An unacknowledged party of Utopia quietly persists among artists and writers

Evidence

Yet in our time, where the claims of the officially political seem extraordinarily enfeebled and where the taking of older kinds of political positions seems to inspire widespread embarrassment, it should also be noted that one finds everywhere today — not least among artists and writers — something like an unacknowledged “party of Utopia”: an underground party whose numbers are difficult to determine, whose program remains unannounced and perhaps even unformulated, whose existence is unknown to the citizenry at large and to the authorities, but whose members seem to recognize one another by means of secret Masonic signals. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 418

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘unacknowledged party of Utopia’ with its secret Masonic signals is a provocative lens for a cognitive map of where cultural producers actually stand politically today.
• XREF: connects to: Art expresses utopian harmony negatively by embodying contradictions unresolved — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 549; Art is trapped between utopian longing and the charge of false comfort — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 66; Each modernist avant-garde had a distinct redemptive or utopian vocation. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 403 (+2 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Art expresses utopian harmony negatively by embodying contradictions unresolved — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 549; Art is trapped between utopian longing and the charge of false comfort — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 66; Each modernist avant-garde had a distinct redemptive or utopian vocation. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 403 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Postmodern ironic distance from visionary engagement can secretly reproduce political quietism. #complicates (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 609
• Anti-totalitarian fear of Utopia blames revolution for violence that counterrevolution originates #complicates (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 858