For this special episode, Matt & Jesse venture out of their self-inclosed Build-A-Bear tent thanks to the gracious prodding of their new friend and comrade, Pearson, host of the always excellent Coffee with Comrades podcast, in order to imagine alternatives and discuss the theory of “Anti-Anti-Utopia.” While each of us who’ve seen a Hollywood summer blockbuster, perused Netflix, or owned a dog-eared copy of a Hunger Games novel have sipped from the bitter cup of our Terminal Dystopia Syndrome, few have dared to dream of utopia. As something paradoxically both dangerous and trivial to the tyrants and influencers who police the status quo, utopia remains largely a pejorative signifier for naive and unrealistic visions of the future. Simply by existing as a concept, utopia’s most rude offense is the failure to acquiesce to the myths of our doomed fate built long-ago into the so-called “laws of human nature.” In the era of capitalist realism, the prescribed common sense drives a relentless anti-utopianism, a dangerous ideology that requires a countering through anti-anti-utopianism. So WTF is “Anti-Anti-Utopia” anyways? Coined recently by Kim Stanley Robinson in an essay entitled “Dystopias Now,” the science fiction writer starts by saying, haltingly: “The end of world is over. Now the real work begins.” What would it look like to admit that the world as we know (or knew) it is beyond repair, and that living through the Capitalocene means that we will have to build a better world from within an active apocalypse? In the first half of this two-part conversation, we discuss these terms – Utopia, Dystopia, Anti-Utopia, and Anti-Anti-Utopia – four corners of a semiotic square, a balance of contradictions and counter-forces that together light the way for new beginnings. So whereas Star Trek may have illustrated a far-off future of post-scarcity, it failed to imagine the contours of revolutionary change that would secure – for humanity – a utopia lovingly wrought on Earth. Star Trek instead scripted and drifted toward new but familiar conflicts outside of us, amongst the stars. So perhaps, to boldly go where Utopia might be found, an Anti-Anti-Utopianism is the voyage we must now chart for ourselves, together, here on this fragile planet. Trapped under the dystopian rubble of empire, we deserve all the light that glimmers above us, and so we must reach for it.
Mentioned In This Episode:
This collaborative episode can also be found on the Coffee with Comrades podcast as Episode 133: “Imagining an Alternative: The Theory of Anti-Anti-Utopia” ft. The Future is a Mixtape
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Jacques Fresco: A Wikipedia Biography and his greatest act of imagineering: The Venus Project.
Inspiration for the phrase “The Future is a Mixtape” came from Too Like The Lightning by Ada Palmer. Published in 2016 by Tor Books. {Someday, sweet someday, Matt might publish his review-essay on that transcendent novel, which is part of a quartet of books called Terra Ignota.}
Kim Stanley Robinson’s neologism of the the term, Anti-Anti-Utopia, appeared in the first issue of Commune in 2018: “Dystopias Now”
SRSLY WRONG’s Discussion on Political Graphs: Episode 226: Political Charts
Conservative Christian Meme (shared by Pearson)
The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin’s first work of utopian science fiction (and the first major science fiction work exploring anarchism as utopian space/place). Originally published in 1974 by Harper & Row.
Saul Newman’s Postanarchism. Published in 2015 by Polity Books.
Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516)
500 Years of Utopia Exhibit at the UCR Library (2016)
Neil Blomkamp’s Elysium (2013). Featuring Jodie Foster, Matt Damon, Sharito Copley and Diega Luna.
Tejasvani Datta in The Cinemaholic: “Will There Be an Elysium Sequel?”
While Star Trek, through its many TV shows and films, fails to fully explore the utopian vision of Earth, its ships mirror the post-scarcity world we are left to imagine exists there, somehow, someway, light years away from Earth and which often make our planet feel like a blip from the Federation ships we so often follow through wormholes and warp drives. However, in one rare moment of this lauded institution, Deep Space Nine showcases an anomaly where they go back in time to 2024, where a revolution takes place in a “Sanctuary District” in San Francisco. For More: Wikipedia - Deep Space Nine’s “Past Tense” While we never see Earth becoming utopian or arriving at Third Nature, these two episodes at least witness the end of Fascism and the future seeds of Anti-Anti-Utopia seen offscreen.
Coffee With Comrades Episode 119: “Google Murray Bookchin” ft. Anark
Matthew Snyder in The Los Angeles Review of Books: “Snowpiercer: Speak, Memory, Occupy”
Cory Doctorow’s forthcoming book, The Lost Cause, imagines what happens in a post-Green New Deal future when we’ve moved all cities away from global continental coastlines, and must confront new problems.
Novara Radio: Cory Doctorow discusses the book and more on the Bastani Factor: “Control, Power and Resistance in the 21st Century. An Interview with Cory Doctorow.”
Matt’s friend Joshua Bregman: “Advertising is the last idiom of utopia”; as witnessed hilariously and poignantly in a recent Chobani yogurt ad: “Eat Today, Feed Tomorrow.”
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher. Published in 2009 by Zero Books.
Mr. “End of History,” Francis Fukuyama, saying “Socialism Ought to Come Back” in an Interview with George Eaton in The New Statesman
Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and The Last Man. Originally published in 1992 by Free Press.
Steven King’s famous essay: “Why We Crave Horror Movies”
Adam Curtis’ Hypernormalisation. Released in 2016 and produced by BBC.
Novara Radio: James Butler interviews David Graeber: “Bullshit Jobs, Direct Democracy and the End of Capitalism”
Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Originally Published in 1988 and Printed by Pantheon Books.
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992). Directed by Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick.
Itty-Bitty & Quick and Witty: A five-minute animation inspired by Chomsky and Herman’s book, and narrated by Amy Goodman: The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine.
Richard Wolff’s Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism. Published in 2012 by Haymarket Books.
“Abolition is about presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions.” – Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto by Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser. Published in 2019 by Verso Books.
Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone by Astra Taylor. Published by Metropolitan Books in 2019.
Anark on Youtube, where he breaks down Anarchist theory and Left texts.
Accelerationism: A Wikipedia Definition
Andy Beckett in The Guardian: “Accelerationism: How a Fringe Philosophy Predicted the Future We Live In”
The Real Utopias Project: The Verso Books Series and Erik Olin Wright’s website.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140. Published in 2017 by Orbit Books.
Sian Cain in The Guardian (2016): “Alan Moore Gives Heartfelt Backing to Jeremy Corbyn (but Won't Vote for Him)”
Alison Flood in The Guardian (2020): “Alan Moore Drops Anarchism to Champion Labour Against Tory 'Parasites'”
Dez Vylenz’s The Mindscape of Alan Moore- A documentary & filmic collage of Moore’s several interviews and public speeches. Released in 2003 and produced by Shadowsnake Films.