Call for Papers for a proposed edited collection of essays on: Anarchism and Utopianism
We extend this call for papers to authors from all disciplines interested in exploring the relationship between anarchism and utopianism.
The history of the relationship between anarchism and utopianism is marked by ambivalence. On the one hand, many classical anarchist thinkers such as Bakunin and Kropotkin repeatedly emphasised the "scientific" character of their social philosophy in an effort to distance themselves from the charge of utopianism. Likewise, most utopian authors have tended to emulate the state-centred utopian model propagated by Plato and More rather than the more libertarian example of de Foigny, Diderot, and Morris. On the other hand, a number of more contemporary anarchist utopian writers have explicitly questioned the mutual exclusivity of anarchism and utopianism. Herbert Read, for example, vigorously defended libertarian utopian thinking in his book Anarchy and Order, Paul Goodman consistently championed a pragmatic form of utopianism that had a tremendous influence on the counter-culture of the 1960s, and Ursula K. Le Guin published in 1974 the first anarchist utopia. Far from being merely of literary or historical interest, related elements of both the anarchist and utopian traditions have continued to inspire and inform a range of contemporary radical social movements, including global anti-capitalism, ecologism, feminism, pacifism, post-colonialism, and black, gay, and indigenous liberation.
In Anarchism and Utopianism, the first ever collection of original essays devoted to an assessment of the relationship between these two important traditions, we aim to fill a significant gap in the scholarly literature and to encourage further reflection on the as yet untapped revolutionary potential of anarchist utopianism. We welcome papers that address any aspect of the subject, whether the focus is philosophical (for example, to what extent and in what precise ways are anarchist and utopian ideas compatible?), literary (anarchism and utopianism in the work of Morris, Wilde, or Le Guin, for instance; what might an anarchist society look and feel like?), historical (the legacy of anarchist utopianism in the Paris Commune, the Spanish Revolution, the May 1968 uprisings, etc.), sociological (anarchist utopian perspectives on work, consumerism, war, gender, sexuality, race, education, art, spirituality, technology, and ecology), anthropological (what can anarchist utopians learn from actually existing stateless and marketless societies? does the idea of primitivism have a role to play in the construction of anarchist utopias?), or political (the relationship of means to ends, and anarchist utopianism as revolutionary practice and vital response to some of the most pressing problems of the contemporary world).
If you are interested in contributing to the volume, please e-mail to both of the editors by January 7, 2006 an essay title, c. 500-word proposal, and a very brief list of your relevant publications. Note that contributors to the collection may also have the opportunity - subject to the final approval of the USSE conference programme chair - to present their work at the Seventh Annual Conference of the Utopian Studies Society Europe, to be held in July 2006 in the historical port city of Tarragona, Spain.
Dr. Laurence Davis
Laurence Davis has taught political theory at Oxford University and University College Dublin, and is the editor (with Peter Stillman) of The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed (Lexington Books, 2005).
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Dr. Ruth Kinna
Ruth Kinna, Senior Lecturer in Politics at Loughborough University, UK, is the author of Anarchism: A Beginner's Guide (Oneworld, 2005).
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