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'Sleeping dogs and rebellious hopes': anarchist utopianism in the age of realized utopia
After the tragedies of the twentieth century, the utopian impulse was subject to
searching criticism by a host of liberal intellectuals including Karl Popper, Hannah
Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Jacob Talmon. Looking to history and political philosophy,
these thinkers impugned utopianism for so frequently destroying the freedoms it
appeared to pursue. Defined by its theoretical contradictions, the utopian project,
rooted in the politics of the Enlightenment, bore some responsibility for the
totalitarianism and genocide that had shaped their lives. As this critique became liberal
orthodoxy, a heretic group of anarchist thinkers opposed these conclusions. While
travelling some distance with the liberal critics, for Paul Goodman, Marie Louise
Berneri, and Herbert Read, the twentieth century, rather than invalidating the utopian
urge made its boldness and experimentalism all the more vital. Their act of heresy was
defending utopianism as a central component of their anarchist critique of the present.
History
School
- Social Sciences and Humanities
Department
- Politics and International Studies
Published in
History of European IdeasVolume
46Issue
8Pages
1093 - 1106Publisher
Taylor and FrancisVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Rights holder
© Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupPublisher statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in History of European Ideas on 27 May 2020, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/01916599.2020.1761645.Acceptance date
2020-04-21Publication date
2020-05-27Copyright date
2020ISSN
0191-6599eISSN
1873-541XPublisher version
Language
- en