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Writing a positive account of utopias has always been a difficult and risky task. Utopias have always already been out of fashion and outside of time. Since 1989 at the latest, visions of utopia appear to have come to an end. Twenty years after Fukayama's 'end of history', this article re-assesses the potentially fruitful roles for utopia's out-of-timeness. Focusing on the critical potential of utopias through the concept of tension, it argues that utopian thought must be conceptualized through its tensile connections both to the status quo of a given society and to its possible futures.

Writing a positive account of utopias has always been a difficult and risky task. Utopias have always already been out of fashion and outside of time. Since 1989 at the latest, visions of utopia appear to have come to an end. Twenty years after Fukayama's 'end of history', this article re-assesses the potentially fruitful roles for utopia's out-of-timeness. Focusing on the critical potential of utopias through the concept of tension, it argues that utopian thought must be conceptualized through its tensile connections both to the status quo of a given society and to its possible futures. ; Martin Doll, 'The Topoi of Utopia: A Topology of Political Tensions', in Tension/Spannung , ed. by Christoph F. E. Holzhey, Cultural Inquiry, 1 (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2010), pp. 207–26

"Die Interdependenzen zwischen kulturellen Gegenbewegungen und Werbestrategien werden genauer betrachtet. Als Ausgangspunkt wird auf die Studie ‚The Conquest of Cool" von Thomas Frank rekurriert, der sich zwar empirisch auf die amerikanische Gesellschaft beschränkt, von der ausgehend aber eine Reihe von Parallelen gezogen werden können. Dafür werden kurz Tendenzen der sechziger Jahre referiert, die sich in ähnlicher Weise bis heute fortschreiben. Im zweiten Teil werden bestimmte Erscheinungsformen der Werbung und des politischen Aktivismus hinterfragt. Schließlich wird mit Jacques Rancière die Frage aufgeworfen, was heute Politik heißen kann. Die Ausführungen verwenden nicht repräsentative Daten, sondern zielen auf eine an einzelnen Phänomenen orientierte Analyse, die zunächst mehr Fragen aufzuwerfen als Antworten zu geben scheint." (Autorenreferat)

Preliminary Material /Martin Doll and Oliver Kohns -- Ausser-Sich-Sein: Die Imaginäre Dimension Der Politik /Martin Doll and Oliver Kohns -- Die politik des »politischen imaginären« /Oliver Kohns -- Theorie Und Genealogie Des Techno-Imaginären: Social Media Zwischen ›Digital Nation‹ Und Kosmo Politischem Pluralismus /Martin Doll -- Die Erhabenheit Des Feldherrn /Leander Scholz -- Von der imagination zum imaginären? /Harun Maye -- Äquivokation Die Sprache Und Das Imaginäre – Randbemerkungen Zu Ricæur Und Derrida /Martin Roussel -- Diskursive positionen als prismen des politisch imaginären? /Rolf Parr -- Die Nation Als Imaginäre Gemeinschaft /Jan Lohl -- Das Theater Des Imaginären /Romain Jobez -- Der Streit Um Die Bühne /Beniamin Wihstutz -- Politik Ohne Staat /Jan Völker -- Verzeichnis Der Autoren /Martin Doll and Oliver Kohns.

"When we say not-being, we speak, I think, not of something that is the opposite of being, but only of something different." (Plato, Sophist 257B) How can we speak of non-being if to speak at all implies saying "some thing"? Would we not thereby impart being to the object of our utterance and thus contradict the very claim of our assertion? This linguistic and ontological difficulty raises the broader question of the nature of negation as a rhetorical, logical and political act. Negation cannot simply be opposed to or absolutely independent from affirmation but must instead be intertwined with positivity, since negation always involves a thing which is negated. But this can be called into question by asking whether every affirmation might only be achieved by negating other properties. Rather than starting from the premise that affirmation and negation are mutually exclusive, we wish to explore the possibility of a more intricate relationship between them. How might affirmation be expressed through negation and vice versa? This conference will focus on concepts of complex affirmations and negations in domains including rhetoric, logic, ontology, and politics. Further information can be found at http://negation.ici-berlin.org ; Un-titled: Affirming Negations Negating Affirmations , conference, ICI Berlin, 1–3 July 2010