Messy utopianism and the question of war: What does “staying with the trouble” mean in relation to war?
Messy utopianism and the question of war: What does “staying with the trouble” mean in relation to war?

Summary/Abstract: Donna Haraway’ s formula “staying with the trouble” frequently appears in discourses concerned with ecological catastrophe. Despite their ostentatious rejection of utopian thinking, Haraway and like-minded thinkers tend to consider messiness, tension or even conflict as antithetical to their ideal state of (no longer only human) society. A cultivation of a specific life-promoting and enabling messiness and ambiguity, however, is essential for nourishing new forms of a minoritarian, “messy” utopianism. This article reflectson contemporary utopianism’ s relation to war: do contemporary utopias address war explicitly or implicitly? In this context, bolo’ bolo (1983), written by sci-fi author and anarchist P. M. (a pseudonym of Hans Widmer), can serve as a helpful reference. This speculative utopia sketches out a different relation to conflict and its underlying presumptions of stately order, property, control and subjective self-determination. It proposes to conceive of violence as something not akin to war and thus offers a welcome alternative to simplistic notions of a “natural state”, in which humans are determined either by a bellicose or a peaceful inclination. This approach fills important gaps in the discussion of no-longer-modern utopianisms.

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