Ends of Utopian Thinking in Critical Theory

Nina Rismal is a researcher, organiser and founder interested in social transformation and future thinking. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge and worked for mission-driven research institutes in the US and Germany. In 2022 she co-founded Possible Worlds, a startup that integrates interdisciplinary insights into the development of AI.

• AcknowledgementsNote on TranslationsIntroduction1 The Blow to Utopia from the Left2 The Road Not Taken3 (Political) Utopian Thinking4 Critical Theory5 A New Perspective on Contemporary Critical Theory1 Marx’s Two Utopian Paradoxes1 The Deployment of the Label ‘Utopian’ and Its Consequences2 Marx’s Vision of the Communist Society3 Utopia Cannot Be Envisaged4 Imaginary vs. Rational Ideas5 Utopian Visions Are Insignificant2 The Origins of Adorno’s Utopieverbot1 Adorno and Marxist Theory in the Early Twentieth Century2 What Is the Utopieverbot?3 From the Bilderverbot to the Utopieverbot4 Marx’s Influence on the Utopieverbot5 The Removal of Utopia into the Messianic Future6 Culture Industry and Utopian Consciousness7 The Problem with Identity Thinking3 Negative Utopia?1 Positive Utopia – a Point of Departure for Negative Thinking2 Does Determinate Negation Make Sense?3 The Emergence of the Positive in Constellations4 Something Is Missing4 Bloch’s Rejection of the Utopieverbot1 Bloch’s Life and Times2 Utopia as the ‘Not-Yet’3 The Warm and Cold Streams of Marxism4 Bloch’s Utopian Society: ‘Heimat’5 The Utopian Core: ‘Invariant of Direction’6 Traces Experiences and Expressions of Utopia7 Concrete Utopian Thinking5 An Ontology of Processual Utopia1 The Prefigurations of Utopia in the ‘Not-Yet-Conscious’2 Incompleteness of the World as the ‘Not-Yet-Become’3 The Necessity of Utopian Thinking4 Processual Utopia and Processual Utopian ThinkingConclusionBibliographyIndex