Book description
Imagining the Future bridges theory, politics and
literature, featuring key articles by and
on eminent writers in Utopian Studies, Science Fiction Studies and Social
Theory. Inspired by Frederic Jameson’s Archaeologies of the Future, it is a
fascinatingly diverse response to his proposition that ‘Utopia… now better
expresses our relationship to a genuinely political future than any current
program of action’ and that Utopia demands a ‘meditation on the impossible’.
Frederic Jameson contributes an article, ‘The Antinomonies of Utopia’, as
does Maurice Blanchot, in his hitherto untranslated essay ‘The Proper Uses
of Science Fiction’. Lyman Tower Sargent’s bibliographical essay provides
the essential historical survey of science and technology in science
fiction. There are articles on the novels of Michel Houellebecq and Margaret
Atwood, on power in ancient myth, on the rhetorical construction of
future-time in the war on terror, as well as an accounting of recent
anti-globalization mobilizations around the world. Two articles reflect on
specifically Australian utopias - the uses of ‘Aboriginalism’ and Walter
Burley Griffins’ utopian conception of Canberra. Writers in cultural theory,
psychoanalysis and philosophy take up the work of Jameson, Walter Benjamin,
Raymond Williams and Deleuze and Guattari.
This collection is the result of a collaboration between the Centre for
Comparative
Literature and Cultural Studies and Arena Publications. Produced as a book,
it also
constitutes a special double issue of Arena Journal.. [Publisher's website]
About the authors
.Professor Andrew Milner is a Professor with the Centre for Comparative
Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University. Associate
Professor Milner has previously taught at the London School of
Economics, the University of Canberra, Goldsmiths' College London and at
the University of Leeds. His other titles include Re-Imagining
Cultural Studies (2002) and Class (1999).
Dr. Matthew Ryan is a Research Fellow with the Centre for Comparative
Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University. His research
interests include Irish culture and writing, the nation, globalisation,
culture and ideology. Dr. Ryan is a member of the editorial board of
Arena Magazine.
Dr. Robert Savage is an Research Assistant with the Centre for
Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University. His
research interests also include German and French critical theory and
English and German literature. Dr. Savage is a member of the editorial board
of Colloquy.
Edited by Andrew Milner, Matthew Ryan and Robert Savage of the Centre for
Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University, Melbourne.
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