Utopia Method Vision: The Use Value of Social Dreaming

by Tom Moylan (Editor), Raffaella Baccolini (Editor)

Informed by feminist, Marxist, ethnographic, and post-structuralist frameworks, Utopia Method Vision makes a unique contribution to international debates in cultural, literary, sociological, and political studies of utopian theory, texts, and practices.
The collection addresses the ways in which the contributors approach their study of the objects and practices of utopianism (understood as social anticipations and visions produced through texts and social experiments) and of how, in turn, those objects and practices have shaped their intellectual work in general and their research perspectives in particular. In so doing, the contributors develop a larger, self-critical look at the limits and potential of the entire paradigm by which utopianism is known, studied, critiqued, created, and received.

345 pages, Paperback

First published July 16, 2007

About the author

Thomas (Tom) Patrick Moylan is an American-Irish academic, literary and cultural critic, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Language, Literature, Communication and Culture at the University of Limerick. Moylan's academic interests are in utopian studies and critical theory, science fiction studies, cultural studies, American studies, and Irish studies.

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

In an excellent selection with texts by the most relevant scholars in Utopian Studies nowadays, this book should be available for every scholar looking to research Utopia and its variations in society, culture and literature. The authors link their personal academic trajectories with their political stances and the practical implications in their academic method. The language is clear and the authors approach common pitfalls around the subject, including the idea that Utopia is often, and mistakenly, related to perfection, or to unreasonable idealisms. As the authors say, Utopia is a necessity, but so is being critical of utopia, as well.