When: Friday, 24 May 2024, 18:00
Where: Konferenzraum, Department for Political Science, NIG, 2nd floor, Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna
Speaker: Mathias Thaler (University of Edinburgh)
Moderation: Matthias Flatscher (Department of Political Science, University of Vienna)
Abstract
Visions of utopia – some hopeful, others fearful – have become increasingly prevalent in recent times. This book examines expressions of the utopian imagination with a focus on the pressing challenge of how to inhabit a climate-changed world. Forms of social dreaming are tracked across two domains: political theory and speculative fiction. The analysis aims to both uncover the key utopian and dystopian tendencies in contemporary debates around the Anthropocene; as well as to develop a political theory of radical transformation that avoids not only debilitating fatalism but also wishful thinking. No Other Planet juxtaposes theoretical interventions, from Bruno Latour to the members of the Dark Mountain collective, with fantasy and science fiction texts by N. K. Jemisin, Kim Stanley Robinson and Margaret Atwood, debating viable futures for a world that will look and feel very different from the one we live in right now.
