Modernity as a Time for Utopia

Abstract

The article is devoted to the question of the relationship between Modernity and utopia. Modernity is viewed as a special time regime (i.e., a set of socially significant forms of perception of time by people and social groups), which constitutes a number of conditions that open up opportunities and create obstacles for the utopian thinking and the policies it directs, struggle practices, etc. The author identifies three important from the perspective for the existence of utopia conditions. The first condition is the tension between the openness of Modernity to qualitative changes and its desire for self-closure and reduction towards one of its features (rationalization, global capitalism, etc.). The possibilities of utopian thinking in a particular historical situation depend on the predominance of one of these impulses. The second condition is the problematization of any specific utopia against the background of the general process of reflexive self-renewal of modern societies, the appropriation of criticism to oneself and its recoding into the elements of routine management. The third condition is the colonization of time due to the subjectively perceived acceleration of time and loss of control over time, which complicates any thinking outside the everyday facts, including utopian thinking. According to the author’s conclusion, these three conditions are interrelated: it is the openness of Modernity to change that causes both the problematization of a specific utopia and the colonization of accelerating time, every moment of which should be spent on changes for the better. In its turn, the colonization of time undermines the possibility of “stopping” it, transferring it into the so-called “messianic time”, a time of eventfulness and concreteness.