{"id":1162,"date":"2021-09-03T18:20:15","date_gmt":"2021-09-03T22:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/revolution1313\/?page_id=1162"},"modified":"2023-03-02T17:42:09","modified_gmt":"2023-03-02T22:42:09","slug":"7-13","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/7-13\/","title":{"rendered":"7\/13 | Fred Moten, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Kaiama Glover, and Gary Wilder on &#8220;Concrete Utopianism&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/znrfTYO2jOw\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/fred-moten\/\">Fred Moten<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/nadia-abu-el-haj\/\">Nadia Abu El-Haj<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/kaiama-l-glover\/\">Kaiama Glover<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/gary-wilder\/\">Gary Wilder<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-host\/\">Bernard E. Harcourt<\/a><\/h1>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">discuss<\/h2>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-getting-more-concrete-three-questions-for-gary-wilder\/\">Concrete Utopianism<\/a>&#8220;<\/h1>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/h2>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Tuesday, February 21, 2023<\/h1>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/files\/2023\/02\/Maison-Franc\u0327aise-Columbia-University.pdf\">Maison Fran\u00e7aise<\/a>, Columbia University<\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This year at Utopia 13\/13, we are studying concrete utopias. We are trying to lay a critical theoretic foundation (which was where we started the first semester with <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/1-13\/\">Etienne Balibar<\/a> and the second semester with <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/6-13\/\">Noam Chomsky<\/a>). And we are exploring material instantiations of concrete utopias (from <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/2-13\/\">Cooperation Jackson<\/a> in Jackson MS to <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/3-13\/\">union organizing<\/a> right here on Columbia\u2019s campus, passing through worker cooperatives, eco-farming cooperatives, solidarity economies, and cooperation writ large).<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tonight, we focus our seminar on another critical theoretical foundation, the notion of &#8220;concrete utopianism&#8221; as developed in the book <em>Concrete Utopianism: The Politics of Temporality and Solidarity<\/em>, by Gary Wilder, published by Fordham University Press in 2022.\u00a0<em>Concrete Utopianism\u00a0<\/em>advocates for a turn away from certain strands of contemporary critical theory\u2014such as negative dialectics, Afropessimism, and cultural strands of postcolonial thought\u2014and for a turn or return to more constructive political forms of critical and practical engagement.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This book forms part of a contemporary rebirth of new forms of utopianism that can be labeled \u201cconcrete utopias\u201d (by \u00c9tienne Balibar, earlier by Ernst Bloch in <em>The Principle of Hope<\/em>, and in this seminar), or \u201creal utopias\u201d (as in Erik Olin Wright\u2019s book <em>Envisioning Real Utopias<\/em> (2010)), or \u201cpractical utopias\u201d (as in Noam Chomsky&#8217;s preface and Michael Albert\u2019s book <em>Practical Utopias<\/em>),\u00a0or in terms of the French expression &#8220;<em>utopier<\/em>&#8221; (as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/11-13\/\">La\u00ebtitia Riss will suggest<\/a> at Utopia 11\/13 in Paris).\u00a0The exact term we use has implications, but the overarching thrust of this \u201cmovement,\u201d we might call it, is to revive, within critical theory, a turn to praxis.<\/p>\n<p>In this session, we are joined by Nadia Abu El-Haj, Kaiama Glover, Fred Moten, and Gary Wilder to explore the notion of &#8220;concrete utopianism.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to Utopia 7\/13!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fred Moten,\u00a0Nadia Abu El-Haj, Kaiama Glover, Gary Wilder, and Bernard E. Harcourt discuss &#8220;Concrete Utopianism&#8220; Tuesday, February 21, 2023 Maison Fran\u00e7aise, Columbia University &nbsp; This year at Utopia 13\/13, we are studying concrete utopias. We are trying to lay a&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/7-13\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1603,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1162","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/utopia1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}