Mapping Utopia: Unstable Geometries of a Political Concept

Abstract

The thematic section of this issue of «Scienza & Politica» focuses on the problem of utopia. Though in the last decades Utopian Studies have developed significant analyses of this issue, their concept is still poor in reflexivity. The historiographical reconstructions and conceptual investigations operate through meanings of a concept which escape the control of their users: the many, and even incompatible, meanings of Utopia available today are often loosened from each other, with the result that scholars very often give rise to dialogues that run the risk to be only apparent, since they develop through different semantics. The purpose of a research that engages today in an attempt to elaborate reflexively this category cannot be to look for a unifying meaning of the term: this, in fact, would add up a single definition to the others available on the marketplace of ideas. On the contrary it seems more promising to build an accurate repertoire of meanings in use, in which the concept of Utopia shows its varying boundaries and the contradictions characterizing its long tradition