Fabricating the Future: Becoming Bloch's Utopians (Essays‪)‬

Introduction. ERNST BLOCH'S DEPICTION OF EXISTENCE as experienced under "the continuing spell of static living and thinking" (The Principle of Hope, 139 emphasis mine) stands as a diagnosis, a warning, and, vitally, a response; it is an "iconoclastic rebellion against [...] reification" (Bloch and Adorno 11) which is polyvalent and pervasive. Opposing the static spell, and thinking the world as possibility lies at the heart of Bloch's utopia(n vision). The aim of this essay is not simply definitional (utopia according to Bloch) although that task will form a crucial part. Rather, the aim of this essay is a political intervention: in short, I will argue that when a Blochian creative epistemology of the possible is posited as the central utopian dynamic, then the modality of utopian theorising changes from a potentially legislative, substantive mode, to a 'fictive' mode of process. So far, not much new. I will further argue that the politics this generates resolutely resists any attempt to reduce the possible to the given. This means utopia cannot blueprint or legislate a polity. Again, not much new: debates in utopian studies cover this area. (1) But I will conclude that this is by no means a political concession or a weakening of utopian thought. Rather, when the lines of thought which underpin utopian theorising change direction from future perfect to intransitive verb, this does not mean any loss of political affectivity, but indeed a gain. I claim ethical advantages for a mode of theorising which recognises its fictive modality. This needs explanation.