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The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17.2 (2003) 142-144



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The Task of Utopia: A Pragmatist and Feminist Perspective. Erin McKenna. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. Pp. x + 179. $65.00 h.c. 0-7425-1318-1; $22.95 pbk. 0-7425-1319-X.

Twenty-four hundred years ago, Plato asked us to imagine a political system where philosophers rule. As part of the social gospel movement in the early twentieth century, Walter Rauschenbusch asked us to imagine a Christian society where social service was the moral imperative. At about the same time, Jane Addams, the leading spokesperson for the settlement movement asked us to imagine a social organization where difference is marked not by oppression but by interactive engagement. Fifty years ago during the height of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King asked us to imagine a society where race is no longer a source of judgment. In each case, a utopian vision of a better society relies on engaging the imagination to see the moral possibilities. However, utopian thinking has been largely discredited of late as naïve and possibly dangerous. In The Task of Utopia: A Pragmatist and Feminist Perspective, Erin McKenna reminds us how valuable utopias can be in structuring moral motivations and energies.

McKenna identifies the negative response to utopias as associated with what she refers to as the end-state model. Such an approach is problematic, according to McKenna, because it transforms potential agents of change into spectators while offering a static telos: "in the end-state model of utopia, the notion that people can perfect the world—achieve some static end-state—and no longer have to participate and experiment takes hold" (19). Monolithic approaches to utopias are not only ineffective but also dangerous because, as McKenna suggests, they retard critical thinking and individual choice thus lending themselves well to authoritarian structures.

After addressing the problematic issues regarding end-state utopias, McKenna builds her way toward a process model of utopia by first considering anarchist approaches and then a Deweyan pragmatist model prior to infusing a feminist analysis. McKenna finds much that is attractive about an anarchist utopian vision: flexibility, experimentation, ongoing change, and, of course, anti-hierarchical values. However, a severe price must be paid to achieve the anarchist vision because anarchists "tend to endorse, and rely on for their success, a more or less spontaneous, immediate, and complete revolution—often violent in nature" (65). The disruption with the past and the legitimation of violence makes anarchism a suspect utopia. McKenna highlights two concerns. First, the reliance on swift disruption means that "the anarchist vision lacks a developed method of change" (65). Violent revolution can only change the physical support of institutions of [End Page 142] oppression. A comprehensive theory of change would also include provisions for addressing attitudes and relationships. Second, anarchist utopias are also vulnerable to the insidiousness of violence: "The society which results from violent means does run the risk of being corrupted by its means" (75). One cannot ignore the power dynamics in a violent overthrow. Even if oppressed peoples have gained the methods of physically overthrowing their oppressors, they are now in possession of the means of oppression. McKenna would like to see anarchist utopian theorists more comprehensively work out these crucial transitional issues.

McKenna finds John Dewey's utopian vision of democracy more attractive than an anarchist utopia in part because it eliminates the finitude of an end-state. She labels the Deweyan approach a "process model of utopia." The process utopia integrates a chain of "ends-in-view" where short term, tenuous, and achievable goal states bring into focus new short-term, tenuous, and achievable goal states. McKenna interprets Dewey: "There is no disjunction of means and ends. . . . each end-in-view achieved eventually becomes the means for achieving new ends-in-view" (86). Dewey's democratic vision is not based on a radical external revolution of social institutions; rather it relies on a ground-up subtle revolution springing forth from individuals to local communities and ultimately to society as a...

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