Microutopias and Everyday Hope

In eleven essays of scholarly inquiry encompassing a variety of disciplinary perspectives including literature, visual culture, and media studies, Microutopias and Everyday Hope illuminates the potential for alternative futures that resides in utopian thinking on smaller scales.

Reflecting on analyses of source material that ranges from entertainment media to concrete sites, contributors draw our attention to the important aesthetic details of everyday life that are increasingly drowned out in a landscape dominated by continuous polycrisis. Caught in late capitalism’s relentless and dystopian march, they argue, any kind of future is necessarily predicated on utopian thinking in the present and must look beyond the spectacle of horror to draw on the hope that can be found in the smaller wins day to day.

Ultimately, this collection serves as an appeal to the crucial role the humanities can play in withstanding and moving past the contemporary societal fragmentation plaguing the globe.

Asbjørn Grønstad is Professor of Visual Culture in the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen.

Lene Johannessen is Professor of American Literature in the Department of Foreign Languages at the University of Bergen.