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Semester 1

Utopia (PLIT10161)

Subject

Politics

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed 4 Politics courses at grade B or above. We will only consider University/College level courses, and we cannot consider interdisciplinary courses or courses without sufficient Politics/Government/International Relations focus. **Please see Additional Restrictions below**

Course Summary

This course introduces students to various expressions of the utopian imagination. It will trace utopian thinking and acting across three interconnected domains: political theory (e.g., in debates around climate change); various art forms (e.g., in contemporary speculative fiction) and different social formations (e.g., in intentional communities and prefigurative practices). The overall goal is to work collaboratively toward a nuanced understanding of utopianism, as both urgently necessary and fraught with risks.

Course Description

Utopia is a controversial idea. On the one hand, the prospect of a better future seems necessary for all kinds of social change, from systemic revolutions to piecemeal reforms. On the other hand, history tells us that utopian visions can have deeply destructive effects, as the example of 20th Century totalitarianism demonstrates. Given the simultaneous importance and danger of utopian visions, this course aims to introduce students to the many ways in which the basic idea of utopia has been interpreted in political theory, in various art forms and in different social formations. The overall goal is therefore to work with the students toward a nuanced understanding of social dreaming, as both urgently necessary and fraught with risks. In public and much of academic discourse utopian thinking and acting is frequently derided as wishful thinking, as completely detached from the reality. The module will try to open up an alternative perspective according to which all forms of political change depend, on a basic level, on the wish for things to be otherwise. What utopias do, then, is fashion this yearning for transformation into - more or less radical - projects of collective empowerment. In the context of a conjuncture where fewer and fewer systemic alternatives seem to be available, we need critical interrogations of the status quo that point to a better future. The debate around climate change is only one example in which the desire for utopian visions, from technological "solutionism" to degrowth proposals, becomes patently obvious. The module will grapple with several such controversies to determine which utopian visions may help us deal with the current predicament - and which might lead us astray. **Content Outline: General introduction - Part 1: Utopia in social and political theory (seminars on the historical and contemporary debate around utopianism); Part 2: Utopia in various art forms (seminars on the ways in which writers, filmmakers and other artists have appropriated the idea of utopia); Part 3: Utopia across different social formations (seminars on political projects informed by the utopian imagination); Recap and discussion of assignment 2. **Student learning is envisaged to be maximally interactive. The course will therefore be taught in seminar form, with only a small lecture input on the organizer's part. Students are expected to present work and become engaged with both the substance of the course and with the core driver behind utopian experimentation: to find better ways of orienting ourselves in the world. In particular, the course will expose students to different learning materials, from academic texts to speculative fiction and political pamphlets. The idea is to enable students to train their critical eyes not only on scholarly papers, but also on novels, films and a variety of social experiments. This openness will be reflected in the assessment mode, whereby one essay should be on a topic for the students to choose freely.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 90%, Practical Exam 10%

Additional Restrictions

Unless you are nominated on a Politics exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in one Politics course each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. Enrolment in a second Politics course will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the September Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

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