L’homo utopicus au prisme de l’imaginaire politique kunderien : de l’échec du sublime a l’impossibilité de l’utopie
Homo utopicus in the prism of the Kunderian political imaginary: from the failure of the sublime to the impossibility of utopia

Summary/Abstract: Milan Kundera's imagination is situated in the context of terminal modernity. The great myths that have haunted modern man are nothing more than old, impossible dreams. Homo utopicus as the archetype of modern man becomes, for Kundera, a mere ridiculous puppet who witnesses the collapse and overthrow of his utopias. If any political utopia transferred to the field of action inevitably passes through a brief ephemeral moment that Marc Richir calls "sublime", this utopia is taken over by the forces of the symbolic institution to deviate towards an aestheticization of politics. The Kunderian imagination questions this fatal diversion, which refers to the passage from the moment of political revolt to that of institutionalized revolution, from a phenomenal singularity to a totalitarian mass. This totalitarianism seems to be the basis of the tragedy which presides over the realization of any political utopia: how the homo utopicus who launches into the world an action which aims for happiness and freedom becomes, in Kundera, the one who carries out the hunt for the lost action? This tragic travesty seems to be linked to the failure of the moment of the sublime, which cannot survive in a society of the masses where the quixotic ego cannot exist without being linked to the symbolic institution and to a form of totalitarianism which haunts all utopian imaginations and connects political prophecy to what we can call an Oedipus effect. For Kundera homo utopicus becomes a political impossibility. Indeed, in a universe where there is an absence of singularities and where the characters become light, the great political utopias cannot work for the sublime nor resist the tragedy of the lost action.

• Details
• Contents