A bold response to a question everyone asks but few answer: What is utopia?
A bold response to a question everyone asks but few answer: What is utopia?
Critical theory, History & theory, Political
We Hear Only Ourselves is a study of utopia and its contradictions. If a future beyond capitalism cannot be imagined, what is the place of utopia today? The answer, Cashmore argues, lies beyond either idle speculation or merely hopeful optimism. We Hear Only Ourselves seeks a concept of utopia which is strengthened, not undermined, by its contradictions. From the dialectics of the Frankfurt School to the energetics of resistance in the writings of the Black Panthers, this book draws on a wide range of thought to offer a new concept of utopia, one adequate for our present moment.
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First, this book is the beautiful breakthrough of an enormously gifted young philosopher. Then, an original elaboration of the aporias affecting the concept of utopia, after Marx, Bloch, and Jameson. Above all, it demonstrates how decisive the "narration of blackness", as cast by Fred Moten and Saidiya Hartman, will be for energizing an actual resistance to our catastrophic actuality. On all three accounts, I highly recommend it. ~ Étienne Balibar, author of The Philosophy of Marx
