The Task of Utopia: A Pragmatist and Feminist Perspective

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Rowman & Littlefield, 2001 - Literary Criticism - 179 pages
At their best, both American pragmatism and utopianism are about hope. Both encourage people to think about the future as a guide to understanding the past and forming the present. Just as pragmatism has often been misunderstood as valueless instrumentalism, utopianism has been limited to dreams of a static perfect world. In this book, Erin McKenna argues that utopian vision informed by pragmatism results in a process model of utopia that can help form the future based on critical intelligence. Using John Dewey's works with feminist theory and literature, McKenna develops this pragmatist feminist model of utopia.
 

Contents

Introduction The Problem of the Future
1
Why Pragmatism Feminism and Utopia?
3
An Overview
9
The EndState Model of Utopia
17
Static Imagination
18
The Desirability of Perfection
21
The Possibility of Perfection
26
Utopian Education
29
A Useful Utopian Vision?
79
Deweys Democracy A Process Model of Utopia
83
Intelligent Imagination
84
The Possibilities of Imagined Ends
88
Realizing the Possible
90
Dewey Rejects EndState and Anarchist Visions
92
Judging Future Possibilities
97
Education and Experimentation
101

Perfection as Process
34
The EndState Vision of Womens Country
36
Womens Country
37
Problems of the Vision
40
A Useful Utopian Vision?
44
The Anarchist Model of Utopia
49
Anarchist Imagination
50
The Cost of Freedom
53
The Possibility of Freedom and Its Maintenance
58
Anarchist Education
63
Freedom as the Precondition of Progress
65
The Anarchist Vision of Mattapoisett
68
Mattapoisett
70
Problems of the Vision
74
The Need to Dream the Possible
105
Deweys Community
107
A Picture of Community
113
The Possibility of Community
118
Feminism Pragmatism Community and Utopia
129
A Feminist Critique of Deweys Call for Community
131
Feminist Utopias
135
The Kesh
141
The Hill Women
147
The Valley and the WandergroundGood EndsinView
153
The Future of Utopia
161
Bibliography
169
Index
175
About the Author

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About the author (2001)

Erin McKenna is associate professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Pacific Lutheran University.