What will the world look like in a century? ? The Life of Ideas asked researchers from various backgrounds to imagine utopias for the day after tomorrow, mixing diagnoses, apprehensions, solutions, hopes, the whole range of inventiveness and optimism, the whole register of possibilities.
Louis-Sébastien Mercier in The year 2440Jules Verne in Paris at XXe centuryGeorge Orwell in 1984 tried to imagine the world in the decades and centuries to come. Others, like Fourier or Cabet, attempted to conceive, in surprisingly precise terms, a more harmonious society from which exploitation and suffering would be banished. These writers and philosophers were often visionaries, anticipating the sprawling development of metropolises and automobile traffic, the reign of the computer or even the surveillance society. A number of utopias (universal suffrage, the abolition of slavery, the emancipation of women, the right to education and social protection), which often left their contemporaries incredulous, have fueled democratic aspirations over the of the past two centuries. What continues to arouse our interest is the effort of anticipation, of tearing away from the present, coupled with a concern about the world as it is going and a desire to improve the human condition. It is, in other words, the invention of a reasoned utopia.
The Life of Ideas asked researchers to imagine the world of the day after tomorrow, freely mixing diagnoses, dismay, solutions, hopes, the whole range of inventiveness and optimism, the whole register of possibilities. It is not a question here of compiling a prospective file, but rather of imagining the forms of the future based on the doubts of the present, by fleeing its certainties – a way of subverting them, no doubt. Why would social criticism no longer speak with the voice of utopia, no longer borrow its radicalism from the intellectual proliferations which implement another way of living, of thinking, of creating? ?
United by the desire to free ourselves from the pessimism and resignation which restrict contemporary political imagination, the texts in this file are of two orders: some anticipate the world of the day after tomorrow, others present themselves as stories retrospectives, written in 2112, of the mobilizations unfolding before our eyes. The utopias of today will undoubtedly constitute the material for the history books of tomorrow…
Summary
- Jean Gadrey, “ When income gaps were finally capped », October 28, 2011.
- Jean Bérard, “ The great escape. Memories of a prison director », 1er November 2011.
- François de Singly, “ Why we abolished marriage », November 4, 2011.
- Yves Sintomer, “ The lottery revolution », November 8, 2011.
- Michel Parent, “ 2112, Paris at high speed », November 9, 2011.
- Matthieu Calame, “ Of the incongruity of agricultural and food practices of XXIe century », November 11, 2011.
- Jacques Rodriguez, “ The excesses of the health society. Return to the land of Erewhon », March 12, 2012.