Okay, so maybe another introduction as well is to say a little bit something more specific

about where I'm coming from and what a project is coming from.

So as Marike very kindly said, I'm a political theorist and I'm interested in the question

of utopianism from the particular perspective of political theory.

And that project, that new interest of mine grew out of a finished project that I have

just actually come to an end with, namely this Marie Curie, Curie Integration Grant,

which has culminated in the publication of a book forthcoming next year, where I'm interested

in the role of the imagination for political theory, especially with regard to attempts

to conceptualize political violence.

And when I finished the book, not only one of the reviews, but myself, I realized that

a really important aspect of that question, what is the role of the imagination for political

theory relates to the manifold uses of utopias in political theory.

Now I was kind of then thrown in this very uncomfortable situation of either writing

another chapter and continuing a project, which I was slightly fed up with already,

or finishing that project and starting a new one.

And essentially I did exactly that.

I finished the book and try now to start a new project around utopianism.

Okay.

So I want to start the presentation with three quotes, the epitaphs to my paper, taken from

three contemporary authors of utopian literature.

The first is perhaps the most influential author of contemporary utopianism, Jules Le

Guin.

Let me read this to you for a moment.

I don't think we're ever going to get to utopia again by going forward, but only roundabout

or sideways.

Increasingly often in these increasingly hard times, I'm asked by people I respect and admire,

are you going to write books about the terrible injustice and misery of our world, or are

you going to write escapist and consolatory fantasies?

I'm offered the grand inquisitor's choice.

Will you choose freedom without happiness or happiness without freedom?

The only answer one can make, I think, is no.

Now the second epigraph of my paper is from one of Le Guin's students, we could say,

another Marxist utopian writer, Kim Stanley Robinson, who formulates a similar thought

when he writes, utopias don't speak to us trapped in this world as we are, must redefine

utopia.

It isn't the perfect end product of our wishes.

Define it so and it deserves the scorn of those who sneer when they hear the word.

No, utopia is the process of making a better world, the name for one path history can take,

a dynamic tumultuous agonizing process with no end, struggle forever.

And the final quote is from an even younger heir to Le Guin's view of utopia, I want to

say, namely the Marxist author of what he himself calls speculative weird fiction, China

Mirville, where he says, if an alternative to this world were inconceivable, how could

we change it?

But utopia has its limits.

Utopia can be toxic.

We need utopia, but to try to think utopia in this world without rage, without fury,

is an indulgence we can't afford.

In the face of what is done, we cannot think utopia without hate.

Even our ends of the world are too wiggish.

Here instead is to antinomian utopia, a hope that abjures the hope of those in power.