The Return of the Repressed

Abstract

The repression of active engagement with alternative possible futures has given way in recent decades to wider consideration of utopia in sociology and social and political theory. These discussions have, however, been ambiguous. They feature repeated demands for ‘realistic utopias’. Some overtly positive discussions of utopia privilege particular models of the real and place severe limits on utopia’s alterity in ways that are anti-utopian in effect. Some writers who resist or oppose the terminology of utopia are more supportive of radical social transformation and affirmative of the potential role of the social imaginary. In most cases the institutional specificity and the holism implied by the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society are lacking. Science is still invoked as a brake on utopian thinking. There has also, of course, been a deluge of writing about the environmental crisis which has a future orientation and implicit utopian as well as dystopian themes. Some theoretical writing about the future, while not directly addressing utopia, helps to demonstrate the usefulness of taking a standpoint outside actually existing conditions.