Description

This edited volume brings together an interdisciplinary selection of contributors who draw on a range of scholarly traditions to explore the potential that resides in utopian thinking on smaller scales in media, from music, to film and television, to literature, among other venues. The reflections resulting from these analyses engage in a conversation that steers our attention to the details of aesthetics that are increasingly being drowned out in a world dominated by constant and multiple crises. The book posits, however, that attention to detail in the everyday and in less spectacular venues will be more necessary than ever if we hope to imagine alternative futures in a different and better way. Given the relentless and dystopian march toward the abyss that is characteristic of late stage capitalism, any kind of future is currently predicated on some form of utopian thinking. As scholars demonstrate both theoretically and methodologically how hope persists in cultural and aesthetic expressions that can not only be detected, but can be taught, learned, and adapted in service of creating alternative social and aesthetic imaginaries on a larger scale. Ultimately, this collection highlights the crucial importance of the humanities in order to withstand and even move past the contemporary societal fragmentation being experienced globally. Scholars of media, cultural, and future studies will find this book to be of particular interest.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Microutopias and Everyday Hope
Asbjørn Grønstad and Lene Johannessen
Chapter 2: Unrest and the Light of Utopia: Anarchism and Archaeology
Henrik Gustafsson
Chapter 3: "Don't you tempt me with perfection": Music, Death, and Utopia
Zoltan Varga
Chapter 4: Transnational Figurations of (Micro)utopia in C. N. Adichie's Americanah and K. Waclawiak's How to Get Into the Twin Palms
Tijana Przulj
Chapter 5: How to Imagine Microutopias
Anders Lysne
Chapter 6: Micro-Ecotopic Power Lines in Fantasy Literature
Birger Solheim
Chapter 7: Microutopian Ethics
Asbjørn Grønstad
Chapter 8: Brilliant Stacks of Cans: The Microutopian Impulse in White Noise
Øyvind Vågnes
Chapter 9: A Working-Class Return to (Micro-)Utopia? Presentism, Bodies, and Nostalgia in Miranda July's Kajillionaire
Henriette Rørdal
Chapter 10: The Politics of Everyday Life: Orwell and the Dispossessed
Randi Koppen
Chapter 11: Everyday Utopias: Compasses of Hope
Lene Johannessen
Chapter 12: The Possibility of an Island: The White Lotus as Utopian Heterotopia
Janne Stigen Drangsholt

About the Contributors

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 13 Nov 2025
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Extent 210
ISBN 9781666980523
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations 4 bw illus
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Asbjørn Grønstad

Asbjørn Grønstad is Professor in the Department of…

Anthology Editor

Lene M. Johannessen

Contributor

Asbjørn Grønstad

Asbjørn Grønstad is Professor in the Department of…

Contributor

Anders Lysne

Contributor

Tijana Przulj

Contributor

Zoltan Varga

Contributor

Birger Solheim

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