Ernst Bloch’s Enlightened View of the Fairy Tale and Utopian Longing

Abstract

Ernst Bloch’s Enlightened View of the Fairy Tale and Utopian Longing—not long after Bloch escaped the dystopian realm of East Germany in 1961, he held a fascinating radio discussion with the astute critical theorist Theodor Adorno about the contradictions of utopian longing. Their conversation was intriguing because, at times, Adorno sounded more like a utopian thinker than Bloch. To be sure, Adorno questioned the concept of utopia in his usual incisive manner, but he seemed to share Bloch’s faith in utopia and to be very disillusioned about genuine possibilities for the realization of utopian longings, while Bloch continued to more hopeful about the future of utopia, despite the fact that his own hope had been disappointed by East Germany and the Soviet bloc.