THE START DATE OF THIS CLASS HAS BEEN POSTPONED. MORE UPDATES TOO COME
ISE co-founder Dan Chodorkoff wrote that “Without a vision of the society we desire, it will be impossible to ever achieve it.” At least since Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), utopian literature has offered numerous visions of alternative societies. In this course, we will read three works of utopian literature that exemplify the genre: Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020), and Eman Abdelhadi and M. E. O’Brien’s Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 (2022). Throughout, we will ask ourselves: what can utopian literature do for us right now, when many of us feel submerged in an immobilizing fatalism?
Paulo Freire and Mark Fisher denounced capitalist ideology for promoting a fatalistic view that there is no alternative. More recently, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor have argued that the “end times fascism” we are up against “is a darkly festive fatalism” for those who find it easier to celebrate destruction than imagine a free future. All these thinkers suggest that we urgently need fight against this kind of fatalism. Utopian literature can play a vital role in this fight. As Klein and Taylor write, we need to “counter their apocalyptic narratives with a far better story about how to survive the hard times ahead without leaving anyone behind. A story capable of draining end times fascism of its gothic power and galvanizing a movement ready to put it all on the line for our collective survival.”
How do the utopian novels in this course counter the endless apocalyptic narratives that reinforce the fatalistic sense that “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,” as Fredric Jameson famously put it? More broadly, how can utopian literature help us survive our bleak times in collective, revolutionary ways?
Come read some awesome works of utopian fiction with the ISE! No prior knowledge of social ecology required.
This course is open to all. As with all ISE courses, no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Apply for a scholarship to take Utopian Literature at a free or reduced rate here.
