Placing Utopia: Some Classical Images

Abstract

Except for a small band of enthusiasts, utopia has typically got bad press later into the twentieth century. This is a paradoxical situation, for utopia at the same time is a kind of ontological indicator of modernity. Moderns dream, like their predecessors, but they also know that such dreams can be materialized, and go awfully wrong, turning into twentieth-century nightmares. Utopia, in short, is ubiquitous, even when it is formally unpopular. We cannot stop dreaming, or anticipating.