Notes towards the rooting of Utopia in the Imagination of Politics through performance

Abstract

One can easily argue that since Marx and Engels demise of nineteenth century Utopian socialism, characterizing Utopianism as an “idealism deeply and structurally averse to the Political”, utopia has migrated into fiction. With no surprise, Alain Badiou has famously declared the “passion for the real” as the twentieth century’s “major subjective trait”. The (early) twenty first century has also succumbed helplessly to the eruption of the real. But the times we live today seem to be claiming for something else. Over the past two decades utopian thinking seems to have resurfaced. The severity and monumentality of the issues that afflict the world today are inciting a central question for artists: in the face of an imminent catastrophe, what is the use of utopian imagination at the end of times? What is the purpose of artistic endeavours in a finite world. Utopian (or dystopian) fiction and has always dealt with the envisioning of a future anchored in possible or impossible scenarios, helping the world to correct its wrong doings, to improve, to transform, to threat with dreadful outcomes or to denounce present inequalities. However, if we consider that the world needs to start a new narrative, performing arts can help us to expand imagination, freeing political thinking from the constraints of the real world and wide open to “social dreaming”. In this paper, I aim to combine a speculative reflection grounded on utopian studies and in political theatre considering that performing arts are in a particularly good position to intervene in “social imaginary. This frame incites us to rethink the possibilities of political theatre today and its ontology, fighting for the rooting of (artistic) utopia in the imagination of politics, trusting that art and theatre will be able to help us to invent scenarios that today seem impossible or that we have not yet managed to conceive.