From global-e UC Santa Barbara:<\/p>\n
An avenue for characterizing one aspect of the public imagination of today\u2019s world\u2014apparently configured by a rising populism across both the left and particularly the right\u2014is with reference to a recent upsurge of interest in utopian\/dystopian thinking. Since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, Aldous Huxley\u2019s Brave New World and George Orwell\u2019s 1984 have resumed prominence in the concerned public imagination and are again top of the bestseller lists. Both works discuss how repressive autocratic\/totalitarian elements place subject populations under regimes of total surveillance and propagate \u201cOrwellian\u201d versions of the truth,1 while citizens are palliated by the happy drugs of a somatic culture.2 These dystopian perspectives are contrasted in the conclusion to this piece with my political hypothesis of the \u201cpost-modern Prince\u201d with its \u201cfeasible utopias\u201d reflected in the imaginaries and collective action of diverse progressive forces.<\/p>\n
Utopias have tended to emerge in response to wars, crises, and significant periods of dislocation: in the context of the Peloponnesian Wars, Plato\u2019s The Republic (ca. 380 BC) was premised on creating a good society led by wise elite Guardians. Utopian thought has typically been concerned with concepts of justice, order, the good society, and radical change, often based on common ownership of land\/property. Indeed, utopias\u2014and their dialectical other, dystopias\u2014are \u201cways to interpret the present with an eye to an (imaginary yet positive) future.\u201d A dystopia may be taken as a utopia \u201cthat malfunctions\u201d or \u201conly functions for a particular segment of society.\u201d Dystopias \u201cresemble actual societies historically encountered\u2014planned but not planned well enough to be just.\u201d3<\/p>\n
These insights seem to capture very well aspects of current imaginaries in US, European, and in some respects world politics.<\/p>\n