Concrete Utopianism: The Politics of Temporality and Solidarity

Awards:   Short-listed for Big Other Book Award for Nonfiction 2023
Author:   Gary Wilder
Publisher:   Fordham University Press
ISBN:  

9780823299874


Pages:   352
Publication Date:   09 August 2022
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Concrete Utopianism: The Politics of Temporality and Solidarity


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Awards

  • Short-listed for Big Other Book Award for Nonfiction 2023

Overview

Full Product Details

Author:   Gary Wilder
Publisher:   Fordham University Press
Imprint:   Fordham University Press
ISBN:  

9780823299874


ISBN 10:   0823299872
Pages:   352
Publication Date:   09 August 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

Preface | ix Introduction: The Opposite of Pessimism Is Not Optimism | 1 I. Refiguring Politics 1. The Possible- Impossible: Dialectical Optics and Uncanny Refractions (Here, Now, Us) | 17 2. Concrete Utopianism and Critical Internationalism: Refusing Left Realism | 35 3. Practicing Translation: Beyond Left Culturalism | 62 4. Of Pessimism and Presentism: Against Left Melancholy | 86 Intermezzo 5. Solidarity | 109 6. Anticipation | 122 II. Unthinking History 7. Time as a Real Abstraction: Clock- Time, Nonsynchronism, Untimeliness | 139 8. Dialectic of Past and Future | 157 9. It's Still Happening Again: Ontology, Hauntology, and Ellison's Dialectics of Invisibility | 191 10. A Prophetic Vision of the Past: Glissant's Poetics of Nonhistory | 221 III. Anticipating Futures 11. The World We Wish to See | 263 Acknowledgments | 291 Notes | 295 Index | 363

Reviews

A bold, ambitious critique of Left political theory, Concrete Utopianism refuses the stale antinomies of pessimism and optimism, the traps of 'realism, ' progress, even historical time, and instead resuscitates a radical imagination that embraces solidarity and understands the future not as a roadmap but an orientation; not as hope but horizon. Gary Wilder calls on us to think and struggle in the world, with the world, and toward the 'impossible' world we desperately need if we are to secure a possible future . . . together. ---Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, This is an extraordinary piece of work, at once a political manifesto, a philosophy of politics and history, and an impressive rereading of some major texts that sheds new light on them and their utility for thinking about our present. In turning to Black intellectuals on the same terms as White European intellectuals, Wilder rethinks the canon of what counts as Left thought. Wilder's readings are eloquent and clear, yet nuanced and complex, and are brought together with a careful and concrete analysis of social movements. One thinks differently having read and absorbed what Wilder writes. ---Joan Wallach Scott, Institute for Advanced Study,


This is an extraordinary piece of work, at once a political manifesto, a philosophy of politics and history, and an impressive rereading of some major texts that sheds new light on them and their utility for thinking about our present. In turning to Black intellectuals on the same terms as White European intellectuals, Wilder rethinks the canon of what counts as Left thought. Wilder's readings are eloquent and clear, yet nuanced and complex, and are brought together with a careful and concrete analysis of social movements. One thinks differently having read and absorbed what Wilder writes. ---Joan Wallach Scott, Institute for Advanced Study,


Author Information

Gary Wilder is a Professor of Anthropology, History, and French and Director of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Duke, 2015) and The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (Chicago, 2005). He is co-editor of The Postcolonial Contemporary: Political Imaginaries for the Global Present (Fordham, 2018) and The Fernando Coronil Reader: The Struggle for Life Is the Matter (Duke, 2019).

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