Capitalism, Temporality, Precarity: Utopian Form and its Discontents In Contemporary Literature and Theory

Abstract:This essay argues for a materialist elaboration of the insight that historical time is nonidentical with itself. It sees in such time the seeds of utopian futurity that lie latent in the historical present yet are systematically foreclosed by it. The utopianism at issue involves a radical constriction of desire and a global redistribution of precarity, which together render the utopian imagination responsive to the finite character of the earth's resources. Certain works of contemporary literature are especially revelatory in this context. They invite us to live through the texture of their forms both the heterogeneity of historical time and the incipience of a transfigured future in which (to quote Anahid Nersessian) the world will be "lightened of the burden of furnishing abundance" because humans have become "agents of less catastrophic harm."