Insularity now here and nowhere: private circles and utopian isles

Abstract

This paper opposes two versions of insularity: the first is the linkage between utopian political imaginings and island spaces, which contributes to a negative view of utopia as a self-enclosed, totalitarian state; the second is the wide-spread dream of the private home as the realm of a happy life - the 'realistic' direction visions of a better future tend to take in contemporary Western societies, also an insular concept. The paper then suggests a possibility of utopian politics beyond both of these forms of insularity - the isolated island as a detached vision of a political ideal as well as the insular refuge of private withdrawal -, a politics opposed to the existing 'partitions' (Ranciere) within the current social order. As an example, the final part of the paper discusses a utopian political approach in this sense to the issue of 'economic migration'.