Utopia's Discontents

In the years before the 1917 revolution, exiles who had fled the Russian empire created large and boisterous Russian colonies across Western and Central Europe. Centers of radical activity in the heart of bourgeois cities, these émigré settlements evolved into revolutionary social experiments in their own right. Feminists, nationalist activists, and Jewish intellectuals seeking to liberate and uplift populations oppressed by the tsarist regime treated the colonies as utopian communities, creating new networks, institutions, and cultural practices that reflected their values. Prefiguring the ideal world of freedom and universal fraternity of which radicals dreamed, émigré communities played a crucial role in defining the Russian revolutionary tradition and transforming it into praxis. The dreams born in the colonies also influenced their European host societies, informing international debates about the meaning of freedom on both the left and the right. But if the utopian visions forged in exile inspired populations far and wide, they developed a tendency to evolve in unexpected directions. Colony residents’ efforts to transform the world unwittingly produced explosive discontents that proved no less consequential than their revolutionary dreams.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the major themes of the work and offers historiographical background on exile and the Russian revolutionary movement. It argues that the émigré colonies created by tsarist subjects in late nineteenth-century Europe should be viewed as utopian communities that prefigured the better world of the future of which the foreigners dreamed. It also examines how these communities transformed revolutionary thought and practice. The chapter introduces Ernst Bloch’s concept of concrete utopia, which treats utopia not as a quixotic goal but as a form of lived revolutionary praxis realized through quotidian activities. This is the central analytic apparatus that the author uses to analyze émigré politics.

Infrastructural-Innovation Realism in an Age of Collapse

This article explores a phenomenon of low-level magical realism we call infrastructural-innovation realism. Reversing the formulation identified by Sean McCann and Michael Szalay in their 2005 essay “Do You Believe in Magic? Literary Thinking After the New Left,” in which an earlier generation of left-leaning American writers eschewed engagement with the state in favor of imagining utopian magical communities, these novels rewrite historical events, often catastrophic and violent ones, with the addition of one piece of working magical infrastructure. Here we explore the effects of these magical technological additions in three novels: Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad (2016); Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017); and briefly, César Aira’s Shantytown (2000). Although these effects vary, in these novels, history continues on as violently as ever: together they betray the difficulty in late neoliberalism of even imagining that states will provide working infrastructure, particularly for oppressed and displaced people. At the same time, these novels challenge the idea that imagining utopian communities beyond the state’s orbit constitutes a retreat from politics. Rather, they showcase the difficult, painstaking work of building alternative community in the wake of the state’s many failures and imply the continued necessity of confronting and reimagining the violent state rather than appealing to it.

Religion, the social brain and the mystical stance

This article explores the implications of the social brain and the endorphin-based bonding mechanism that underpins it for the evolution of religion. I argue that religion evolved as one of the behavioural mechanisms designed to facilitate community bonding when humans first evolved the larger social groups of ~150 that now characterise our species. This is not a matter of facilitating cooperation, but of engineering social cohesion – a very different problem. Analysis of the size of C19th utopian communities suggests that a religious basis both allowed larger groups to form and greatly enhanced their longevity. I suggest that religion evolved in two stages: an early immersive form with no formal structure based on trance-dancing (a form still evident in the rituals and practices of many hunter-gatherers) and a later form which had more formal structures and gave rise to our modern doctrinal religions. I argue that the modern doctrinal religions did not replace ancestral immersive religions but rather that the doctrinal component was overlaid on the ancient immersive form, thereby giving rise to the mystical stance that underlies all world religions. I suggest that it is this mystical stance that causes the constant upwelling of cults and sects within world religions.

Religiousness and Spirituality in the New Utopian Movements

The aim of this article is the study and analysis of a set of revived utopian communities today, understood as contemporary spiritual heresies from theoretical perspectives close to postmodern critiques. Following ethnographic research over a series of years in different locations across the four continents, this socio-anthropological contribution highlights the characteristics, development and social image of this complex and largely unknown social and spiritual reality. The approach goes beyond the spatial—it includes not only the “being there” and living with the utopian individuals in their own communities for years—but also a temporal dimension, with emphasis placed on their continuity, on the existence of heterodox and heretical groups and communities throughout history. The new ethical critique, environmental problems, and the fear of an imminent sixth extinction guide us in the exploration of new millenarian beliefs emerging from the new spiritual movements born in what is called New Age. A detailed review by these cults—which appear to not follow any recognizable pattern—allows us to understand how some ideas are used in the post-capitalist era or—for the most critical—the eco-capitalist era. We approach the utopian communities understanding them as key strongholds of a counterculture that has aligned with the times, exploring their symbolic spaces and their idea of progress based, among other premises, on degrowth and voluntary simplicity. This is an approach to today’s heresies disguised as modernity. A look at religiousness turned spirituality in utopian movements of our time.