Introduction

Summary

This chapter provides an overview of the importance of utopian theorizing in the twenty-first century. It resituates utopianism, through Blochean theory, as larger than a literary genre and more diverse than representations of perfect societies. Rather, it celebrates an ideal of the utopianism of the everyday, of the here-and-now as much as of the future. It argues for a utopianism that is necessarily decolonial as it seeks to undo the damage of racial capitalism and provide imaginative resources for living differently. It concludes with an overview of the chapters collected in this book, showing that they explore both reactionary or nostalgically inflected visions of America’s settler-colonial utopian foundations, as well as centering new strains of utopian thought emerging from the margins of hegemonic American culture.