Any attempt to realize utopia concretely in practice becomes dissimulative
Evidence
I say above that “the full implications of the question of Value posed within the ‘materialist’ predication of the subject cannot yet be realized.” I must now admit what many Marxist theoreticians admit today: that in any theoretical formulation, the horizon of full realization must be indefinitely and irreducibly postponed. On that horizon it is not Utopia that may be glimpsed. For Utopias are historical attempts at topographic descriptions that must become dissimulative if attempts are made to represent them adequately in actual social practice. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 1038
Categorization
- ADDENDUM: Relevant to ‘strategic essentialism’ sustainability: the indefinitely postponed horizon of full realization is analogous to holding an identity claim without insisting on its actual ‘fulfillment’.
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s own tracing of strategic essentialism’s sustainability — the ‘irreducible nonfit between theory and practice’ maps onto the non-collapse question. — connects to: Utopian visions reveal a system’s limits only through failed attempts at transcendence — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 470; Fully describing utopia would betray it because it is a becoming, not a being — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1539; Utopian urban plans fail without social psychological realism about people (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Fully describing utopia would betray it because it is a becoming, not a being
#expands(0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1539 - Utopian urban plans fail without social psychological realism about people
#corroborates(0.78) - Utopian visions historically served as critical distance rather than action blueprints
#qualifies(0.78) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 840 - Utopian visions reveal a system’s limits only through failed attempts at transcendence
#qualifies(0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 470