The Ends of Utopian Thinking in Critical Theory

Nina Rismal is a researcher, organiser and founder interested in social transformation and future thinking. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge and worked for mission-driven research institutes in the US and Germany. In 2022 she co-founded Possible Worlds, a startup that integrates interdisciplinary insights into the development of AI.

Acknowledgements

Note on Translations


Introduction

 1 The Blow to Utopia from the Left

 2 The Road Not Taken

 3 (Political) Utopian Thinking

 4 Critical Theory

 5 A New Perspective on Contemporary Critical Theory


1 Marx’s Two Utopian Paradoxes

 1 The Deployment of the Label ‘Utopian’ and Its Consequences

 2 Marx’s Vision of the Communist Society

 3 Utopia Cannot Be Envisaged

 4 Imaginary vs. Rational Ideas

 5 Utopian Visions Are Insignificant


2 The Origins of Adorno’s Utopieverbot

 1 Adorno and Marxist Theory in the Early Twentieth Century

 2 What Is the Utopieverbot?

 3 From the Bilderverbot to the Utopieverbot

 4 Marx’s Influence on the Utopieverbot

 5 The Removal of Utopia into the Messianic Future

 6 Culture Industry and Utopian Consciousness

 7 The Problem with Identity Thinking


3 Negative Utopia?

 1 Positive Utopia – a Point of Departure for Negative Thinking

 2 Does Determinate Negation Make Sense?

 3 The Emergence of the Positive in Constellations

 4 Something Is Missing


4 Bloch’s Rejection of the Utopieverbot

 1 Bloch’s Life and Times

 2 Utopia as the ‘Not-Yet’

 3 The Warm and Cold Streams of Marxism

 4 Bloch’s Utopian Society: ‘Heimat’

 5 The Utopian Core: ‘Invariant of Direction’

 6 Traces Experiences and Expressions of Utopia

 7 Concrete Utopian Thinking


5 An Ontology of Processual Utopia

 1 The Prefigurations of Utopia in the ‘Not-Yet-Conscious’

 2 Incompleteness of the World as the ‘Not-Yet-Become’

 3 The Necessity of Utopian Thinking

 4 Processual Utopia and Processual Utopian Thinking


Conclusion


Bibliography

Index