By Bernard E. Harcourt
“What changes later is that it comes out of space into time, with the later utopians of the 18th, especially the 19thcentury, Fourier and Owen and Saint-Simon and Cabet, who transfer utopia into the future. It is a transformation of the topos [of utopia] from space into time.”
— Ernst Bloch, in conversation with Theodor Adorno, Radio Debate, Südwestrundfunk, 1964.[1]
At our last seminar Utopia 10/13 on “The Frankfurt School, Critical Theory, and Utopia” at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, we discussed the transformation of the concept of utopia from a geographic/spatial concept to a temporal/historical concept during the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, with specific reference to Ernst Bloch’s analysis of the modern temporality of utopian thinking. Grounded as we were in Critical Theory—which itself grew out of and (at least for the first generation of the Frankfurt School) was inextricably linked to a specific philosophy of history—our discussion focused more on the relation between utopian thinking and dialectical theories of history than on the more basic relationship between utopian thinking and the dimension of time/history tout court. Both of these questions have accompanied us throughout this Utopia 13/13 series. In this seminar, with Laëtitia Riss’s article “Utopier le présent” (in English here, “To Utopize the Present”), we address head on the latter question, namely the more basic question of the very temporal nature of modern understandings of utopia.
In a detailed analysis that spans seven centuries and takes us from Thomas More to contemporary thinkers such as Fredric Jameson, Miguel Abensour, Jean-Paul Engélibert and current forms of apocalyptic fiction, Laëtitia Riss recounts the centuries-long history of writing on utopia and the transformation of its relationship to the past, the present, and the future. Through a meticulous analysis, Riss demonstrates how we moderns are still, today, captured by a historicist understanding of utopia. “This historicist understanding of utopia is still ours today,” Riss declares.[2]
This presents a problem, Riss argues, given the tendency for history to overshadow utopian thinking, and to subordinate it, especially during times of apocalyptic thinking such as ours—with the global climate crisis promising the end of history. Riss details the many ways in which history typically eclipses utopia: in some cases (such as Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s L’An 2440, rêve s’il en fut jamais from 1771), history serves as the ineluctable agent that brings about a promised future without the need for any human intervention; in other cases (such as Marx and Engels’ Utopian Socialism and Scientific Socialism from 1880, and at least according to our last seminar with Rahel Jaeggi and Martin Saar, certain strands of Critical Theory), the promise of historical materialism undermines utopian thought, resulting in an even worse outcome. As Riss writes, “The absence of utopia is even more perilous than its prudent dismissal, because it erases not the future but the places from which it is possible right now for a transforming critique to emerge.”[3]
The modern historicization of utopia represents, for Riss, a pernicious problem. It inverses the proper relation to history by focusing us on the future, rather than on our present. It also masks the contingent nature of our present and thereby erodes our will to transform society.
By contrast, Laëtitia Riss proposes to anchor utopian thought in the present. That alone, she argues, will allow utopian thought to “participate in making the present sensitive to its historicity, revealing it to be the result of a contingent social practice, and in making it, consequently, available as a place for political intervention.”[4] This is precisely what Riss calls “to utopize the present”—and is what she calls for in her essay.
The task, then, is to liberate utopian thought from the grip of the future, in order to focus us back on transforming the present; or, in Riss’s words, to pursue “the dream of a present awakened to itself so that History finds a human face again, freed from the weight of destiny.”[5]
Although presented as an alternative, the path forward that Riss proposes feels, at times, adjacent to different earlier interventions. The notion of historicizing the present in order to make it a site of intervention bears a resemblance to the satirical element of Thomas More’s Utopia, the aspect of his social critique of the present. The notion of historical contingency is, naturally, at odds with the tradition of Marx and Engels; however, Riss shares with them an aversion to any possible complacency that may result from a future-oriented utopian socialism. Like Rahel Jaeggi at our last seminar, Riss does not believe in the possible end of contradictions; as she writes, “utopia cannot be considered as an end, but only as a moment, which will have to be overcome in its turn.”[6] And, similarly to Ernst Bloch and Herbert Marcuse, Riss is oriented, more than anything, toward mobilizing us into action:
The utopian presents hold the chance to offer a forceful refusal of the idea that we are deprived of resources to build our future and invite us to “overcome the depressing idea of the irreparable divorce of the action and the dream.”[7]
I had proposed as the formula for this year’s 13/13 series on utopia the expression “A History of the Future”—which is part of our banner this year. I had intended to suggest by that expression the idea that, in studying the concrete utopias that exist today, we will effectively detail and memorialize the efforts and initiatives that will change the present into its future, thereby document a history of that future. The missing term, of course, is the present. Riss reintroduces that term for us in her work.
We are delighted to welcome Laëtitia Riss to Utopia 13/13 to present her work and equally delighted to welcome back our dear friend and colleague Étienne Balibar to comment on her proposal. Étienne Balibar opened our seminar this year on the theme of “critical theoretic foundations for concrete utopias.” It is an honor to have Étienne Balibar back to continue the conversation.
Welcome to Utopia 11/13!
Notes
[1] Ernst Bloch in Bloch and Adorno, “Possibilities of Utopia Today,” trans. and ed. by Jonathan Roessler, Radio Debate, Südwestrundfunk, 1964, p. 4.
[2] Laëtitia Riss, “Utopier le present : le rêve historique des utopies,” La Découverte 4, no. 108 (2021): 29-38, at p. 30. English translation by Fonda Shen at https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/utopia1313/laetitia-riss-to-utopize-the-present-the-historical-dream-of-utopias/.
[3] Riss, “Utopier le present : le rêve historique des utopies,” at p. 35.
[4] Riss, “Utopier le present : le rêve historique des utopies,” at p. 31.
[5] Riss, “Utopier le present : le rêve historique des utopies,” at p. 32.
[6] Riss, “Utopier le present : le rêve historique des utopies,” at p. 38.
[7] Riss, “Utopier le present : le rêve historique des utopies,” at p. 38.