Utopia Beyond Capitalism in Contemporary Literature

A Commons Poetics

Raphael Kabo

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9781350288577
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Featuring readings of contemporary utopian poetry and fiction from authors such as Juliana Spahr, Mohsin Hamid, Bong Joon-ho, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lidia Yukavitch, and Cory Doctorow, this book investigates the commons - a form of organisation based on collectivity, communalism and sharing - as a type of transition between capitalist precarity and crisis and anti-capitalist futures. Each of the texts under examination was written in opposition to a particular crisis of the capitalist present - inequality, political representation, mobility, and climate change - and develops a particular mode of utopian 'commoning'. Through its examination of these writers, crises and texts, this book reaffirms the use of utopianism as a tool for generating and representing alternative futures for a world in the midst of ongoing planetary crisis.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Commons beyond capitalism: That Winter the Wolf Came
• 2 Utopias beyond borders: Exit West
• 3 Utopias beyond disaster: New York 2140
• 4 Utopias beyond death: Walkaway and The Book of Joan
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint