Work in Progress - Everyday (Micro)Utopias

In a period where the triadic web of precarity, populism and polarization form the cultural backdrop, the research group has recently reflected on where these currents emerge and manifest, showing how barely detectable shifts in political and social anticipations and demands impact on the everyday. This is what we have called microdystopias, or everyday dystopias. In the continuation of this work, we now want to focus on the interplay between the everyday dystopic and the micro-utopic in relation to precarity, populism and polarization. The project will, among other things, identify the complex aesthetic and ideological relation between the microdystopic and the microutopic.

We are reading and discussing: Sargent, Lyman Tower. "Utopia Matters! The Importance of Utopianism and Utopian Scholarship." Utopian Studies 32, no. 3 (2021): 453-77. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/839563