Forges a new understanding of how these two Lusophone nations are connected. The closely entwined histories of Portugal and Brazil remain key references for understanding developments--past and present--in either country. Accordingly, Fernando Arenas considers Portugal and Brazil in relation to one another in this exploration of changing definitions of nationhood, subjectivity, and utopias in both cultures. Examining the two nations' shared language and histories as well as their cultural, social, and political points of divergence, Arenas pursues these definitive changes through the realms of literature, intellectual thought, popular culture, and political discourse. Both Brazil and Portugal are subject to the economic, political, and cultural forces of postmodern globalization. Arenas analyzes responses to these trends in contemporary writers including Jose Saramago, Caio Fernando Abreu, Maria Isabel Barreno, Vergilio Ferreira, Clarice Lispector, and Maria Gabriela Llansol. Ultimately, Utopias of Otherness shows how these writers have redefined the concept of nationhood, not only through their investment in utopian or emancipatory causes such as Marxist revolution, women's liberation, or sexual revolution but also by shifting their attention to alternative modes of conceiving the ethical and political realms.

Performing Identities and Utopias of Belonging consists of sixteen essays, reflecting the current conflicted debate on the ontology, constructiveness and affect of categories of ascribed social identity such as gender, ethnicity, race and nation, in the context of British, Irish and North American cultural landscapes. They address the many ways in which these communities of belonging are imagined, iterated, performed, questioned, and deconstructed in literature, cinema and visual culture; they also support or counter claims about the enhanced value of social identity in the expression of the self in the light of the present debates that surround the contested post-identity turn in cultural studies. Significantly, they also address the role of social identity in the field of utopian and dystopian thought, focusing on the projection of imagined futures where alternative means of conceiving ascribed identity are conceptualized. The contributions are shaped by a plurality of approaches and theoretical discourses, and come from both established and emerging scholars and researchers from Europe and beyond. The collection is structured in three sections – the politics of (un)belonging, deconstructing utopian and cultural paradigms, and performing identities in the visual arts – which organize the multidisciplinary discussions around specific nuclei of interrogations.

In an age of globalization characterized by the dizzying technologies of the First World, and the social disintegration of the Third, is the concept of utopia still meaningful? Archaeologies of the Future, Jameson's most substantial work since Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, investigates the development of this form since Thomas More, and interrogates the functions of utopian thinking in a post-Communist age. The relationship between utopia and science fiction is explored through the representations of otherness . alien life and alien worlds . and a study of the works of Philip K. Dick, Ursula LeGuin, William Gibson, Brian Aldiss, Kim Stanley Robinson and more. Jameson's essential essays, including "The Desire Called Utopia," conclude with an examination of the opposing positions on utopia and an assessment of its political value today.

"This thesis examines the forms of utopianism which developed in U.S. fiction after the Civil War, from Mark Twain to Jack London. It covers the genres and subgenres of the utopia of reform, the fiction of occult utopianism, the lost-race romance, the post-catastrophe utopia, and the dystopia. Its central argument is that utopianism provides a means of developing alternative horizons of historiosophy and of building images of otherness, as it is also an argumentative apparatus which allows utopists to comment on their empirical society, as the other side of otherness. Nineteenth-century U.S. utopian fiction conveyed, through an increasing deconstruction of the utopian genre, conflicting interpretations of such elements of American myth-history as the stock image of America as a new Eden and paradise of abundance, the American Dream, and Manifest Destiny. This helps explain the fragmentation of the utopian genre within literary discourse and its cooptation by modern science fiction as it developed after the first decade of the twentieth century." --

This volume shows how modern political theory can be enriched through an engagement with works of literature. It uses the resources of literature to explore issues such as nationalism, liberal philosophy, utopiansim, narrative and the role of theory in political thought. A variety of approaches are adopted and the aim is to show some of the many and diverse ways in which literature may enrich political theorising, as well as considering some of the problems to which this may give rise. The theorists discussed include Richard Rorty, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Martha Nussbaum. There are literary references from Greek tradegy, Jonathan Swift, Brian Moore, Elizabeth Bowen and contemporary feminist utopian fiction. All the contributors have a long-standing interest in the relations between literature and moral and political thought. They are concerned not to be restricted by conventional academic boundaries and are not united by any party-line or uniformity of intellectual commitments. This volume will be of great interest to all students engaged in the study of politics and literature.

Speaking and understanding can both be thought of as forms of translation, and in this way every speaker is an exile in language—even in one's mother tongue. Drawing from the philosophical hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, the testimonies of the German Jews and their relation with the German language, Jacques Derrida's confrontation with Hannah Arendt, and the poetry of Paul Celan, Donatella Ester Di Cesare proclaims Auschwitz the Babel of the twentieth century. She argues that the globalized world is one in which there no longer remains any intimate place or stable dwelling. Understanding becomes a kind of shibboleth that grounds nothing, but opens messianically to a utopia yet to come.

Paul Ricœur’s Moral Anthropology is a guide for readers who are interested in Paul Ricœur’s thoughts on morals in general, bringing together the different aspects of what Geoffrey Dierckxsens understands as Ricœur’s moral anthropology. This anthropology addresses the question what it means to be human, capable of participating in moral life. Dierckxsens argues that Ricœur shows that this participation implies being a self, living a singular lived existence with others and being responsible in institutions of justice. Through experiencing life one comes to learn taking moral decisions and the reasons for moral life. The wager of Ricœur’s hermeneutical approach to moral anthropology is—so Dierckxsens argues—to understand moral life on the basis of the interpretation of lived existence, rather than on the basis of cultural or natural patterns only, like many contemporary moral theories in analytical philosophy. Ricœur’s moral anthropology is thus particularly timely in that it offers a critical argument against contemporary moral relativism and reductionism. By bringing together Ricœur’s moral anthropology, and recent moral theories this book offers a novel perspective on Ricœur’s already well-established moral theory. Dierckxsens moreover offers a critical perspective by arguing that we should revisit certain moral concepts in Ricœur’s moral anthropology and in contemporary moral theories in analytical philosophy. He evaluates certain concepts in Ricœur’s work, such as the concept of universal moral norms and how it stands against cultural differences in morals. He moreover interrogates certain ideas of contemporary analytical philosophy, such as the idea of cultural moral relativism and whether we can find a common morality across the cultural differences. By placing Ricœur’s ideas on moral life within the context of the contemporary scene of moral theory, this book contributes well to Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricœur.