Renesans myślenia utopijnego i drogi jego transformacji w teorii społecznej początku XXI wieku
Renaissance of Utopian Thinking and the Ways of its Transformation in the Social Theory at the Beginning of the 21st Century

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I analyse the transformations that have taken place within utopian thinking since the beginning of the century. I claim that the idea of “the death of utopia” – which was widely discussed at the end of the 20th century – may be considered right in one of its forms only. This particular one is characterized by a will to create a model of an unchangeable, perfect, universal world where the disciplinary mechanism would play a crucial role. In contrast to such ideas some other visions of the future have been developing dynamically in recent years. Three types of such visions – as far as I am concerned the most important ones – are presented in this paper. The first group are iconoclastic utopias that authors withdraw from delineating detailed plans for the future in favor of both emphasising a need to transcend the existing reality and indicating the main directions of the changes. The second group are the “Dyonisian” utopias that are oriented towards the individual needs and are characterized by permanent changeability. The third group are retrospective utopias in which the historical events are the point of reference for creating the visions of better future. I argue that utopian thinking is not only developing these days, but that we are witnessing its reneissance and far-reaching evolution.

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