utopianism #1

 

"Utopianism is the general label for a number of different ways of dreaming or thinking about, describing or attempting to create a better society" (REP). 

In EdC's Notas para a vida no LIMIAR (2022), utopianism is a way of dreaming with a life "sem o capitalismo," that is, a life in which we no longer live inside this "cadáver" that "se move sugando nossas vidas, nosso passado, nossas palavras."

This kind of utopianism is vital in a period in which "the future has become a kind of menace," as Franco Berardi puts it, because the only thing "the future" evokes is the seemingly inevitable deterioration of an already catastrophic present. Not surprisingly, our relationship to this "future" is ruled by fear: "O medo do futuro se alastra," says one of the actors in the prologue of Notas.

How do we try to "reverter" this "cancelamento do futuro," and, what's more, to "arrancar alegria ao futuro," and not only fear?

To engage in utopianism is to engage in a process of "tenciona[mento] do futuro," instilling it with the tension of alternatives and the joyful possibility of the end of capitalism (not the end of the world but the beginning of life): "Estamos no limiar: ou vamos superar nosso modo de vida ou o exterminismo do presente já é o nosso futuro."