This lecture will consider how the image of utopia is being
reformulated in our contemporary moment of ecocatastrophe. In recent
years, scholars have advocated a process-oriented approach to
conceptualising the utopian impulse, as differentiated from the literary
genre of utopia understood as imagining (more) perfect worlds in other
times and places. However, the posthuman and nonhuman dimensions of
utopian becoming have been overlooked in recent utopian theory; at a
time when we urgently need to galvanise our readings of hopeful
post-anthropocentric perspectives.
This talk will consider what an elemental analysis of nonhuman agents
such as the lithic and the mycological adds to our understanding of
contemporary utopian becomings. I argue that an elemental analysis of
utopian becoming reveals the residual lingering of older utopian genres
and modes, alongside new materialist interventions into environmental,
infrastructural, and ecological entanglements. Drawing on Ernst Bloch’s
theorisation of the hope principle, I will consider productive examples
of what I call “elemental non-contemporaneity” within contemporary
fiction, TV series, multimedia artworks, installations, and queer and black utopian theory.