In the second part of our conversation and collaboration with the Coffee with Comrades podcast, we begin seeking out works of literature, cinema, and scholarship that might illuminate Anti-Anti-Utopian blueprints for building new worlds. As Matt remarks, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a list of films that would be called utopian, but Pearson argues that you could – in fact – come up with a robust list of fiction and non-fiction texts that spell out the shape of this new genre of hope-making. A developmental syllabus of Anti-Anti-Utopian study may start with Ursula K. Le Guin’s iconic and epic “ambiguous utopia,” The Dispossessed (1974), and include Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy of novels (1992-96), as well as nonfiction books like Erik Olin Wright’s Envisioning Real Utopias (2010), Alex Williams & Nick Srnicek’s Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work (2015), and A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos (2019). These visions of still imperfect, but radically more just & egalitarian worlds teach us that striving toward the utopian horizon is neither naive nor impractical, but instead all too necessary and prudent, especially now. As such, The Golden Square affirms that the decommodification of life and democratization of society are not just revolutionary goals, but in fact, the revolutionary project itself. Beyond the ceaseless academic obsessions with diagramming the corpse of our dystopian hellscape, we must chart a path outside our pyramid-shaped cages by realizing the unconditional rights to food, shelter, healthcare, and education for every person on earth – a readymade threshold separating us from the Utopian Sphere. Moving outward, Pearson, Jesse and Matt talk about the key planks that might make up the political philosophy of Anti-Anti-Utopia and how charting an emancipatory path forward requires an intersectional anti-capitalist compass magnetized to the many symbiotic, multilectical transformations necessary to abolish empire. As Matt has been fond of saying of late: “Be like an anarchist,” first and foremost.
Mentioned In This Episode:
This collaborative episode can also be found on the Coffee with Comrades podcast as Episode 134: "Building New Worlds" ft. the Future is a Mixtape
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Kim Stanley Robinson’s neologism of the the term, Anti-Anti-Utopia, appeared in the first issue of Commune in 2018:“Dystopias Now”
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.
The Anarchist Revolution of Catalonia (Spain): A Wikipedia Exploration
Living Utopia (The Anarchists & The Spanish Revolution): A documentary about the Anarchist Revolution in Catalonia.
Murray Bookchin’s To Remember Spain: The Anarchist and Syndicalist Revolution of 1936. Originally published in 1994 and now printed by AK Press since 2001.
Murray Bookchin’s The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868-1936. Originally published in 1977 and now distributed by AK Press since 2001.
Cory Doctorow’s For the Win. Published in 2012 by Tor Books.
Okja (2017). Directed by Bong Joon-Ho. Featuring Seo-Hyun Ahn, Tilda Swinton and Paul Dano.
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Featuring Ivana Baquero, Adriana Gil and Sergi López.
The Devil’s Backbone (2001). Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Featuring Marisa Paredes, Eduardo Noriega and Federico Luppi.
The Shape of Water (2017). Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Featuring Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer and Michael Shannon.
Rebecca Solnit Celebrates The Shape of Water’s Oscar Win on March 4th, 2018. Her Facebook post was published the day after:
“The Shape of Water: a movie in which a mute woman, a gay man, a black woman, a conscientious foreigner, and a creature from the green Latin American lagoon formed a Fantastic Four+ coalition against white heteropatriarchial nationalist militarism and its brutal lack of imagination and compassion. A movie in which there is abundant love for color, for water, for tap dancing, for camaraderie, for old film references, for oddballs and misfits, for jello jokes, for love stories, for fantasy, for looking, for raindrops on bus windows, for surprises, for Sally Hawkins's face, for so many things – it felt loving and warmhearted in a way some of the other nominated movies did not in the least. And I wonder if the watery creature at its center is the god of fluidity, of the way water is a space without borders, of merging and flowing and moving and inseparability and change. I loved it. I'm glad it won.”
Star Trek’s Deep Space Nine
Born in Flames (1983). Directed by Lizzie Borden.
Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale. Published in 1998 by Anchor Books.
The Mars Trilogy novels by Kim Stanley Robinson: Red Mars (1993); Green Mars (1995); and Blue Mars (1997). Published by Spectra Books.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. Published in 2020 by Orbit Books.
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 031: The No-Bullshit Blueprint for Socialism
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 035: Library Socialism & The Golden Square
Vernor Vinge’s “Technological Singularity” (1993).
The Low Now Foundation: Vernor Vinge’s Talk: “What If the Technological Singularity Does Not Happen?”
Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus. Originally Published in 1942. Distributed by Vintage Books since 2018.
Oscar Wilde’s The Soul of Man Under Socialism. Originally Published in 1891. Printed by Mint Editions Since 2021. Original quote:
“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”
Cindy Milstein’s Deciding for Ourselves. Published in 2020 by AK Press.
Make Rojava Green Again by the Internationalist Commune of Rojava, with a forward by Debbie Bookchin. Published in 2018 by Dog Section Press.
Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work by Alex Williams & Nick Srnicek. Published in 2015 by Verso Books.
Aaron Bastani’s Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Published in 2019 by Verso Books.
Richard D. Wolff’s Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism. Published in 2012 by Haymarket Books.
A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos; Foreword by Naomi Klein. Published by Verso Books in 2019 as Part of the Jacobin Series.
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 030: A Green New Deal to Build The Golden Square
R. Buckminster Fuller’s Utopia or Oblivion: The Prospects for Humanity. Published in 1969. Distributed by Lar Müllers Publishers.
Fred Turner’s From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Published in 2006 by University of Chicago Press.
Daniel Denvir’s The Dig (a Jacobin Podcast): “Counterculture to Cyberculture with Fred Turner.”
The Real Utopias Project: The Verso Books Series and Erik Olin Wright’s website.
Envisioning Real Utopias by Erik Olin Wright. Published in 2010 by Verso Books.
How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century by Erik Olin Wright. Published in 2019 by Verso Books.
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 026: How to Erode Capitalism in the 21st Century
Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. Published in 2014 by Simon & Schuster.
Jane McAlevey’s No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age. Published in 2016 by Oxford University Press.
Zillah Eisenstein’s Abolitionist Socialist Feminism: Radicalizing the Next Revolution. Published in 2019 by Monthly Review Press.
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 043: A New Feminism for Our Unfolding Future
Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story (a precursor to events in The Dispossessed): “The Day Before The Revolution”
Marx’s quote from The Communist Manifesto: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
David Flood in Sapiens: “Anarchism in Practice Is Often Radically Boring Democracy”
The Future Is A Mixtape Episode 029: The Anticapitalist Compass
Michael Brooks (1983-2020): “Be Ruthless with Systems, Be Kind with People.”
Ben Burgis in Jacobin: “We Can’t Cancel Ourselves into a Better World”
Adrienne Maree Brown’s Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. Published in 2019 by AK Press.