also on concrete spaces. Shedding new light on a period where reformation zeal, humanism's optimism, colonialism's greed and a proto-scientific discourse were combined to produce a series of alternative social and political paradigms, this work transports us from the shores of America to the search for the Terra Australis Incognita and the desire to find a new and better world for us.

Utopia

Utopia PDF Author: Thomas More
Publisher: Good Press
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.

Topos in Utopia

Topos in Utopia PDF Author: Sotirios Triantafyllos
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 9781648892691
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
'Topos in Utopia' examines early modern literary utopias' and intentional communities' social and cultural conception of space. Starting from Thomas More's seminal work, published in 1516, and covering a period of three centuries until the emergence of Enlightenment's euchronia, this work provides a thorough yet concise examination of the way space was imagined and utilised in the early modern visions of a better society. Dealing with an aspect usually ignored by the scholars of early modern utopianism, this book asks us to consider if utopias' imaginary lands are based not only on abstract ideas but also on concrete spaces. Shedding new light on a period where reformation zeal, humanism's optimism, colonialism's greed and a proto-scientific discourse were combined to produce a series of alternative social and political paradigms, this work transports us from the shores of America to the search for the Terra Australis Incognita and the desire to find a new and better world for us.

Rethinking Utopia

Rethinking Utopia PDF Author: David M. Bell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317486706
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Over five hundred years since it was named, utopia remains a vital concept for understanding and challenging the world(s) we inhabit, even in – or rather because of – the condition of ‘post-utopianism’ that supposedly permeates them. In Rethinking Utopia David M. Bell offers a diagnosis of the present through the lens of utopia and then, by rethinking the concept through engagement with utopian studies, a variety of ‘radical’ theories and the need for decolonizing praxis, shows how utopianism might work within, against and beyond that which exists in order to provide us with hope for a better future. He proposes paying a ‘subversive fidelity’ to utopia, in which its three constituent terms: ‘good’ (eu), ‘place’ (topos), and ‘no’ (ou) are rethought to assert the importance of immanent, affective relations. The volume engages with a variety of practices and forms to articulate such a utopianism, including popular education/critical pedagogy; musical improvisation; and utopian literature. The problems as well as the possibilities of this utopianism are explored, although the problems are often revealed to be possibilities, provided they are subject to material challenge. Rethinking Utopia offers a way of thinking about (and perhaps realising) utopia that helps overcome some of the binary oppositions structuring much thinking about the topic. It allows utopia to be thought in terms of place and process; affirmation and negation; and the real and the not-yet. It engages with the spatial and affective turns in the social sciences without ever uncritically being subsumed by them; and seeks to make connections to indigenous cosmologies. It is a cautious, careful, critical work punctuated by both pessimism and hope; and a refusal to accept the finality of this or any world.

Political Uses of Utopia

Political Uses of Utopia PDF Author: S. D. Chrostowska
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231544316
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
Utopia has long been banished from political theory, framed as an impossible—and possibly dangerous—political ideal, a flawed social blueprint, or a thought experiment without any practical import. Even the "realistic utopias" of liberal theory strike many as wishful thinking. Can politics think utopia otherwise? Can utopian thinking contribute to the renewal of politics? In Political Uses of Utopia, an international cast of leading and emerging theorists agree that the uses of utopia for politics are multiple and nuanced and lie somewhere between—or, better yet, beyond—the mainstream caution against it and the conviction that another, better world ought to be possible. Representing a range of perspectives on the grand tradition of Western utopianism, which extends back half a millennium and perhaps as far as Plato, these essays are united in their interest in the relevance of utopianism to specific historical and contemporary political contexts. Featuring contributions from Miguel Abensour, Étienne Balibar, Raymond Geuss, and Jacques Rancière, among others, Political Uses of Utopia reopens the question of whether and how utopianism can inform political thinking and action today.

Utopian Discourses Across Cultures

Utopian Discourses Across Cultures PDF Author: Miriam Bait
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Communication
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description


Utopia from Thomas More to Walter Benjamin

Utopia from Thomas More to Walter Benjamin PDF Author: Miguel Abensour
Publisher: Univocal Publishing
ISBN: 9781945414008
Category : Utopian fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Utopia poses a question. Not simply in the sense of a problem to be resolved and at the same time eliminated . . . but in the sense that, within the economy of the human condition, utopia, the aim of social alterity--of all social otherness--is ceaselessly being reborn, coming back to life despite all the blows rained down upon it, as if human resistance had taken up residence within it." For the French philosopher Miguel Abensour, the fictional genre of utopia has provided thinkers and artists a fertile ground to explore for the past 500 years, both as a way to imagine new emancipatory practices of shared existence and as a tyrannical imposition of power. Here, Abensour's project is to examine the idea of utopia in two different but powerful moments in its trajectory: first, utopia's beginning, when Thomas More sought a path for justice through a world in transformation, and second, when utopia faced its greatest danger, the moment that Walter Benjamin called "catastrophe."

European Identities in Discourse

European Identities in Discourse PDF Author: Franco Zappettini
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350042994
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Based on empirical research, this book closely analyses how European identities are discursively produced. It focuses on discourse from members of a civic association active in promoting democracy and attempting participation in the transnational public sphere. Unlike previous books that have addressed the question of European identity from top-down stances or through methodological nationalism, this book engages with the multifaceted concept of transnationalism as a key to the negotiation of 'glocal' identities. Applying a discourse historical approach (DHA) through a transnational reading, it shows how grassroots actors/speakers construct their different cultural and political affiliations as both world and European citizens. They negotiate institutional identities and historical discourses of nationhood through new forms of mobility, cultural diversity and the imagination of Europe as a proxy for a cosmopolitan civil society. These discourses are ever more important in a fractured and polarised Europe falling prey to contrary discourses of nationhood and ethnic solidarity. Highlighting how transnational narratives of solidarity and the de-territorialisation of civic participation can impact on the (re)imagination of the European community beyond tropes like 'Fortress Europe' or intragovernmental politics, this important book shows how identification processes must be read through historical and global as well as localised contexts.

Ecotopia 2121

Ecotopia 2121 PDF Author: Alan Marshall
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1628726148
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 795

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Book Description
A 2016 Green Book Festival "Future Forecasts" Winner A stunningly original, lushly illustrated vision for a Green Utopia, published on the 500th anniversary of the original Big Idea. Five hundred years ago a powerful new word was unleashed upon the world when Thomas More published his book Utopia, about an island paradise far away from his troubled land. It was an instant hit, and the literati across Europe couldn't get enough of its blend of social fantasy with a deep desire for a better world. Five hundred years later, Ecotopia 2121 once again harnesses the power of the utopian imagination to confront our current problems, among them climate change, and offer a radical, alternative vision for the future of our troubled planet. Depicting one hundred cities around the globe—from New York to San Francisco, London, Tokyo, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Beijing, Vienna, Singapore, Cape Town, Abu Dhabi, and Mumbai—Alan Marshall imagines how each may survive and prosper. A striking, full-color scenario painting illustrates each city. The chapters tell how each community has found either a social or technological innovation to solve today's crises. Fifteen American cities are covered. Around the world, urban planners like to tailor scenarios for the year 2020, to take advantage of the metaphor of 20-20 vision. In Ecotopia 2121, the vision may be fuzzy, but its sharp insights, captivating illustrations, and playful storytelling will keep readers coming back again and again.

Educated Fear and Educated Hope

Educated Fear and Educated Hope PDF Author: Marianna Papastephanou
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9087909764
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Beyond dominant tendencies to contrast utopia and ideology, the book reconceptualizes utopia and approaches it along with the notion of dystopia. The interplay of utopia and dystopia is examined, some major anti-utopian arguments are refuted and a new utopianism emerges, one that radicalizes critique and makes engagement with present global realities more pressing. Educated fear, i.e., a critical awareness of dystopian realities, and educated hope, i.e., a critical awareness of the possibility of human perfectibility cohabit a theoretical space that breaks with utopianist modern theoretical underpinnings and becomes historically and spatially more inclusive, while retaining the motivational and justificatory force of ethical imagery. If education is not just an institution of unreflective socialization, if it is about futurity, it has to renegotiate utopian thought. As the interest in utopia is being renewed both in general philosophy and philosophy of education and as dystopia is still neglected, a book that re-defines utopianism and explores for the first time the role of dystopia in radicalizing educational demands for systemic change is indispensable for Utopian Studies, Philosophy and Philosophy of Education academics and students alike. The title of the book is first transliterated into Utopia, a typeface in which Brazilian artists Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain replace capital letters with the iconic buildings of Brazil ́s foremost modernist architect, Oscar Niemeyer, whilst lower-case letters are equated with urban interferences such as fences, skateboarders, CCTV cameras, electricity cables, in short, all those elements that escaped the utopian dream of the architect. To me, it bears associations of the philosophical notion of counterfactuality and of Adorno ́s notion of mimesis. The title is then transliterated into Helvetica Concentrated (a digital typeface that concentrates the surface of Helvetica characters in dots which has been created by Detanico and Lain in collaboration with Jiri Skala). The term Helvetica bears the associations of a modernist utopia of success, performativity, prosperity, predictability, rational planning and uniformity.