Tom Moylan

ralahine centre for utopian studies

Since the turn of this century, engaged intellectuals have argued for the refunctioning of a utopian process within actually existing politics. While I accept the caveats about utopianism's ineffectiveness or co-optation that are the bedrock of the cold stream of the Marxist tradition (from Marx and Engels to Bloch and Jameson), I nevertheless (wit...

Like utopianism, nonviolence is frequently feared, misunderstood, and/or underestimated. Rather than the passive stance that many attribute to it, nonviolence requires a robust agency that speaks truth to power in the service of radically transforming society. Drawing on my studies and my personal and political experience, in this essay I reflect o...

Ernst Bloch, the most significant theorist of the concept of utopia, reserved a particular place for music. He had studied music at university, alongside philosophy and physics, and played the piano; in 1974 Bloch said that he "would probably have been a mediocre Kappelmeister but for . . . a certain talent for philosophy." A large part of his earl...

The grounds of my hope are very complex because I'm a Christian and a whole lot of other things. Or at least I subscribe to that discourse in which God is a significant signifying term. I also subscribe to Gramsci's optimism of the will. Yet as long as you are part of the struggle, pure hope becomes abstract because the actual historical process pr...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: An American flag motif dominates the dust jacket of this collection of political biographies, but change—not tradition—shapes the matter inside. In a period when mass media convey a sense of cynicism about electoral politics as well as foster a mood of privatism in our personal lives,...