Self-Reproducing Movements and the Enduring Challenge of Materialist Feminism
Self-Reproducing Movements and the Enduring Challenge of Materialist Feminism
What was the utopian vision of the Occupy movement that swept the world in the aftermath of the global financial crisis (GFC)? More generally, what types of utopias can be imagined today, and which notions of progress are still operative? And how do utopias allow people to engage in transformative action? Taking the need for utopian representation seriously, this chapter looks at three attempts to map out “utopia” : Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974); Marge Piercy’s seemingly conventional but at the same time revolutionary text, Woman on the Edge of Time (1976); and finally, the encampments built in the initial stage of the Occupy movement. Interestingly enough, all three examples offer glimpses of an anti-authoritarian utopia—a decentralized, egalitarian society where the principles of competition and accumulation have been replaced by mutual aid, self-government, and resource conservation to produce an almost spiritual synergy between people, nature, and culture.
Keywords: Occupy movement, utopia, Ursula Le Guin, Marge Piercy, anti-authoritarian
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