Results by title
3 books match the query 'Utopian Imagination'
American Foreign Policy and the Utopian Imagination
Susan M. Matarese
University of Massachusetts Press, 2010
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, American decision makers have been forced to confront anew questions about the role of the United States in world affairs. What are the responsibilities of the United States toward other countries? What are the appropriate uses and limitation of American power? And what, from an American point of view, would be the ideal shape of the imagined New World Order?
However U.S. policymakers may resolve such issues, their thinking will be influenced by assumptions deeply embedded in American culture. Some of those beliefs derive from the nation's distinctive history, geography, and resources. But others are rooted in what Susan M. Matarese calls the "national image"--a set of emotionally charged, relatively coherent ideas about the special qualities of the United States and its place in the world.
Building on a long tradition of scholarship that looks to works of literature for insights into national myths and symbols, Matarese examines a rich trove of utopian fiction written by Americans during the late nineteenth century. Such writings, she shows, provide a useful window into the popular imagination, revealing widely shared notions about the foreign policy of an idealized America--notions that have proven remarkably resilient in the twentieth century as well. Indeed, even in the post-Cold War era, one can find striking similarities between the foreign policy goals of the Bush and Clinton administrations and the dreams of America's utopian architects a century earlier.
The author concludes with an appeal for greater humility and realism in the formation of U.S. foreign policy, and a recognition of the limits of American power in what is likely to be an increasingly fluid, fragmented, and multipolar world.
However U.S. policymakers may resolve such issues, their thinking will be influenced by assumptions deeply embedded in American culture. Some of those beliefs derive from the nation's distinctive history, geography, and resources. But others are rooted in what Susan M. Matarese calls the "national image"--a set of emotionally charged, relatively coherent ideas about the special qualities of the United States and its place in the world.
Building on a long tradition of scholarship that looks to works of literature for insights into national myths and symbols, Matarese examines a rich trove of utopian fiction written by Americans during the late nineteenth century. Such writings, she shows, provide a useful window into the popular imagination, revealing widely shared notions about the foreign policy of an idealized America--notions that have proven remarkably resilient in the twentieth century as well. Indeed, even in the post-Cold War era, one can find striking similarities between the foreign policy goals of the Bush and Clinton administrations and the dreams of America's utopian architects a century earlier.
The author concludes with an appeal for greater humility and realism in the formation of U.S. foreign policy, and a recognition of the limits of American power in what is likely to be an increasingly fluid, fragmented, and multipolar world.
[more]
Biocosmism
Vitality and the Utopian Imagination in Postrevolutionary MexicoJorge Quintana Navarrete
Vanderbilt University Press, 2024
Honorable Mention, Premio al Mejor Libro en Humanidades, Latin American Studies Association–Mexico Section, 2025
Most scholars study postrevolutionary Mexico as a period in which cultural production significantly shaped national identity through murals, novels, essays, and other artifacts that registered the changing political and social realities in the wake of the Revolution. In Biocosmism, Jorge Quintana Navarrete shifts the focus to examine how a group of scientists, artists, and philosophers conceived the manifold relations of the human species with cosmological forces and nonhuman entities (animals, plants, inorganic matter, and celestial bodies, among others).
Drawing from recent theoretical trends in new materialisms, biopolitics, and posthumanism, this book traces for the first time the intellectual constellation of biocosmism or biocosmic thought: the study of universal life understood as the vital vibrancy that animates everything in the cosmos from inorganic matter to living organisms to outer space. It combines both analysis of unexplored areas—such as Alfonso L. Herrera’s plasmogeny—and innovative readings of canonical texts like Vasconcelos’s La raza cósmica to examine how biocosmism produced a wide array of utopian projects and theorizations that continue to challenge anthropocentric, biopolitical frameworks.
Most scholars study postrevolutionary Mexico as a period in which cultural production significantly shaped national identity through murals, novels, essays, and other artifacts that registered the changing political and social realities in the wake of the Revolution. In Biocosmism, Jorge Quintana Navarrete shifts the focus to examine how a group of scientists, artists, and philosophers conceived the manifold relations of the human species with cosmological forces and nonhuman entities (animals, plants, inorganic matter, and celestial bodies, among others).
Drawing from recent theoretical trends in new materialisms, biopolitics, and posthumanism, this book traces for the first time the intellectual constellation of biocosmism or biocosmic thought: the study of universal life understood as the vital vibrancy that animates everything in the cosmos from inorganic matter to living organisms to outer space. It combines both analysis of unexplored areas—such as Alfonso L. Herrera’s plasmogeny—and innovative readings of canonical texts like Vasconcelos’s La raza cósmica to examine how biocosmism produced a wide array of utopian projects and theorizations that continue to challenge anthropocentric, biopolitical frameworks.
[more]
The Movies as a World Force
American Silent Cinema and the Utopian ImaginationFriedman, Ryan J
Rutgers University Press, 2019
Throughout the silent-feature era, American artists and intellectuals routinely described cinema as a force of global communion, a universal language promoting mutual understanding and harmonious coexistence amongst disparate groups of people. In the early 1920s, film-industry leaders began to espouse this utopian view, in order to claim for motion pictures an essentially uplifting social function. The Movies as a World Force examines the body of writing in which this understanding of cinema emerged and explores how it shaped particular silent films and their marketing campaigns. The utopian and universalist view of cinema, the book shows, represents a synthesis of New Age spirituality and the new liberalism. It provided a framework for the first official, written histories of American cinema and persisted as an advertising trope, even after the transition to sound made movies reliant on specific national languages.
[more]