Abstract

Readers of Utopian Studies might be surprised to learn that the idea of utopia is "almost universally denied" (xv) that is has heretofore played little to no role in "liberatory political philosophy" (xv), and that, despite these things, "the idea of utopia ought to have a place in radical political theory" (xvii). And yet such proposition appears to be the starting point, as well as the raison d'être, for Bill Cashmore in We Hear Only Ourselves: Utopia, Memory, and Resistance (2023). In many respects, the chief weakness of this book is this sense that its arguments are wholly new, without much regard for the long history of utopian theory in radical political philosophy and in liberatory politics more generally.... Read More.