“Utopian thinking demands a revision of Gramsci's famous slogan, which might now run: cynicism of the intellect, utopianism of the will. A generalized cynicism is indeed one way of characterizing the political transparency of contemporary or postmodern society, in which “they know what they're doing but they do it anyway," in which everyone is a Marxist and understands the dynamics and the depredations of capitalism without feeling it possible to do anything about them.” — Fredric Jameson, American Utopia (2016, 22)

Speaking of Utopia nowadays seems at best naive and at worst totalitarian, over thirty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and in a political climate where the ambition to (technologically) improve humankind has become an object of the race between the richest. It is said that we have left neoliberalism behind us, entering a new era marked by the worldwide turn to authoritarianism. Thinking and dreaming of another system, a world to come, the one worth fighting for seems no more than an anachronism, a messianic indulgence. And yet, techno-oligarchs from Silicon Valley announce urbi et orbi that AI, soon to be AGI, is the technological achievement that will finally lead us to Utopia.

Why speak of Utopia now?
This reading group springs from taking seriously one of Fredric Jameson’s most persistent provocations: that any critique of capitalism worthy of its name must first confront our fear of Utopia. Thus we believe that dark times invite sustained engagement with the concept, rather than a retreat from it. Across seven sessions, we will track the Utopian in the thought of Jameson as it is routed through political desire, pleasure, and form, and as it is constrained in what we have come to call ‘postmodern’. We will explore the relationship between dystopia and Utopia; the question of whether Utopia can be a narrative or only a mechanism; and whether the collapse of the Eastern Bloc put an end to Utopian thinking, or whether it remains ingrained in the least obvious narratives of late capitalism. That is to ask: how can a concept that at first provokes an ironic smirk help us make sense of the present?

One meeting a month, usually on the first Wednesday of the month. To sign up, reach out to the organizers:
Nimaye Nambiar (nimaye.nambiar@student.uva.nl), Enrico Maria Gennari (enrico.gennari@student.uva.nl), Ola Wesołowska (aleksandra.wesolowska@student.uva.nl)
This reading group will be supervised by Sudeep Dasgupta and Abe Geil.

Reading Schedule

READING SESSION 1—DESIRE (October 7th; 15:00 - 18:00), BG2 room 012
● Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, “Preface” (5 pages)
● Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, “Conclusion: The Dialectic of Utopia and Ideology” (271 - 291; 20 pages)
● Fredric Jameson, “Pleasure: A Political Issue” (1-14; 14 pages)
● Fredric Jameson, “An American Utopia” (54–67; 14 pages) in An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army, ed. Slavoj Žižek

READING SESSION 2—THE SUBJECT (November 4th; 15:00 - 18:00),  OMHP C 2.23
● Fredric Jameson, “Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan: Marxism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, and the Problem of the Subject” (338 - 396; 58 pages)

READING SESSION THREE—UTOPIA AS A FORM (December 2nd; 15:00 - 18:00), PCH, room 5.37
● Archaeologies of the Future, Part One, Introduction “Utopia Now” + chs. 1–5: Varieties of the Utopian, The Utopian Enclave, Morus: The Generic Window, Utopian Science versus Utopian Ideology, The Great Schism (xi - xvi; 1 - 71; 76 pages)

READING SESSION FOUR—WISH, TIME, AND THE UNKNOWN (January 14th; 15:00 - 18:00), OMHP, room C 105
● Archaeologies of the Future, Part One, chs. 6–9: How to Fulfill a Wish, The Barrier of Time, The Unknowability Thesis, The Alien Body (72 - 142; 70 pages)

READING SESSION FIVE—THE FUTURE AS DISRUPTION (February 3rd; 15:00 - 18:00)
● Archaeologies of the Future, Part One, chs. 10–13: Utopia and its Antinomies, Synthesis, Irony, Neutralization and the Moment of Truth, Journey into Fear, The Future as Disruption (142 - 235; 93 pages)

READING SESSION SIX—THE CRISIS OF THE UTOPIAN (March 3rd; 15:00 - 18:00)
● The Seeds of Time, “The Antinomies of Postmodernity” (1-72; 72 pages)
● The Seeds of Time, “The Constraints of Postmodernism” (129 - 206; 77 pages)

READING SESSION SEVEN—THE DESIRE CALLED MARX (April 7th; 15:00 - 18:00)
● Jean-François Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, “The Desire Called Marx” (95-154; 59 pages)