Utopia means “nowhere” so I guess its appropriate that our seminar on Erik Olin Wright’s Envisioning Real Utopias has been in the vaporware category for years. However, we’re finally ready to go live. We’ll be putting up a post every day or two for the next couple of weeks, then Erik will respond. Some of the posts will be fairly conventional reviews, others will take some particular point as a license to jump off in new directions. Enjoy and comment!
At the suggestion of a commenter “m”, here are some useful links
buy and read the book,
Envisioning Real Utopias
or read chapters here freely accessible here
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/ERU.htm
or read an article that summarizes many of the points, here
Click to access New%20Left%20Review%20paper.pdf
or listen to this talk that also summarizes a few points, starting at 54:00
http://videoarchive.asanet.org/presentations/2012ondemand_awards_presidential_address.html?plist=2012
Or this written version of the talk
Click to access Presidential%20address%20–%20uncorrected%20page%20proofs%20–%202012.pdf
{ 7 comments }
sanbikinoraion 03.16.13 at 2:38 pm
I have been looking forward to this for ages so congratulations on getting it out the door!
Hermenauta 03.16.13 at 3:07 pm
There´s no Kindle edition, eck.
JW Mason 03.16.13 at 3:08 pm
Hey, great. I’ve always felt that while these seminars get some fantastic contributions, they don’t have the impact they ought to when you get ten posts on the same topic in just a day or two. So I’m delighted you’ll be doing this one over a more extended period.
Patrick S. O'Donnell 03.16.13 at 5:02 pm
As a prelude to this delightful venture, let us not forget the necessity of unreal, irreal, or surreal utopias, that is, the invaluable role utopian thought and imagination plays in political imagination, thought and critique; the part played by utopian constructions in civic education; and what Santayana called the “immediate or aesthetic power” of such utopias, “their kinship to the spirit they enlighten and exercise.” On these kind of utopias (not unrelated to ‘real utopias’ in Wright’s sense), please see:
http://www.religiousleftlaw.com/2011/06/utopian-thought-imagination.html
and http://www.religiousleftlaw.com/2011/06/musings-on-utopia-historical-philosophical.html
engels 03.16.13 at 5:28 pm
What JW said.
Luis 03.18.13 at 2:41 am
By the way, for those just coming in and lamenting the lack of kindle edition, many chapters of the book are available on EOW’s website.
Luis 03.18.13 at 2:36 pm
Followup q: who are the writers in the seminar? Do you have anyone from one of his utopian experiments?
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