Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 22:53:44 +0000 From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere7.demon.co.uk> Subject: BHA: Concrete utopianism Hi all, Some spectacularly (so-o-o erudite) pessimistic musings on utopia by Jameson and Anderson in the last two New Left Reviews prompts me to post the following draft dictionary entry (proffered as a pick me up should you read the twin-stepping maestros; it might also serve as a gentle wake-up call to any contributor who might have repressed the deadline of July 31) (cross references in capitals, emphases italicized): *concrete utopianism* ‘consists in the exercise of constructing MODELS of alternative ways of living on the basis of some assumed set of resources, counterbalancing ACTUALISM and informing hope’ (DG 395). The concept is introduced in the course of elaborating the DIALECTIC OF FREEDOM, where it is a vital component of totalizing depth praxis (EMANCIPATORY AXIOLOGY), and it reverberates throughout Bhaskar’s later philosophy. Gramsci’s slogan is amended to read, ‘Concrete utopianism, not pessimism, of the intellect, optimism of the will’ (P 215). CONCRETE is intended in its positive meaning of well rounded and appropriate for the purposes in hand, and links the concept to the CONCRETE UNIVERSAL; if it is not concrete, utopianism is taken in a pejorative sense, as not being ‘naturalistically grounded in a fully four-planar analysis of human being’ (D 350) and so not satisfying principles of ACTIONABILITY and *prefigurationality*. Concrete *utopianism* is grounded in, among other things, a keen sense of the reality and ontological primacy of unactualized possibility -- ‘there is another world, but it is in this one’ (Eluard) --, and of the creative power of imagination, which plays a crucial role in constructing MODELS in all science, and in neo-Blochian hope; the later Bhaskar’s theory of the transcendentally real SELF stresses that in many areas of our lives we already act in ‘the way social utopians have believed we could act’, or, ‘SPIRITUALITY is a concrete reality, here and now’ (RM1,15-6). CR’s demonstration of the openness of the world and the insistence of the pulse of freedom leads it to reject the ENDIST postmodern post-utopian pessimism of writers like Jameson (2004, 46) who defend the ‘essential reasonableness’ of the view that the function of utopianism ‘lies not in helping us to imagine a better future but rather in demonstrating our utter incapacity to imagine such a future—our imprisonment in a non-utopian present without historicity or futurity—so as to reveal the ideological closure of the system in which we are somehow trapped and confined.’ As Eagleton avers (2000, 174), ‘the truly starry-eyed utopian ... is he who imagines that the future will be pretty much like the present.’ See also EUDAIMONIA, UNIVERSALIZABILITY Mervyn --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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