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Microutopias and Everyday Hope
Asbjørn Skarsvåg Grønstad (Anthology Editor) , Lene M. Johannessen (Anthology Editor) , Janne Stigen Drangsholt (Contributor) , Asbjørn Skarsvåg Grønstad (Contributor) , Henrik Gustafsson (Contributor) , Lene M. Johannessen (Contributor) , Anders Lysne (Contributor) , Tijana Przulj (Contributor) , Henriette Rørdal (Contributor) , Zoltan Varga (Contributor) , Øyvind Vågnes (Contributor) , Birger Solheim (Contributor)
Microutopias and Everyday Hope
Asbjørn Skarsvåg Grønstad (Anthology Editor) , Lene M. Johannessen (Anthology Editor) , Janne Stigen Drangsholt (Contributor) , Asbjørn Skarsvåg Grønstad (Contributor) , Henrik Gustafsson (Contributor) , Lene M. Johannessen (Contributor) , Anders Lysne (Contributor) , Tijana Przulj (Contributor) , Henriette Rørdal (Contributor) , Zoltan Varga (Contributor) , Øyvind Vågnes (Contributor) , Birger Solheim (Contributor)
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Description
In eleven essays of inquiry from different scholarly traditions, the authors in Microutopias and Everyday Hope examine the potential that resides in utopian thinking on smaller scales.
Basing their explorations in material ranging from music, TV-series, film, and literature to concrete sites, the reflections that result engage in a conversation that steers our attention to the details of aesthetics that are increasingly being drowned out in the polycrisis. However, our attention to detail in less spectacular venues and in the everyday is required if we are to imagine alternative futures differently, and better.
Caught in late capitalism's relentless and dystopian march toward the abyss, any kind of future is predicated on utopian thinking in the present. The essay collection is therefore also an appeal to the crucial importance of the humanities as providing the glue that can withstand our contemporary's fragmentation. 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.
Table of Contents
1. Microutopias and Everyday Hope
Asbjørn Grønstad (University of Bergen, Norway) and Lene Johannessen (University of Bergen, Norway)
2. Unrest and the Light of Utopia: Anarchism and Archaeology
Henrik Gustafsson (Arctic University of Norway, Norway)
3. "Don't you tempt me with perfection": Music, Death, and Utopia
Zoltan Varga (Western Norway University, Norway)
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 (University of Bergen, Norway)
5. How to Imagine Microutopias
Anders Lysne (University of Bergen, Norway)
6. Micro-Ecotopic Power Lines in Fantasy Literature
Birger Solheim (University of Bergen, Norway)
7. Microutopian Ethics
Asbjørn Grønstad
8. Brilliant Stacks of Cans: The Microutopian Impulse in White Noise
Øyvind Vågnes (University of Bergen, Norway)
9. A Working-Class Return to (Micro-)Utopia? Presentism, Bodies, and Nostalgia in Miranda July's Kajillionaire
Henriette Rørdal (University of Bergen, Norway)
10. The Politics of Everyday Life: Orwell and the Dispossessed
Randi Koppen (University of Bergen, Norway)
11. Everyday Utopias: Compasses of Hope
Lene Johannessen
12. The Possibility of an Island: The White Lotus as Utopian Heterotopia
Janne Stigen Drangsholt (University of Stavanger, Norway)
About the Contributors
Index
Product details

Published | 11 Dec 2025 |
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Format | Ebook (PDF) |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 240 |
ISBN | 9798765154687 |
Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
Illustrations | 4 bw illus |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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Uncovering the utopian impulse in diverse cultural works, this elegant book attends to the many subtle, transient, dispersed moments of social hope, desire, and change. Developing the concept of microutopias through an analysis of films, literature, music and more, this book not only reveals the presence and importance of microutopianism within social life, but demonstrates what microutopianism offers as an analytical method. An original and vibrant contribution to utopian studies.
Davina Cooper, Research Professor in Law and Political Theory, King's College London, UK
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This engaging and engaged collection moves from a concern with utopia as critically bound up with the practices, rhythms and spaces of everyday life, offering possible glimpses of a transformed way of living from within the constraints of a shared reality. Reading widely across and between medias and cultures, its authors invite us to understand afresh the many traces of a better world that surround us in the cultural practices and products of the present. This way of reading can itself, they suggest, be a vehicle of hope.
Michael G. Kelly, Professor of French, University of Limerick, UK