Towards the Rooting of Utopia in the Imagination of Politics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51427/cet.sdc.2025.3.4.7Keywords:
Visions of Utopia, Resistance, Political Theatre, Artistic Imagination, End of TimesAbstract
The times we live today, one might claim, are defined by a growing notion of finitude. The covid19 pandemic and the outbreak of war in Ukraine heightened an already perennial sense of permanent crisis. The famous quote attributed to Fredric Jameson seems to have undergone a semantic twist: “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” is no longer a slogan of anti-capitalist rhetoric; it's just a blunt truism. Indeed, today it is very easy to imagine the end of the world. The severity and monumentality of the issues that afflict the world today are inciting a central question for artists: in the face of an imminent catastrophe, what is the use of performing arts at the end of times?
Utopian (or dystopian) fiction has always dealt with the envisioning of a future anchored in scenarios based on “What-if” or “If-Only” premises (Thaler, 2022). In this paper I aim to combine a speculative reflection grounded on utopian studies and in political theatre. I am considering performing arts as a valid tool to defy the end of times and to fight for the rooting of (artistic) utopia in the imagination of politics, trusting that art and theatre will be able to help us invent scenarios that today seem impossible or that we have not yet managed to conceive.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Rui Pina Coelho
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