5.1 IDIOT VERSUS IDEOMANE
Hannah Arendt (1958) wrote in The Human Condition:
Not only would we not agree with the Greeks that a life spent in privacy on "one's
own" (idion), outside of the wotld of the common, is "idiotic" by definition, or with
the Romans to whom privacy offered by a temporary refuge from the business of the
res publica; we call private today a sphere of intimacy ... whose peculiar manifoldness
and variety were certainly unknown to any period prior to the modern age. 277
The retreat into the private and intimate sphere has become a permanent refuge for
many citizens in a society in what Rodger's called the "age of fracture'~ A recent book
on the influence of Ernst Bloch warns of a "privatization of hope': The vanishing hope
for finding solutions in the political sphere, the decline of the public sphere and the
self-fulfilling prophecy of the homo economicus have fuelled the retreat intoa rationality based on self interest. The ''idiot'', in the Arendt sense, is the dominating figure in
most of the Western countries that have not (yet) fallen into deep economic crisis. Boris
Buden (2009) described the privatization ofhope stating that "it is hope without society
(Gesellschaftslosigkeit der Hoffnung) not the society without hope (Hoffnungslosigkeit
der Gesellschaft)"278 that is the defining feature of contemporary existence.
The void in the public sphere is filled with post-democratic politics or, with a growing
amount of citizens that are attracted by groups for whom the world "radical" does not
mean going to the raot of the problem but to simplify the problems and accordingly
the solutions.
Creagh (2007), recalls Proudhon's definition of "ideomanes":
The most dangerous of them are, perhaps, those people whom Proudhon calls
" ' Arendt, H. (1998). The Human Condition (2nd ed.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. (Original work
published 1958), p. 38.
'"' Buden, B. (2009). Zone des Obergangs: Vom Ende des Postkommunismus. Frankfurta.M.: Suhrkamp, p.169.
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"ideomanes", individuals imprisoned in the bubble of their ideas, including doctrinaire anarchists. They propound a platform popped out of the mind of some leader
or bureaucratically elaborated in some insular institutional meeting, and they require
emancipation movements to subordinate themselves to that program. These obsessive
personalities try to convince the world, they offer the philosopher's stone, they even
elaborate "utopias". They sacrifice their lives, their desires, their aspirations and their
families to "the Cause': and if they go so far as to mould themselves in those trends
that seem to carry their ideas, they may even mutate into monsters.
The ideomanes are blinkered, their ideas are an obstacle to the analysis of their own
subjective reality and hold them back from the theoretical exploration of the infinity
of possibles. 279
The growing polarization of European societies, and the recent developments for example in France ("Charlie Hebdo") show that with "ideomanes" a political discussion
is impossible. And even if some of the movements might disintegrate, the overall rise
of fundamentalism (religious or political) isin proportional relationship to the rise of
"idiots" who have retreated into their privacy. Both phenomena, the "idfomane" and the
"idioC have disconnected themselves from the analysis of their own subjective reality
and severed their link to society, and thus fortified their positions in fundamentalist delusion or enclosed themselves in their private bubble. Both versions represent a
narrowing down of possible alternatives and ultimately cement the status quo that the
and the neoliberal status quo. The reproach made to "16th century type" of Utopias can
thus he rejected. As Levitas (2005) clarified: "I would argue, however, that the problem
of totalitarianism is exactly that: a problem of totalitarianism, not one of utopianism."281
In a different context Levitas (2011) recalls that:
... utopia is .a social construct which arises not from a 'natural' impulse subject to social
mediation, but as a socially constructed response to an equally socially constructed gap
between the needs and wants generated by a particular society and the satisfactions
available to and distributed by it. All aspects of the scarcity gap are social constructs,
including the propensity to imagine it away by some means or other. 282
This flexible fundament that utopian thinking is standing on, the awareness that it is a
social response to a social construction, is giving contemporary utopias an emancipatory potential and the flexibility to react to changes in the social construction. Hannah
Arendt has also pointed out that "to avoid misunderstanding: the human condition is
not the same as human nature."283
The human condition, that A~endt understood as the realm of plurality, action and the
birth of new ideas, has been transformed under the social reconstruction of the "There
is No Alternative" (TINA) ideology into a realm of either self-centered and passive "idiocy" (again, in the sense of Arendt's definition) or into the narrow models of society
promoted by "ideomanes".
"idfomane" and the "idiot" actually want to escape from.
5.2 ~IZEK'S WAITING ROOM
In the context of the "idfomane" -"idiot" polarity a redefinition of utopian thinking
would mean that utopias should have the inspirational energy to motivate "idiots" to
get out of their fatalistic retreat while avoiding the fundamentalist world pictures of the
"ideomanes". As Russen, Fehr and Rieger (2005) have asserted:
We believe that, contrary to its perceptions and connotations in hegemonic contemporary ideologies and thought models of the political, a rehabilitation of utopian thought
is necessary. This reduced and narrowly defined concept of the utopian represents but
280
one segment of the many perspectives that transcend the human world.
In order to avoid that the rehabilitated utopia develops only in a retroactive or reactive
way, in the sense that it reacts to allegations against past utopian failures visions, the
emancipatory aspect of utopia has to be highlighted as a means to counter "idfomanes"
So how can "hope without society" or the "privatized hope" be overcome? Frederic
Jameson (2005) does not explicitly point at Kierkegard's leap of faith but the religious
undertones are echoing in his answer. He calls for a "Utopian leap, between our empirical
present and the Utopian arrangements of this imaginary future:' 284 Levitas (2011) also
underlines the role of "belieC she sees the "increase in fatalism" in relationship to the
"weakening of the belief in progress" and criticizes that:
Images of decline, however, are now much more prevalent - both the idea of a gradual
slide into a worsening situation and the fear of dramatic and radical collapse cause by
social breakdown, nuclear catastrophe or ecological disaster. It is a climate conductive
to dystopia, the warning of what will happen if... - and there is often little conviction
that averting action can be assured. 285
The problem is that this dimate of fatalism is even promoted by figures of the political
'" Levitas, R. (2005), p. 4.
281
279
Creagh, R. (2007). Anarchism is Back: We May Now Re(dis)cover Utopia. Spaces ofUtopia: Electronic
Joumal, no 6, autumn/winter, pp. 61-83 (p. 74).
180
Riisen, J., Fehr, M., & Rieger, T. W. (eds.) (2007), 7hinking Utopia, p. IX.
Levitas, R. (2011 ), p. 210.
"'Arendt, H. (1958), pp. 9-10.
284
Jameson, F. (2005), p. 147.
"' Levitas, R. (2011), p. 225.
143
144
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( A P) A R T C 0 N T E M P 0 RA RY ART A N D U T 0 P 1 A
inactivity. For any thinking about social change without the awareness of a wider notion
of agency (than just the participation in the health care debate) will ultimately result in
fatalism. Levitas ( 2011) remarks that för utopias to be located in the future "some nation
of change, and an agency capable of effecting this, is necessary''. 289 She points out that:
.. .it is fatalism that is the key issue. Where it is no longer assumed that social organization is inherently controllable by human agents, or where it is no longer believed
that the agents who are in control can themselves be made accountable to the rest of
us, much of the motive för the construction of utopias as goals is lost. lhey cease to
be images ofhope-for future and become again expressions of desire. The function of
utopia thus reverts from that of a goal and catalyst of change to one of criticism and
the education of desire, without any necessary move forward into action.290
left. In a youtube clip, under the title "Don't Act. Just Think" (2012), Slavoj, Zizek who
describes himself in the dip as "some kind of communist", criticizes that a lot of people
in the political left do not have an answer to the question:
What do you really want? What should replace the system? And then you get one
hig confusion. You get either a general moralistic answer. ( ... ) So either this or some
kind of vague Keynesian, social democracy, or a simple moralistic critique, and so
on and so on.286
1
Zizek likens the Occupy Wall Street movement to Bartleby, and criticizes that the "20 h
century alternatives miserably failed" and reframes the question what to do as "how to
abolish market without again regressing into relations of servitude and domination?"
He condudes:
My advice would he, hecause 1 don't have any simple answers, two things (a) precisely
to start thinking. Don't get caught into this pseudo-activist pressure. ( ... ) Mayhe we
should say that 'In the twentieth century we mayhe tried to change the world to quickly,
the time is to interpret it again, to start thinking. Second thing (... ) we should he very
careful what we do. (... ) We do stir up puhlic debates hut we cannot he accused of
being utopians in the had sense of the term:'287
Ultimately, out of fear of being accused to he a utopian, the left should get involved into,
för example, the health care dehate that was going on during the time that the clip was
made. The really interesting question is why the self-prodaimed ("kind of") communist
Zizek, who has been thinking his whole life about capitalism does not come up with a
solution better than "get engaged in the health care debate:' And why his lifelong reflection has failed to come to the condusion that the market has also produced relations of
servitude and domination. Zizek's conception of political change that is animated by a
rear-view mirror (in the McLuhan sense), instead of at least attempting to project solutions, puts the emancipatory struggle into a waiting room.
Goodwin and Tyler (1982) call för a reconstructive political theory and name the three
prerequisites:
1) a conception of society as an artefact (unlike Nature), capahle ofheing purposefully
altered by man himself
2) the conviction that progress, qua improvement, is possible
288
3) an analysis of socio-political life which is free from fatalism ...
In Zizek's waiting room all three prerequisites are ignored in favor of a fatalistic retreat into
The problem of agency, as Levitas underlines, does not only lie in the utopian genre
but in the political culture in general. The consequence is that the locus of opposition
shifts into the realm of culture and thereby away from the actual question of power. For
Levitas the "move from compensation to criticism to change has hecome a move from
change to criticism:'291 This can he translated as a weakening of utopian thinking för, as
Levitas darifies, "the realization of utopia depends upon hope, upon not only wishful
thinking but will-full action:'292
Once in the realm of culture and criticism, and out of the domain of "will-full action''
the Zizeks, Hardts, Negris and Agambens of this world can pacify and diffuse the locu~
of opposition even further_ The paradox is that in a waiting room, which has no outside,
Bartlehy could not even articulate his famous "I would prefer not to" because nohody
will come to ask any action from him.
5.3 RETOPIA
While it is clear the desire for change has manifested itself in protest movements like
the "Indignados" or "Occupy" and on the reactionary side in the "Tea Party" orin the
rise of European right-wing parties, the question is why the movements on the left have
disintegrated so quickly while the movements on the right have been integrated into the
political decision making process. The "Tea Party" and its European spiritual cousins are
articulating some form of a glorification of the (lost) past, which according to Goodwin
and Tyler "renders the thinker impotent with respect to both present or future"293. So
their agenda of change has no emancipatory potential for the future. On the left, the
2
"
290
286
ZiZek, S. (2012). Don't Act. Just Think, uploaded 2012, consultedJanuary, 2Slh, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgR6uaVqW sQ
287
Ibid.
288
Goodwin, B., & Tyler, K. (1981), pp. 23-24.
Levitas, R. (2011), p. 224.
Ibid., p. 226.
"' Ibid., p. 228.
m Ibid., pp. 230-231.
293
Goodwin, B., &Tyler, K. (1981), p. 23.
145
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RETOP I A
(AP)ART CON TE MP O RAR Y ART AND UT OPIA
ahsence of a "future image" and possihly the too loose forms of organization have led
to a quick disintegration and the potential of agency along with it . But this does not
mean that the only alternative is Zizek's waiting room. Levitas (2011) writes that the
"problem of agency does not arise hecause the desire for an alternative has weakened,
hut because hope depends on the transition appearing to he practically possible." As the
importance of the factor of hope has heen already conceptualized hy Bloch, the realm
of the possihle has to he the focus of any emancipatory movements. Without a dear
conceptualization (that remains tlexible enough to he adjusted to changes in the social
construct called society) of the possible, without an articulation of utopian mental images, political agency will ultimately vaporize and revert into critidsm.
To comeback to the four different types of utopianism, the "contemporary outopia': the
"contemplative utopia': the "activism without utopian mental picture" and the "retopia':
the later type is the only type of utopianism having the potential to animate political
agency for more than just a season or two of protest. The retopia, in its focus on agency
is countering the passivity of the "idiots" (in Arendt's sense) and in its openness it is a
resistance to the fundamentalism of the "ideomane'~
As the preliminary definition (in chapter 3) indicated, retopia is based on the idea of
reconstructive utopia according to Lewis Mumford (1922), hut modified in a number
of factors, so that retopia cannot be translated as reconstructive utopia but rather as a
return to the reconstructive utopia, which is an important difference because unlike the
reconstructive utopia, tbe retopia does not have a claim on human nature, is explicitly
grounded in the local environment (and not in ahstract universals) is explicitly oriented
towards (political) action, and acknowledges the importance of a utopian mental image
(that should not he a dogmatic blueprint but open to evolution).
Nicole Pohl's definition of Utopia is also valid för retopia. She argues that:
Utopia is and must be flexible, heterogeneous, local yet global, located at the blurring
boundaries of the aesthetic, ethical, juridical and political. Utopia demonstrates the
continual exploration of that which is possible.294
In the context of retopia, "blurring boundaries" does not mean diffused focus but openness to other priorities than disciplinary borders and narrow knowledge generation.
What retopia has in common with Wright's "real utopia" is that it "is grounded in the
belief that what is pragmatically possible is not fixed independently of our imaginations, but is itself shaped by our visions. Self-fulfilling prophecies are powerful forces
2~ Pohl, N. (2009). Utopia Matters. Spaces ofUtopia: Electronic Journal, no 7, pp. 1-14 (p. 10).
in historY:'295 This optimism is explicitly countering the reigning fatalism of many contemporary thinkers. lt is explicitly hased on the possihilities of political agency and an
encouragement to leave "Zizek's waiting room''. As the Detroit example illustrated, a
return to (the art of) the commons can he a way of engaging people in their physical
environment on concrete transformative projects in the interstices of a society that has
permanently excluded ane part of its population. In areas ofhigh youth unemployrnent
like Spain, Greece or Italy it is also conceivable that people without perspective find a
local project (independent of any state initiatives) in which their skills can find an outlet.
The new "islands of retopia" can be located not in the future or on a remote place but
in the middle of Western societies. The knowledge generated in such projects can be
valuable if Wallerstein's prognosis turns out to be correct in that we are living on a point
of hifurcation. Tue local social experiments can generate an new form of activism that is
not based on abstract critique but on self generated knowledge about social alternatives.
Each local social experirnent should agree on a common value system and the plurality
of experiments that are all locally rooted can also provide a plurality of different experiences. TINA becomes TAMA (There are Many Alternatives). All the know-how and all
the locations that are left-overs of the capitalist transformation binge can be bundled to
generate new forms of social organization.
Therefore retopia is based on the importance of a vision of different futures, on the
power of imagination (further defined as Vorstellungskraft), on the volition and on the
constitutive power of action.
5.4 (RE)VISION
The importance of a vision of the future seems to he a banality but, increasingly, the scope
of vision has shifted (to the rear view mirror), the language has become more diffused
and there is a sense of discomfort when articulating visions. Being a "dreamer" has a
more and more negative connotation in a world that proudly wears its narrow pragmatism on the banner. But, as Moritz Kaufman (1879) has pointed out, "here we see the
value of utopias, in that they hold up a higber idea! of society and prevent a stationary
or rather stagnant condition of humanity, satisfied with the base facts of life:'296 These
words by Kaufman are now like an odd echo of the l 9'h century. Roughly a hundred
years later (in the late 1970s), the sound ofhigher ideals was more shrill. Paul Weyrich,
an early American neo-conservative, asserted: "It's a war of ideology, it's a war of ideas,
it's a war of our way oflife:'297 In the more moderate 21 st century version the idea sounds
like this, Haiven and Khasnahish (2014): "Without visions of how the world might be
m Wright, E. 0. {2010), p. 6.
296
Levitas, R. (2011), p. 16.
291
Rodgers, T. D. (2011), p. 1.
147
RE T OP I A
148
( A p) A R T C 0 N TE M P 0 RA RY A R T A N D U T 0 P 1 A
different, struggles stagnate and decline:'298 Orin the words of David Graeber (2012):
"Still if there is anything that the last several hundred years of world history have shown,
it's that utopian visions can be powerful:'299 For Graeber the examples of ~he ideas ~f
Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham or the French Revolution show the force of ideas. Lewis
Mumford (1922) writes about the function ofideas:
The world of ideas serves many purposes. Two of them bear heavily upon our investigation of utopia. on one hand the the pseudo-environment or idolum is a substitute for
the external world; it is a sort of house of refuge to which we flee when our contacts
with "hard facts" become too complicated to carry through or too rough to face. On
the other hand, it is by means of the idolum that the facts of the everyday world are
brought together and assorted and sifted, and a new sort of reality is projected back
gain upon the external world.300
So the world of ideas is not only an escape from reality but also a place where the reality
is "rearranged" and mirrored back on the reality in the form of a vision: This visi~~ can
then serve as a demonstration of other possibilities and open new options to cnt1cally
analyse the reality. As Goodwin and Tyler (1982) argue:
. .
..
.
The basis of utopia's claim to be taken seriously as political theory is its cntical analys1s
of socio-political reality, as much as its ideal vision. Social criticism is not the particular
prerogative of utopians, but they conduct it in an idiosyncratic forceful fashion'. ~y
demonstration rather by reasoned argument. One cause of the widespread hostlhty
to admitting utopian 'fantasy' to the corpus of political thought is the extent to which
it subverts, or renders unnecessary, reasoned argument and replaces it by its symbols,
301
inversions and the all-powerful reductio ad absurdum.
But in order to he subversive utopian visions do not necessarily proceed via reductio ad
absurdum, they can also provide, according to Goodwin and Tyler, "a dynamic element
into the conceptualization, justification and criticism of the present with reference to
past, future or 'lateral' possibilities" and thereby conceptually "escape the ever. domi.nant
present".302 And, as could be added here, also help t~' avoid s~eing the ~ture ~ a d~ffer­
ent perspective than through the "rear-view mirror . As LeVItas underhnes, the VIrtue
· 1 progre~s."303. In
of utopia is that it holds up an ideal, an ideal which encourages soc1a
times when visions only take a positive connotation if they come from the sc1entifictechnological sector or from business (occasionally also from the arts), the reintroduc299
Haiven, M., & Khasnabish, A. (2014), p, 63.
299
Graeber, D. (2012), p. 354.
""' Mumford, L. (1922), p. 9.
301
Goodwin, B., & Taylor, K. (1981), p. 17.
302
Ibid., p. 22.
303
Levitas, R. (2011), p. 13.
tion of "vision" into the political process would revitalize debates about the shape that
society should take. The political as the sphere of struggle of opposing opinions should
re-embrace the struggle of opposing visions.
5.5 THE 1Qth TRANSLATION OF IMAGINATION
In order to develop visions in an environment where, for many people, alternatives to
the status quo are inconceivable, the imagination needs to he animated. But imagination
as a concept is too general, and does not contain a specific direction. The English word
"imagination" has ten translations in German: Fantasie, Einbildung, Einbildungskraft,
Vorstellung, Einfallsreichtum, Ideenreichtum, Imagination, Vorstellungsgabe, Vorstellungskraft, Vorestellungsvermögen (source: leo.org). While words like Fantasie or
Einbildung refer to the non-existent, Ideen- or Einfallsreichtum refer to the amount of
ideas, Imagination has a visual connotation, the concepts related to Vorstellung are closest to the kind of imagination that is needed in terms of retopian thinking. Vorstellung
literally means "putting something in front of something else" ( or "placing something
else in front of the existing"), but has also connotations like "idea~ "conception': "vision",
"belief" and "image". Vorstellungsgabe and Vorstellungsvermögen refer to the skill to
imagine, Vorstellungskraft refers to the "strength': "energy': "agency" and "potency" to
imagine. So Vorstellungskraft, the tenth translation of "imagination" is not retranslatable
into English, but it actually means the strength, energy, agency and potency to "place
something else in front the existing': to develop ideas, conceptions, visions beliefs and
images. In this all encompassing complexity, Vorstellungsk.raft is the kind of imagination
that is needed in order to develop new visions. All of the following English quotes should
be understood in this wider understanding instead of the very reductive, ill defined and
unimaginative term "imagination''.
Robert T. Tally Jr. (2010), recalls the old 1968 slogan "power to the imagination" and
proposes a reconsideration of the role of imagination:
Perhaps it seems overly optimistic or even na'ive, but the idea of imagination as a
revolutionary force retains value in a world in which real alternatives to the status
quo are taken to be, not just impossible, but unimaginable.304
Tally Jr. sees scientific realism as a "non-imaginative representation of reality" that
"may produce an accurate portrait of a very limited field, the imagination makes possible a more comprehensive, and therefore more 'realistic' representation:'305 In this
interpretation, realism without imagination is impossible and merely leads to a limited
understanding. In the same vein, Ronald Creagh (2007) locates Utopia "at the crossroads
""Tally Jr, R. T. (2010). Sartre, Marcuse, and the Utopian Project Today. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and
Culture, vol 12, iss. 1, p. 3.
,.. Ibid., p. 6.
149
RETO P A
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150
(AP)ART CONTEMPORARY ART AN D UTOPIA
between the actual world and collective imagination. It questions nothing less than a
world vision, because it is a query about reality." 306 Creagh thus sees Utopia in a direct
tension between the actual world and imagination that has the potential to redefine
reality, and he adds one important element: the collective dimension.
Imagination reduced to the individual is like privatized hope. As Hannah Arendt (1958)
stated, the "only thing people have in common is their private interests" and as a consequence "both the public and private spheres oflife are gone, the public because it has
become a function of the private and the private because it has become the only common
concern left:'307 For the imagination that means the same that Werner Heisenberg (1955)
famously stated about science "zum ersten Mal im Laufe der Geschichte der Mensch auf
dieser Erde nur noch sich selbst gegenueberstehf' 308(for the first time in history man
encounters on this earth only himself). Mark Fisher (2009) quotes a similar idea by Adam
Curtis: "in a world of individualism everyone is trapped within their own feelings, trapped
within their own imaginations:'309 This individualism trap för the imagination is fortified
by the fact that it becomes more and more difficult to relate to other people, or as Berardi
( 2011) calls it the "faculties of conjunction'' are dulled by the process of cognitive reformatting and as a consequence individuals are on a "passage from a conjuctive to a connective
form of human concatenation:' As Berardi clarifies: "Conjunction is becoming-other. In
310
contrast, in connection each element remains distinct and interacts only functional1y:'
In this context the idea of "collective" has a strange connotation, because the immediate
"functionality" of this connection is not visible. The motivation of being mobilized för
an idea outside of the immediate self interest is at first more difficult to comprehend.
Rodgers (2011) writes that "in the course of those shifts of ideas and imagination, the
webs of dependence and connection that joined the disaggregated selves h ad become
far harder to articulate:'m The consequence is connection instead of conjunction and
private imagination instead of collective imagination. The imagination and sense of a
shared interest (that is not only the sum of private interests) are seriously weakened which
ultimately just strengthens the status quo that has fuelled this fracture. As a consequence
as Tally Jr. (2010) points out, "it is frequently impossible to gain a clear picture of the
status quo itself, never mind its putative alternatives. Again, the imagination itself must
he empowered in such a system:' 312
'°
6
301
3""
David Graeber (2011) sees an urgency to develop new forms of imagination, especially
since the financial crisis of 2008 and criticizes that "it's almost impossible för anyone
to imagine anything else. The war against the imagination is the only one the capitalists have actually managed to win:'m The "war against the imagination'' is för Graeber
the establishment of a successful narrative that there is no alternative, the idea that the
current social organization is the only possible solution. But, he remarks, "total systems
don't really exist, they're just stories we tell ourselves, and the fact that capital is dominant
now does not mean that it will always be''. 314
When Graeber (2011) writes about imaginationhe refers to ameaning ofthe word that
is pre-Cartesian because it is "only after Descartes, really, that the word 'imaginary' came
to mean, specifi.cally, anything that is not real:' Before Descartes, before the "transcendent
notion of imagination': in the common Ancient and Medieval conception, in Graeber's
interpretation, "the imagination was the zone of passage between reality and reason"3ts_
Graeber advocates a return to this pre-Cartesian understanding of imagination. He writes:
... the kind of imagination I have been referring to here is much closer to the old,
immanent conception. Critically, it isin no sense static and free-floating, but entirely
caught up in projects of action that aim to have real effects on the real world, and as
such, always changing and adapting.Jt6
lmagination and action are connected in this understanding. In this passage between reality and reason, the imagination has the crucial role to actively shape the understanding of
reality and ensure that reason produces an active response that enables action on reality.
As reality is collective reality, an enclosing of imagination to the private imagination
would inevitably reduce the understanding of reality and limit the possibilities of action.
The importance of collective imagination is highlighted in the concept of radical imagination by Haiven and Khasnabish (2014). Radical imagination is defined as an "aspirational
term'' which aims at imagining "the world, life and social institutions" with the explicit
recognition "that the world can and should he changed"317• Haiven and Khasnabish
underline that:
... the radical imagination is not just about dreaming about different futures. It's about
bringing those possible futures 'back' to work on the present, to inspire action and
new forms of solidaritytoday. Likewise, the radical imagination is about drawing on
the past, telling different stories about how the world came to be the way it is, and
Creagh, R. (2007), p. 61.
Arendt, H . (1958), p. 69.
Heisenberg, W. (1956). Das Naturbild der heutigen Physik. Hamburg: Rowohlt, p. 17-18.
°' Fisher, M . (2009), p. 74.
3
""Berardi, F. (2011), p. 30.
m Rodgers, D. T. (2011), p. 271.
312 Tally Jr, R. T. (2010),.Sartre, Marcuse, and the Utopian Project Today, p. 5-6.
313
Graeber, D. (2011), p. 113.
11
Ibid., p. 98.
•
"' Ibid., p. 52.
"' lbid., p. 53.
3 17
Haiven, M., & Khasnabish, A. (2014), p. 3.
151
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152
( A p) A R T C 0 N T E M P 0 R A R Y A RT A N D U T 0 P 1A
remembering the power and importance of past struggles and the way their spirits
live on in the present.318
The focus of radical imagination is "to imagine and make common cause with the experiences of other people'' and "to build solidarity across boundaries and borders, real or
imagined"319 with the explicit intention to undermine the existing power struc~res. ~e
collective dimension is thus not only an ethical dimension, but has also the dimension
of enlarging the scope, as Haiven and Khasnabish (2014) explain:
,
. . .
... we understand the imagination as not merely the 'private property of the mdlVldual.
'Jhrough shared e:xperiences, language, stories, ideas, art and theory w_e share part.of
our imagination. We create, with those around us, multiple, overlappmg, contrad1ctory and coexistent imaginary Iandscapes, horizons of common possibility and shared
understanding.120
Thus solidarity and imagination are intertwined in the form of a "shared landscape and
a common resource that both informs our actions and relationships and is, in turn,
shaped by our actions and relationships:•m So in radi:~l imag~nati~n ~e ~.reative force
of the individual is enhanced through the creation of shared unagmanes ·
To come back to the initial redefinition of imagination as "Vorstellungskraft" as the
strength, energy, agency and potency to "place something else in front ~f the existing",
to develop ideas, conceptions, visions beliefs and images, the understandmg can be now
expanded. If "Vorstellungskraft" is understood as the passage from reality to re_as~n,
then its energy can be used not only to merely place something in front of the extStmg
but to alter it. Not only in the sense of developing a different reason but also to create a
different reality. If the Vorstellungskraft is then also understood as "shared imagi~~ies':
and thereby a collective dimension is added to it, then the concept becomes pohtically
charged as a means to collective agency. So in this reinterpretati~n Vorstellungskraft
means: the strength of collective agency to project a new understandmg on the status quo
with the explicit aim to alter it. This redefinition does not mean a functio~al :edu~tio~ of
the idea of imagination but a re-establishement of the link between reality, im.agm~tion
and reason in order to counter the narrowing down of imagination through its pnvate
enclosure. Individual imagination is primordial but in order to reestablish its freedom
and widen its scope, Vorstellungskraft has the potential to apen new possibilities to
stimulate political action.
5.6 THE CONFIDENCE GAME
In politics, Vorstellungskraft can have a transformative potential. As Graber (2012)
explains, politics "is the art of persuasion; the political is that dimension of social life
in which things really do become true if enough people believe them:'322 In reverse this
means that if nobody believes in change because there is not enough "Vorstellungskraft" then stagnation becomes the status quo. In Graeber's understanding politics is a
"confidence game" that is "very similar to magic".323 As Graeber (2011) illustrates the
political process:
If you managed to convince everyone on earth that you can breathe under water, it
won't make a difference: if you try it you will still drown. On the other hand, if you
could convince everyone in the entire world that you were the King of France, then you
would actually be the King of France. (In fact, it would probably work just to convince
a substantial partion of the French civil service and military). 324
This shows the power of confidence games and ideas in the political process. While
the political reality is obviously more complex, in its essence "political power has to be
constantly recreated persuading others to recognize one's power"325 • That means any
contemplative attitude towards politics is a way ofrenouncing political power. Persuasion
and action are the fundaments of political power. As Hannah Arendt (1958) clarifies "men
constantly create their own, self-made conditions': So, according to Arendt, "since action
is the political activity par excellence, natality, not mortality, may be the central category
of political, as distinguished from metaphysical thought."326 Action is the domain of the
political and inactivity or passivity is the equivalent of the domestication of society. In
this sense Bartleby can never be political because he opts för the fatalistic retreat of the
"idiot". As Arendt observed already in the 1950s, a tendency towards excluding action
was a way of standardizing societies and producing conformity. Arendt writes:
It is decisive that society, on all its levels, excludes the possibility of action, which
formerly was excluded from the household. Instead, society e:xpects from each of its
members a certain kind of behavior, imposing innumerable and various rules, ali of
which tend to "normalize'' its members, to make them behave, to exclude spontaneous
action or outstanding achievement.327
As action can have unpredictable consequences, political control means replacing action
with behavior, which means normalized activity in a regular predictable frame. Arendt
sees that this conformism, "the assumption that men behave and do not act with respect
m Graeber, D. (2012). p. 342.
323
Graeber, D. (20 l l ), p. 94.
3"
lbid., p. 94.
lbid., p. 94.
318
Ibid., p. 3.
32.S
3 19
Ibid., p. 3.
"
Ibid., p. 3.
m lbid., p. 40.
320
m Ibid.,
p. 226.
6
Arendt, H. (1958), p. 9.
153
-154
RETOPIA
( A P) A R T C 0 N T E M P 0 RA RY A R T A N D U T 0 P 1 A
to each other, that lies at the root of the modern science of economics."328 So hehavior is
the category of the homo economicus, the formatted homo sapiens.
With the rise of neo-liberalism this homo economicus was distilled even further hecause
the domain of the imagination was colonized in the same way as the domain of action.
David Graeber (2011) remarks that "the neoliberal project really has been stripped down
to what was always its essence: not an economic project at all, but a political project,
designed to devastate the imagination, and willing". 329
But action, imagination and willing are closely connected, not only but also in the political process. Arendt (1958) lays the connection open by tracing back the etymological
roots of action:
Greek and Latin, unlike the modern languages, contain two altogether different and
yet interrelated words with which to designate the verb "to act". To the two Greek
verbs archein ("to begin'', "to lead'', finally "to rule") and prattein ("to pass through~ "to
achieve'', "to finish") correspond the two Latin verbs agree ("to set in motion'', "to lead")
and gerere (whose original meaning is "to bear"). Here it seems as though each action
were divided in two parts, the beginning made by a single person and the achievement
330
in which many join by "bearing" and "finishing" the enterprise, by seeing it through.
Action thus means to begin and then convince others to join. In an environment ofconformism every beginning is met with rejection because it transcends the frame of"normalized"
regular hehavior and ultimately challenges the status quo. Thus action is not only at the
root of politics but also at the root of utopia. Utopias "hoost human activity" and "deliberate collective action"331 , as Levitas (2011) underlines. Action is the entryticket into the
"confidence game'' ofpolitical transformation. But action in the framework of enclosure (of
Vorstellungskraft) and in the absence of a retopian mental picture risks to be co-opted hy
the status quo. Immanuel Wallerstein (1998) claims that there are at least two alternatives:
If we are making a fundamental historical choice in the next fifty years, what is it
between? Clearly, our choice is between a system (analogous to the present one in
some fundamentals) in which some have significantly greater privileges than others,
and one that is relatively democratic and egalitarian.
With much, much more value produced, the difference between the top stratum and
the rest could be and has been far greater than in the other historical systems, even if
it is true that the top stratum of the present system has included a larger percentage
of the system's overall population than that of preceding historical systems.332
'28
Ibid., p. 41.
329
Graeber, D. (2011), pp. 5-6.
'"' Arendt, H. (1958), p. 189.
331
Levitas, R. (2011), p. 196.
"'Wallerstein, I. (1998), p. 69.
The places för experimenting the "relatively democratic and egalitarian" alternative
might he opening up in the cities that have lost their value (in the sense of capitalist
value generation) like Detroit. Detroit, when a flourishing industrial city, was called
the "Future of America". The question is if the 2015 version of Detroit is the future of a
retopian reconstruction of the future.
Can places like Detroit hecome the avant-garde of a new social arrangements, or is the
social fragmentation stronger than the need to survive in a hostile environment? One
must ask if any local example för the success of different social organization (that is not
an ahstract theory hut a lived experience) can create a sense of opening of the enclosure. For, as Graeher (2011) underlines, "the moment there appears to he any sense of
opening, the imagination will immediately spring forth''. 333 This imagination has the
potential to animate an increasing part of the population of (Western) societies who have
currently opted to be "idiots" (in the Arendt sense) or who have been outsourced into
passivity (e.g. the unemployed youth in Southern Europe). But as pervious social and
art movements have shown, this energy can he also diffused if it lacks a retopian vision.
Art and science can contrihute to this process by not reproducing the enclosure in their
practice and by including a utopian dimension into the generation ofknowledge. Lewis
Mumford (1922) declared that:
"Though the paralysis of the arts and sciences our contemporary programs för revolution and reform have done very little to lift our heads over the disorderly and bedraggled environments in which we conduct our daily business."334
Although the idea of revolution has henceforth found its justified place in the advertising world, the idea of utopian political transformation is certainly only present in the
"bedraggled" margins of arts and sciences. Hence the "paralysis" and the sense of not
lifting the heads high enough. Mumford's answer to the TINA premise was clear: "Our
choice is not between eutopia and the world as it is, but between eutopia and nothing
- or rather nothingness:' 335
"'Graeber, D. (2011), p. 33.
"'Mumford, L. (1922), p. 180.
m
Ibid., p. 160.
155