Utopia, politics and social imagination

Abstract

The erasure of utopia from the socio-political imagination by-now is sacrosanct and more or less consensual. It implies that inequality and injustice are to be socio-politically managed but not fought out-of-the-world, leaving before us lib- eral realistic utopia as the only successful [ideological] paradigm. It has changed the idea of politics and ideology and placed us in the post-ideological age. Peo- ple who negate socialism/communism entirely seem to claim that such an idea of equality rests on a mistake - which means that there are permissible inequali- ties; hence, injustices that are seen as let-it-go. Negation of all grand narratives resulted in a consensus arrived at of the previous century as the worst in all his- torical times, placing suspicion and even negation of the western metaphysical cannon. Implications of this are two. One, a distortion of the political history of an epoch giving a one-dimensional view of violence. Due to this distorted rep- resentation the socialist/communist paradigm lost the emancipatory status. It also meant the loss of messianic time and messianic politics. Politics is reduced to police in order to uphold the historically sedimented socio-cultural hierarchies. Second, it indirectly legitimizes the victory-debate of [western] liberal-democratic- capitalism. These two lead to an even greater implication: The loss of a counter- perspective/paradigm deforms the shape of equality, placing the notion of a just society in the narrow conceptions of individual and the collective. It also subverts the subject of politics. The poverty of liberalism is that it aims at a certain kind of egalitarian condition, while, to echo Ranciere, equality is not the goal to be achieved but to be treated as a regulative principle also already existing. The conditions of now in particular and the present at large ignite in us the urge for a radical transformation, that no more injustice will befall onto the oppressed and the deprived by any means; most vital being the political. The now-aspect never fully realizes itself, thus, retaining in the present the indispensability of the fu- turistic imagination of a yet-to-arrive[Benjaminian], yet-to-come[Derridean], and in whatever singularities[Agamben's the coming community] form it may be. The world we live in itself generates the longingness for another [to echo Agamnen's supposition that utopia is the it topia of things], alternate world - an imaginary place free of exploitation, oppression and dehumanization. The perplexing ques- tion here is what should be the focus of justice and equality? A just and fair society calls for a radical transformation, with non-repeatability of specters of the adominable past. It is important to note that the unjust conditions of people are not to be seen exclusively. Inequality and injustice in one realm indicate the real- ity in other realms too. The distinction between the economic and other realms isneedless to be maintained. This kind of an understanding takes us back to some of the most crucial fundamental questions of political philosophy. One amongst them is the dynamics of interplay between individuals, groups, collectives and institu- tions. Foucault's idea of modern power encapsulated in the dictum of fostering life or disallowing it is taken into in conceiving new community. The sovereign power that holds right over life and death, where the state of exception has become the rule, in the sense that the [social] life has multiple sovereigns taking control of life and death - like the Foucauldian understanding of power's penetrating power over subjects' bodies and forms of life. The condition of zone of indistinction is what is the serious issue here. The control automatically breeds within itself the seeds of intolernace and oppression. Neither liberalism nor democracy attempts of radical politics with the principle of hope is also surrendered. The denuncia- tion of political utopias imply as if societies that are governed beyond the bounds of utopian imagination are more sane. The apparent failure of communism is reduced utopia to mere possibilism - creating a metaphysical di erence between politics and utopia. Liberals had emphatically convinced the world that the by-gone century experi- enced the moral fall. This is indeed a soothing story. There is also truth in this. Reducing the utopian imagination to an impossible dream, denouncers of utopia had a hidden message that an egalitarian fair or a just society will be achieved on their own terms. The death of political ideologies was declared once-for-all crucifying both the philosophical and the political sides of Marxism. The triumph of captialism is another soothing story told in the form of endism. The truth in it brought no change in the lives of the oppressed. May be people did not hold back their faith in the idea of radical transformation. Liberal-capitalist-democracy is defended by providing a two-fold understanding; as a profound pragmatic principle and as one intergral to everyday life. It means that the world-after-communism has undone the past, by moving toward a liberal-capitalist future. Yet democracy lacks the messianic role. If liberal-democratic-capitalism is the only way then it is supposed to play the role of the emancipator. It is indeed a monumental task for liberal dmocracy.The democratic imposture as the society of the masses, cannot act as the messiah because its understanding of politics and community cannot really liberate the oppressed. Many critics have argued on these similar lines. Democratic equality is no better than liberal or socialist equality. Radical equality that Ranciere and others argue for requires radical contingency - not in the sense of public neutral- ity, but accommodating radical di erences. What kind of a society it would be if not democratic? No socio-political formation can completely liberate or emanci- pate people in its present-time and present form, also because [civil] society lacks that in-built meachanism to ght its injustices. It always require the political and politics - as an extra-social perspective. Interestingly, there is an overlapping consensus among all political philosophers and others on the futility of the meta- physical foundations of politics. The current work acknowledges Ranciere's idea of the political and Derrida's democratic radical futures. The deeply contemptible social hierarchies are backed by oppressive politics. For the oppressed, past and present; the tomorrow is yet to come and will come. It is only a hopeful future, hopeful of getting over the fear of social life. Derrida is right, in that promise of politics-to-come is more an ontological one than being empirical, and certainly has in nite possibilities. It means there is never a accomplished condition of an idea. There is still something-to-emerge by way of self-creation. The open future doesn't give a name to the coming community, making it a whatever form. Bloch's hope gets translated this way in Derrida - the deferment to the future and openness of the future. It also means that it can come in an incomplete form. The challenging task is the irreparability of the world - precisely the human social condition. It is important to address inequalities/injustices/dominations/violences associated with several social identities.