Memories Of Utopia

These essays examine how various communities remembered and commemorated their shared past through the lens of utopia and its corollary, dystopia, providing a framework for the reinterpretation of rapidly changing religious, cultural, and political realities of the turbulent period from 300 to 750 CE. The common theme of the chapters is the utopian ideals of religious groups, whether these are inscribed on the body, on the landscape, in texts, or on other cultural objects. The volume is the first to apply this conceptual framework to Late Antiquity, when historically significant conflicts arose between the adherents of four major religious identities: Greaco-Roman 'pagans', newly dominant Christians; diaspora Jews, who were more or less persecuted, depending on the current regime; and the emerging religion and power of Islam. Late Antiquity was thus a period when dystopian realities competed with memories of a mythical Golden Age, variously conceived according to the religious identity of the group. The contributors come from a range of disciplines, including cultural studies, religious studies, ancient history, and art history, and employ both theoretical and empirical approaches. This volume is unique in the range of evidence it draws upon, both visual and textual, to support the basic argument that utopia in Late Antiquity, whether conceived spiritually, artistically, or politically, was a place of the past but also of the future, even of the afterlife. Memories of Utopia will be of interest to historians, archaeologists, and art historians of the later Roman Empire, and those working on religion in Late Antiquity and Byzantium.

'Memory and Utopia' looks at the connection between memory and forgetfulness in Europe during the twentieth century. Drawing on oral history and feminist theory and practice, the book highlights how women struggled to be recognized as full subjects. The themes of utopia and desire in the 1968 movements of students, women and workers are explored. 'Memory and Utopia' examines the sense of belonging to Europe that has emerged in the last twenty years. The book analyses European identity as expressed through identities based on gender, age and culture to explore an inclusive and non-hierarchical subjectivity.

For a genre that imagines possible futures as a means of critiquing the present, utopian/dystopian fiction has been surprisingly obsessed with how the past is remembered. Memory and Utopian Agency in Utopian/Dystopian Literature: Memory of the Future examines modern and contemporary utopian/dystopian literature’s preoccupation with memory, asserting that from the nineteenth century onward, memory and forgetting feature as key problematics in the genre as well as sources of the utopian impulse. Through a series of close readings of utopian/dystopian novels informed by theory and dialectics, Hanson provides a case study history of how and why memory emerged as a problem for utopia, and how recent dystopian texts situate memory as a crucial mode of utopian agency. Hanson demonstrates that many modern and contemporary writers of the genre consider the presence of certain forms of memory as necessary to the project of imagining better societies or to avoiding possible dystopian outcomes.

Essays and photos that reveal and reflect on everyday life in socialist Yugoslavia, from tourism to television. Research about socialism and communism tends to focus on official aspects of power and dissent and on state politics, and presuppose a powerful state and a party with its official ideology on one side and repressed, manipulated, or collaborating citizens on the other side. This collection of essays instead helps uncover various aspects of everyday life during the time of socialism in Yugoslavia, such as leisure, popular culture, consumption, sociability and power, from 1945 until 1980, when Tito died. “A highly original project, which will cover a much neglected area, helping those who either did not make it to Yugoslavia in Tito’s time or were born too late to understand what life then and there was all about.” —Sabrina P. Ramet, Professor of Political Science at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway “This collection represents an original and highly useful work that helps fill a gap in the existing literature on socialist Yugoslavia and East-Central Europe in the Cold War. It also makes an important contribution to cultural history of the region in the second half of the twentieth century.” —Dejan Djokic, Lecturer in Serbian and Croatian Studies, The University of Nottingham “This book focuses on a cultural and social history of socialist Yugoslavia from the perspective of ‘ordinary’ people and by reconstructing their memories. The contributors, many of them belonging to a new generation of scholars from the former Yugoslavia, employ new approaches in order to make sense of the complicated past of this country.” —Ulf Brunnbauer, Department of History, Freie Universität Berlin

Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.

As we are approaching our fin de siecle, issues of time and memory haunt contemporary culture. Museums and memorials are being constructed rapidly, as if there were no tomorrow. Contemporary art and literature focuses on memory and the past, rather than claiming radical breakthroughs into some unknown future. With the recent resurgence of nationalism and issues of national identity, the political future, too, seems to fold itself back into the past rather than offering a bold vision of the 21st century. The great paradox of our fin de siecle culture is that novelity is even more associated with memory and the past rather than future expectation. But if the obsession with memory is one salient symptom in this age of a modernity grown old, then cultural and political amnesia is undoubtedly its counterpoint. Rather than blaming amnesia on television or the school, Twilight Memories argues that the danger of amnesia is inherent in the information revolution. Our obsessions withcultural memory can be read as re-representing a powerful reaction against the electronic archive and they mark a shift in the way we live structures of temporality. In this book, the media are the hidden veil through which the author looks at the problem of cultural memory and an emerging new sensibility of temporality in literature, art, politics, media theory and the museum.

A fascinating, non-partisan exploration of an incendiary region Say the word “Israel” today and it sparks images of walls and rockets and a bloody conflict without end. Yet for decades, the symbol of the Jewish State was the noble pioneer draining the swamps and making the deserts bloom: the legendary kibbutznik. So what ever happened to the pioneers’ dream of founding a socialist utopia in the land called Palestine? Chasing Utopia: The Future of the Kibbutz in a Divided Israel draws readers into the quest for answers to the defining political conflict of our era. Acclaimed author David Leach revisits his raucous memories of life as a kibbutz volunteer and returns to meet a new generation of Jewish and Arab citizens struggling to forge a better future together. Crisscrossing the nation, Leach chronicles the controversial decline of Israel’s kibbutz movement and witnesses a renaissance of the original vision for a peaceable utopia in unexpected corners of the Promised Land. Chasing Utopia is an entertaining and enlightening portrait of a divided nation where hope persists against the odds.