Utopia is not made to be realized, but to educate our eyes. By criticizing its excesses, the counter-utopians have done a salutary job, but they have also diverted us from what is of its primary interest: greater attention to our daily lives. This is why we miss utopia today.
Pierre Macherey, professor emeritus at the University of Lille IIIformer student of Louis Althusser with whom he wrote Read Capital (together with E. Balibar, R. Establet and J. Rancière) is a specialist in Marx, Hegel, and Spinoza, contemporary critical philosophy, the relationship between philosophy and literature ; he also trained, and deeply influenced, generations of students. Recently he published: Little Nothings. Daily ruts and excesses (Ed. Le Bord de l’eau, 2009), From Canguilhem to Foucault: the strength of standards (La Fabrique, 2009), The university word(La Fabrique, 2011), From Utopia(From the publisher Incidence, 2011). In this last work, after having problematized what he calls “the dilemmas » (terminological, methodological, ontological and ethical) posed by utopia, P. Macherey offers an analysis of four great utopias: those of More, Bacon, Campanella and especially Fourier. Here he presents the main lines, from social criticism to the art of detail of a planned daily life.
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