This book investigates how desires to transform our bodies can bring utopia to the present, and how utopian practices often lead to distinctly dystopian or anti-utopian outcomes. It is the first comprehensive study to address the paradoxical relationship between bodies and utopianism. Franziska Bork Petersen discusses doping, bodybuilding and cosmetic surgery alongside practices such as retouching the ‘body as image’ on social media, and looks at how fashion modelling and performance ‘estrange’ the body. Techniques and technologies to transform our bodies are increasingly accessible and suggest an excessive identification of the body as lacking. To ‘be a body’ in a culturally meaningful way, we incessantly improve our bodily appearance and capacity. The book therefore addresses the utopianism inherent in a cultural understanding of bodies as increasingly controllable.

Although over the last two decades there has been a proliferation of gender studies, transgender has largely remained institutionalised as an ‘umbrella term’ that encapsulates all forms of gender understandings differing from what are thought to be gender norms. In both theoretical and medical literature, trans identity has been framed within a paradigm of awkwardness or discomfort, self-dislike or dysfunctional mental health. Marginal Bodies, Trans Utopias is a multidisciplinary book that draws primarily from Deleuze and post-structuralism in order to reformulate the concept of utopia and ground it in the materiality of the present. Through a radically new conceptualisation of the time and space of utopia, it analyses empirical findings from trans video diaries on the Internet belonging to transgender individuals. In doing so, this volume offers new insights into the everyday challenges faced by these subjectivities, with case studies focusing on: the legal/social impact of the UK’s Gender Recognition Act 2004, boundaries of public and private as evidenced within public toilets, and the narrative of the ‘wrong body’. Contextualising and applying Deleuzian concepts such as ‘difference’ and ‘marginal’ to the context of the research, Nirta helps the reader to understand trans as ‘unity’ rather than as a ‘mind-body mismatch’. Contributing to the reading and understanding of trans lived experience, this book shall be of interest to postgraduates and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Transgender Studies, Critical Studies, Sociology of Gender and Philosophy of Time.

What do we want? What do we believe to be wrong with the world? How can we best change it? How should we live? Given the world as it is, how can we best achieve our dreams and desires? Utopian Bodies is, quite simply, a new approach to thinking about theory. Using the dominant themes of green and feminist politics, this fascinating and original text creates a new notion of utopian thought and life - "transgressive utopianism". This new concept is not a blueprint for an ideal polity; instead it demonstrates an approach to the world that is both idealistic and pragmatic, focussing on bodies of thought in relation to bodies of people: communities. Also spanning philosophy, political theory and deconstruction, this book is especially relevant today as the millennium marks a time of resurgence in utopian studies

Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context: Texts, Ideas, Spaces decisively demonstrates the extent to which utopianism has shaped political thought, cultural imaginaries, and social engagement after it was introduced into the Chinese context in the nineteenth century. In fact, pursuit of utopia has often led to action—such as the Chinese Revolution and the Umbrella Movement—and contested consequences. Covering a time span that goes from the late Qing to our days, the authors show that few ideas have been as influencing as utopia, which has compellingly shaped the imaginaries that underpin China’s historical change. Utopianism contributed to the formation of the Chinese state itself—shaping the thought of key figures of the late Qing and early Republican eras such as Kang Youwei and Sun Yat-sen—and outlived the labyrinthine debates of the second half of the twentieth century, both under Mao’s rule and during the post-socialist era. Even in the current times of dystopian narratives, a period in which utopia seems to be less influential than in the past, its manifestations persistently provide lifelines against fatalism or cynicism. This collection shows how profoundly utopian ideas have nurtured both the thought of crucial figures during these historical times, the new generation of mainland Chinese and Sinophone intellectuals, and the hopes of twenty-first-century Hong Kong activists. “Wang, Leung, and Zhang’s collection is a timely contribution to utopian studies built on consistent, coherent, boundary-crossing approaches. Interdisciplinary in its very sense, the essays bring intellectual history, literary studies, philosophy, and political theories together in dialogue. Of particular note are the essays that situate Hong Kong in a literary tradition that connects China, Hong Kong, and the beyond.” —Mingwei Song, Wellesley College “Utopia and Utopianism in the Contemporary Chinese Context is an impressive intellectual undertaking. The essays are highly engaging and offer powerful, multi-faceted approaches to utopianism in contemporary Chinese thought and practice. Stimulating and informative, the book as a whole addresses the dynamic interplay between the utopian and dystopian, thereby inspiring clarity in political thought and action in the present moment.” —Robin Visser, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

In Radical Utopianism and Cultural Studies, John Storey looks at the concept of utopianism from a cultural studies perspective and argues that radical utopianism can awaken the political promise of cultural studies. Between the Preface and the Postscript, there are seven chapters that explore different aspects of radical utopianism. The book begins with a definition of what radical utopianism means, with its productive combination of defamiliarization and desire. From there, it considers Thomas More’s invention of the concept of utopia with its double articulation of what is and what could be, Herbert Marcuse’s utopian rereading of Sigmund Freud’s concept of repression, Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers, the Paris Commune, and the Haight-Ashbury counterculture. In the final chapter, Storey examines two versions of utopian capitalism: retro and post. Although the main focus here is on Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign and Paul Mason’s recent bestseller Postcapitalism, the chaper begins with a brief discussion of Karl Marx on capitalism. Each chapter, in a different way, argues that radical utopianism defamiliarizes the manufactured naturalness of the here and now, making it conceivable to believe that another world is possible. This book provides an ideal introduction to utopianism for students of cultural studies as well as students within a number of related disciplines such as sociology, literature, history, politics, and media studies.

A 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist “A unique alien invasion story that focuses on the human and the myriad ways we see and don’t see our own world. Mesmerizing.” —Jeff VanderMeer A blend of searing social commentary and speculative fiction, Chana Porter’s fresh, pointed debut explores a strange new world in the wake of a benign alien invasion. Trina FastHorse Goldberg-Oneka is a fifty-year-old trans woman whose life is irreversibly altered in the wake of a gentle—but nonetheless world-changing—invasion by an alien entity called The Seep. Through The Seep, everything is connected. Capitalism falls, hierarchies and barriers are broken down; if something can be imagined, it is possible. Trina and her wife, Deeba, live blissfully under The Seep’s utopian influence—until Deeba begins to imagine what it might be like to be reborn as a baby, which will give her the chance at an even better life. Using Seeptech to make this dream a reality, Deeba moves on to a new existence, leaving Trina devastated. Heartbroken and deep into an alcoholic binge, Trina follows a lost boy she encounters, embarking on an unexpected quest. In her attempt to save him from The Seep, she will confront not only one of its most avid devotees, but the terrifying void that Deeba has left behind. A strange new elegy of love and loss, The Seep explores grief, alienation, and the ache of moving on.

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.