![]() This volume brings together researchers from two fields that have so far seen little exchange – documentary studies and utopian scholarship – and covers a wide range of films from Soviet avant-garde to propaganda videos for the terror organisation ISIS, from political-activist to ecofeminist and interactive documentaries. ![]() ![]() Starting from the insight that utopias are always a critical reaction to the deficits of the present, Utopia and Reality takes a different approach by looking into the under-researched area of propaganda and documentary films for depictions of better worlds. There is a consensus that utopias in the Morean tradition are not suited to fiction film, and research has accordingly focused on dystopias. Since publication of Thomas More‘s Utopia more than five hundred years ago, there has been a steady stream of literary works that depict a better world positive utopias in film, however, have been scarce. As he unravels the dialectics at work in the utopian narrative, Wegner gives an ambitious synthetic discussion of theories of modernity, considering and evaluating the ideas of writers such as Ernst Bloch, Louis Marin, Gilles Deleuze, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Henri Lefebvre, Paul de Man, Karl Mannheim, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jürgen Habermas, Slavoj Zizek, and Homi Bhabha. Considering the narrative utopia from its earliest manifestation in Thomas More's sixteenth-century work Utopia to some of the most influential utopias of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this book is an astute study of a literary genre as well as a nuanced dialectical meditation on the history of utopian thinking as a quintessential history of modernity. All Rights Reservedĭrawing from literary history, social theory, and political critique, this far-reaching study explores the utopian narrative as a medium for understanding the social space of the modern nation-state. Here, Lorainne Stobbart seeks to argue that the Maya of Central America provided that basis and, in doing so, she compels the reader to examine both the unquestioning acceptance of official historic dating and the possible motives and reasons for accepting Utopia as a fictional work for over four hundred and fifty years." "The author investigates the remarkably large number of features both societies shared, including similarities in local government, religion, social customs, trade and urban life, leading to the conclusion that More did, indeed, have access to information on Mayan life and culture." "Many scholars in both historical and literary circles may find themselves disagreeing with this controversial work, but they will, like future analysts, find it difficult to ignore."-BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. That Utopia is factual not fictional is one such theory." "Perhaps because More's text was written before Mexico was 'officially' discovered no previous study of Utopia has attempted to establish a factual New World basis for this ideal state. "At periodic intervals during historical or literary analysis a new theory arises that forces a re-evaluation of long-held opinions.
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