Suchergebnisse

This article studies the idea of "World Government" as envisioned in aseries of essays published by Bertrand Russell in the period of the Cold War. It drawsupon the theoretical categories introduced by Karl Mannheim in Ideology and Utopia(1936) to account for the nature of the reconstruction schemes the author advances tospare human society a possible apocalyptic nuclear confrontation. The study hasshown that Russell's liberal outlook is utopian insofar as it has shown advancedpositions regarding self-determination, the dissemination of progress and cooperationtoward the reconstruction of a peaceful and prosperous world. However, given thetechnological abyss separating the industrial West in the 1950s from the rest, an open"World State" would be another form of imperialism in disguise. The risk involved isthat this "global utopia" whose rulers monopolize military, legislative as well aseconomic power, would turn into an institutional and ideological instrument ofcontrol in the hands of the technologically powerful few.

This article seeks to analyse Samuel Butler's satirical treatment of Victorian institutions and values in Erewhon (1872). It focuses on the function of the utopian genre to account for the ideological struggles that inform society, and its capacity to suggest cures to social ills.

This article revisits Edward Bellamy's utopian novel Looking Backward 2000-1888 (1887) with reference to its socialist and globalist themes in the light of the recent developments that have recently led to the triumph of liberal ideology over communism. Combining elements of Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the novel as expounded in Simon Dentith'sBakhtinian Thought(1996), and Karl Mannheim's Ideology andUtopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge(1936), it reads the novel as an attempt to historicize the nineteenth-century capitalist society in a bid to renegotiate the social contract on new bases. Thanks to their accumulated symbolic and cultural capital, and the medial position they hold between the conflicting parties (capital and labor), the intelligentsia self-appointed themselves as social mediators. Their influence on politics and their participation as experts or members of think-tanks seem to have made of them objective allies of today's liberal globalizing trends.