Religion functions as a utopia reconciling real historical contradictions in mythological form

Evidence

This is not to say that Utopia cannot have a philosophical value, for it has a political value and every politics is implicitly a philosophy, even if disconnected and crudely sketched. In this sense religion is the most gigantic Utopia, that is the most gigantic “metaphysics”, that history has ever known, since it is the most grandiose attempt to reconcile, in mythological form, the real contradictions of historical life. It affirms, in fact, that mankind has the same “nature”, that man in general exists, in so far as created by God, son of God, therefore brother of other men, equal to other men, and free amongst and as other men; and that he can conceive of himself as such, mirrored in God, who is the “self-consciousness” of humanity; but it also affirms that all this is not of this world, but of another (the Utopia). Thus do ideas of equality, fraternity and liberty ferment among men, among those strata of mankind who do not see themselves as equals nor as brothers of other men, nor as free in relation to them. Thus it has come about that in every radical stirring of the multitude, in one way or another, with particular forms and particular ideologies, these demands have always been raised. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1440

This is not to say that Utopia cannot have a philosophical value, for it has a political value and every politics is implicitly a philosophy, even if disconnected and crudely sketched. In this sense religion is the most gigantic Utopia, that is the most gigantic “metaphysics”, that history has ever known, since it is the most grandiose attempt to reconcile, in mythological form, the real contradictions of historical life. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1440

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘utopia’ as Gramsci uses it — a politics that is implicitly a philosophy, and religion as the gigantic utopia.
• XREF: Directly relevant to how Islamophobia critique reads religion as both ideological and political — links forward into how ‘Islam’ functions as a utopian/ideological formation. — connects to: Religion represents the superstructural projection of earlier modes of production — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 6154; Theological compromise concepts mediate between romance narrative and capitalist historicity — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 3058; Literature formally resolves, in the imaginary, social contradictions that cannot be resolved in reality — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 740
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1440