Utopia/Dystopia (eBook)

Conditions of Historical Possibility

Michael D. Gordin, Helen Tilley, Gyan Prakash (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2010
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4008-3495-2 (ISBN)

Infos

The concepts of utopia and dystopia have received much historical attention. Utopias have traditionally signified the ideal future: large-scale social, political, ethical, and religious spaces that have yet to be realized. Utopia/Dystopia offers a fresh approach to these ideas. Rather than locate utopias in grandiose programs of future totality, the book treats these concepts as historically grounded categories and examines how individuals and groups throughout time have interpreted utopian visions in their daily present, with an eye toward the future. From colonial and postcolonial Africa to pre-Marxist and Stalinist Eastern Europe, from the social life of fossil fuels to dreams of nuclear power, and from everyday politics in contemporary India to imagined architectures of postwar Britain, this interdisciplinary collection provides new understandings of the utopian/dystopian experience. The essays look at such issues as imaginary utopian perspectives leading to the 1856-57 Xhosa Cattle Killing in South Africa, the functioning racist utopia behind the Rhodesian independence movement, the utopia of the peaceful atom and its global dissemination in the mid-1950s, the possibilities for an everyday utopia in modern cities, and how the Stalinist purges of the 1930s served as an extension of the utopian/dystopian relationship. The contributors are Dipesh Chakrabarty, Igal Halfin, Fredric Jameson, John Krige, Timothy Mitchell, Aditya Nigam, David Pinder, Marci Shore, Jennifer Wenzel, and Luise White.

Autor

Michael D. Gordin is associate professor of history at Princeton University. Helen Tilley teaches history at Birkbeck College, University of London. Gyan Prakash is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Prince- ton University.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 23.8.2010
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Systeme
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: Ambivalence • Atoms for Peace • Bourgeoisie • British Empire • British Kaffraria • Cambridge University Press • Capitalism • Civilizing Mission • colonial India • Colonialism • commodification • Commodity • communism • Cosmopolitanism • Dada • Dalit • Decolonization • Dipesh Chakrabarty • Dystopia • Edmund Husserl • Ernst Bloch • Ethos • Everyday life • Fredric Jameson • Government of India • Guy Debord • Gyan Prakash • Hannah Arendt • Harvard University Press • Hayden White • hegemony • Historiography • Ideology • imperialism • India office • Individualism • industrialisation • International Atomic Energy Agency • Interrogation • Jane Jacobs • Jean Baudrillard • Late Capitalism • Le Corbusier • Lecture • Literacy • Literature • Manifesto • Maratha • Marci Shore • Marshall Plan • Martin Heidegger • Marxism • Mayawati • Missionary • modernism • Modernity • Multitude • narrative • nation state • nkvd • nongqawuse • Nuclear power • nuclear reactor • orality • Oxford University Press • Patriotism • Philosopher • Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche • Politician • Politics • Postmodernism • post-structuralism • Princeton University • Public sphere • Racism • Relativism • Research reactor • Rhodesia • Rhodesian Front • Royal Commission • Scientist • Situationist International • Slavery • Soviet Union • Stalinism • Subjectivity • Surrealism • Technology • The Other Hand • Thought experiment • Timothy Mitchell • Tiyo Soga • University of California Press • Uranium-235 • Utopia • V. • Voice of America • Writing • Xhosa people • Yale University Press
• ISBN-10: 1-4008-3495-3 / 1400834953
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4008-3495-2 / 9781400834952