Vol. 12 No. 24 (2022): Utopie quotidiane. Visioni, pratiche e soggetti
Monographic Section

Il futuro come Utopia?

Giuliana Mandich
Università degli Studi di Cagliari

Published 2023-03-27

Keywords

  • Utopia,
  • Future,
  • Temporality,
  • Affective atmosphere,
  • Every day life

How to Cite

Mandich, G. (2023). Il futuro come Utopia?. Cambio. Rivista Sulle Trasformazioni Sociali, 12(24), 15–25. https://doi.org/10.36253/cambio-13810

Abstract

This paper aims to understand how the first phase of exit from the pandemic has changed the temporality of everyday life and produced an affective atmosphere characterized by a positive attitude towards the future. I will start by analyzing the link between utopia and everyday life: on the one hand, as a privileged area of prefigurative practices in the different versions of utopian realism, and on the other, as trapped in the present in the theories of presentification. I will then examine some emblematic cases of a ‘need for the future’ that emerged in the first exit from the pandemic in the spring-summer 2021. Finally, starting from the affective and temporally complex nature of the present as conceptualized by Berlant (Berlant, 2011; Berlant, 2008) and Coleman (Coleman, 2020b; Coleman, 2020a), I will try to account for the push toward the future that the partial exit from the pandemic has perhaps brought out.