Joe P. L. Davidson, "Saving Utopia: Imagining Hopeful Futures in Dystopian Times" (MIT Press, 2026)
About this episode
Joe P. L. Davidson discusses his book on the evolution of utopian thinking in contemporary society.
There is no alternative. The End of History. Climate Apocalypse. It seems that our contemporary moment is defined by the idea that things can only get worse or, in the most optimistic reading, perhaps stay as they are. Ideas for things getting better, utopian ideas, seem in short supply. It is this which Joe Davidson confronts in his book Saving Utopia: Imagining Hopeful Futures in Dystopian Times (MIT Press, 2026). Davidson links this apparent decline in utopian thinking to a change in ‘time consciousness’, the ways in which our sense of the future seems less open to possibility than it once was. Despite this he notes the persistence of utopianism in a new form, the ‘postdystopian utopia’ which takes account of the assumption the future will be worse and uses this as a spur to utopian thinking. He then explores how this manifests itself in various utopian works in different traditions, from Black utopianism considering the tragedy of the slave trade, feminism mining the nostalgia of previous battles to consider how things could be different and climate change utopianism confronting catastrophe. In our discussion we explore the changing fortunes and forms of utopianism over time…
People in this episode
Host: Matt
Guest: Joe P. L. Davidson
Topics covered
- utopianism
- dystopian literature
- climate change
- feminism
- Black utopianism
- postdystopian utopia
Keywords
- utopian ideas
- dystopia
- time consciousness
- postdystopian
- climate apocalypse
- feminism
- Black utopianism
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: MIT Press
Books & works: Saving Utopia: Imagining Hopeful Futures in Dystopian Times
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