Original scientific paper

Utopianism From Orientation To Agency. What Are We Intellectuals Under Post-Fordism To Do?

Darko Suvin

Abstract

The essay is divided into an introduction, »The Dark Now«, which argues the focus on the oriented agents able or failing to dynamize the utopian locus, and three parts. Part 1, »Living in Fantasyland (Dystopia, also Fake Utopia and Anti- utopia)«, takes Disneyland and its analyses by Marin and others as the paradigm for our lives in such imaginary but also real spaces; it defines Dystopia, as well as its subform of Anti-utopia. Part 2, »We Intellectuals in Post-Fordism«, deals with the thesis that our dystopian rulers have wiped out the barrier between »culture« and economically based politics, with what is Post-Fordism, and what is the situation of intellectuals between wage-labour and self-determination. Part 3, »The Bifurcations and the Alliances« presents some suggestions about our oppositional interests in a capitalism engaged in large scale structural declassing of intellectual work. The con- clusion is that there is no way out of dystopia except as orientation to utopia and viceversa: »And if you think this is utopian, please think why is it such« (Brecht).

Keywords

utopism; post-fordism; intellectualism; dystopia; anti-intellectualism

Hrčak ID:

202160

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/202160

Publication date:

1.9.2005.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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