{"product_id":"concrete-utopianism-the-politics-of-temporality-and-solidarity-hardback-9780823299881","title":"Concrete Utopianism; The Politics of Temporality and Solidarity (Hardback) 9780823299881","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003eConcrete Utopianism\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cfont size=\"5\"\u003eThe Politics of Temporality and Solidarity\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eGary Wilder (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9780823299881\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003eHardback, published 9 August 2022\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e352 pages\u003cbr\u003e22.9 x 15.2 x 3.1 cm, 0.75 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFinalist, 2022 Big Other Book Award for Nonfiction\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Never before has it been more important for Left thinking to champion expansive visions for societal transformation. Yet influential currents of critical theory have lost sight of this political imperative. Provincial notions of places, periods, and subjects obstruct our capacity to invent new alignments and envision a world we wish to see. Political imagination is misread as optimism. Utopianism is conflated with idealism. Revolutionary traditions of non-liberal universalism and non-bourgeois humanism are rendered illegible. Negative critique becomes an end in itself. Pessimism is mistaken for radicalism and political fatalism risks winning the day. \u003cbr\u003e In this book, Gary Wilder insists that we place solidarity and temporality at the center of our political thinking. He develops a critique of Left realism, Left culturalism, and Left pessimism from the standpoint of heterodox Marxism and Black radicalism. These traditions offer precious resources to relate cultural singularity and translocal solidarity, political autonomy and worldwide interdependence. They develop modes of immanent critique and forms of poetic knowledge to envision alternative futures that may already dwell within our world: traces of past ways of being, knowing, and relating that persist within an untimely present; or charged residues of unrealized possibilities that were the focus of an earlier generation's dreams and struggles; or opportunities for dialectical reversals embedded in the contradictory tendencies of the given order.\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eConcrete Utopianism\u003c\/i\u003e makes a bold case for embracing what Wilder calls a politics of the possible-impossible. Attentive to the non-identical character of places, periods, and subjects, insisting that axes of political alignment and contestation are neither self-evident nor unchanging, reworking Lenin's call to \"transform the imperial war into a civil war,\" he invites Left thinkers see beyond inherited distinctions between \u003ci\u003ehere\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ethere\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003enow\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ethen\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eus\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ethem\u003c\/i\u003e. Guided by the spirit of Marx's call for revolutionaries to draw their poetry from a future they cannot fathom yet must nevertheless invent, he calls for practices of anticipation that envision and enact, call for and call forth, seemingly impossible ways of being together. He elaborates a critical orientation that emphasizes the dialectical relations between aesthetics and politics, political imagination and transformative practice, concrete interventions and revolutionary restructuring, past dreams and possible worlds, means of struggle and its ultimate aims. This orientation requires nonrealist epistemologies that do not mistake immediate appearances with the really real. Such epistemologies would allow critics to recognize uncanny and untimely aspects of social life, whether oppressive or potentially emancipatory. They may help actors to render the world subversively uncanny and untimely. They may clear pathways for the kind of critical internationalism and concrete utopianism that Left politics cannot afford to ignore.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003ePreface \u003c\/i\u003e  ix\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eIntroduction\u003c\/b\u003e: The Opposite of Pessimism Is Not Optimism   1\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eI. Refiguring Politics\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e1.\u003c\/b\u003e The Possible- Impossible: Dialectical Optics and Uncanny Refractions (Here, Now, Us)   17\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e2.\u003c\/b\u003e Concrete Utopianism and Critical Internationalism: Refusing Left Realism   35\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e3. \u003c\/b\u003ePracticing Translation: Beyond Left Culturalism   62\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e4. \u003c\/b\u003eOf Pessimism and Presentism: Against Left Melancholy   86\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eIntermezzo\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e5. \u003c\/b\u003eSolidarity   109\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e6.\u003c\/b\u003e Anticipation   122\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eII. Unthinking History\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e7. \u003c\/b\u003eTime as a Real Abstraction: Clock- Time, Nonsynchronism, Untimeliness   139\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e8. \u003c\/b\u003eDialectic of Past and Future   157\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e9.\u003c\/b\u003e It's Still Happening Again: Ontology, Hauntology, and Ellison's Dialectics of Invisibility   191\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e10.\u003c\/b\u003e A Prophetic Vision of the Past: Glissant's Poetics of Nonhistory   221\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eIII. Anticipating Futures\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e11.\u003c\/b\u003e The World We Wish to See   263\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eAcknowledgments \u003c\/i\u003e  291\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eNotes\u003c\/i\u003e   295\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eIndex \u003c\/i\u003e  363\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"Fordham University Press","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52580486152472,"sku":"9780823299881","price":81.49,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/concrete-utopianism-the-politics-of-temporality-and-solidarity-hardback-9780823299881","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}