What are utopias for? Marx accused them of misleading revolutionary energy. For reformists, they distract from the inevitable course of progress. According to literary critic and specialist in Marxism Fredric Jameson, their role is of a different nature. In this reissue of Archeologies of the future, his great book published in 2005 – here published with Think with science fiction in a revised translation -, utopias are resonated with each other, from Thomas More to the XVIe century until the science fiction writers of the twentiethe century. Each carries within it an essential preoccupation, a center of gravity: for Charles Fourier, it is desire, for Saint-Simon the administration, for Edward Bellamy meritocracy, for William Morris the end of alienated labor… Each utopia tries to respond to a major suffering, gaping, specific to his time. Unlike faith in progress, it is not aimed at gradual improvement but at a radical solution.
What remains of the utopias in the 2000s asks Fredric Jameson? Are they still thinkable and desirable? According to him, the idea of social totality has disappeared and with it the utopian project. Is it an irremediable loss? No, he replies, because what matters is not so much that utopia is achievable but that it is capable of radiating reality. It acts as a force of attraction, a horizon rather than a lever. From then on, its imaginary dimension becomes decisive. Therein lies the meaning of the other part of the volume, Think with science fiction. Henceforth, the strength of utopia is no longer in a global system but, on the contrary, in a plurality of enclaves where frustrations are abolished and where the rational and the dreamlike mingle. These archipelagos thrive on the side of technological science fiction but also within “fantasy” and its chimeras. As Ernst Bloch already thought, utopia is embodied in the details of everyday life, in barely formulated emotions, in stubborn reveries. It is above all the domain of expectation. Philippe Garnier
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