Utopian political imagination tests postmodernism’s capacity to imagine change

Evidence

Utopia is a spatial matter that might be thought to know a potential change in fortunes in so spatialized a culture as the postmodern; but if this last is as dehistoricized and dehistoricizing as I sometimes claim here, the synaptic chain that might lead the Utopian impulse to expression becomes harder to localize. Utopian representations knew an extraordinary revival in the 1960s; if Postmodernism is the substitute for the sixties and the compensation for their political failure, the question of Utopia would seem to be a crucial test of what is left of our capacity to imagine change at all. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 20

Categorization

• QUESTION: Is ‘Utopian impulse’ harder to localize because postmodern culture is dehistoricized, and what would falsify or confirm that?
• XREF: connects to: Plato’s Republic is best read as a theory of social change — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 29; Firestone’s technological utopianism prefigured queer theory and cyborg feminism — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 879; Glissant makes imagination, relation, and poetics the engines of historical change — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 24 (+5 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Plato’s Republic is best read as a theory of social change — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 29; Firestone’s technological utopianism prefigured queer theory and cyborg feminism — Marianne DeKoven, Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the…, 879; Glissant makes imagination, relation, and poetics the engines of historical change — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 24 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Perceived failure of revolution drives acceptance of postmodernity #complicates (0.80) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 54
• Modernism pursues the New substantively while postmodernism only clocks variations #complicates (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 8