Els llocs de la utopia

What do we understand by utopia? How do we think about what can happen and what we can do? At a time when it is no longer possible to consider history as a teleological process oriented towards progress, to what new spatiotemporal coordinates do we link utopia today?

The philosopher Haud Guéguen and the sociologist Peter Wagner will discuss the necessary respatialization of utopia, where it is essential to develop a cartography of concrete utopias in situated places and worlds, thus inventing a new sense of the possible.

Since the first appearance of the word in the best-known work of Thomas More, the category of utopia has profoundly changed its spatiotemporal dimension. Initially referring to a "no-place" or a place that does not exist anywhere, utopia was initially thought of in spatial terms, before being subjected to a process of "temporalization" that involved creating a "horizon of expectation" (Reinhart Koselleck) or something that "does not yet exist" (Ernst Bloch) and therefore refers to the dimension of the future.

By proposing to rethink utopia in light of its own modern history, the hypothesis they will propose is that of a necessary respatialization or relocation of utopia. Then what counts in such a perspective is to develop a cartography of the concrete or real utopias that are invented in increasingly situated places and worlds, thus inventing a new sense of the possible.

By the Research Group of the Santa Mònica 

With the participation of Haud Guéguen and Peter Wagner

Haud Guéguen is a professor of philosophy at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. Among her publications is Le choix de la guerre civileune autre histoire du néolibéralisme (Lux, 2021), which she co-wrote with Pierre Dardot, Christian Laval, and Pierre Sauvêtre.

Peter Wagner is a German sociologist. He is known for his work in social and political theory, as well as his contributions to the field of cultural studies and globalization. He currently teaches at the University of Barcelona and has been a visiting professor at numerous academic institutions around the world.