Session 7. Utopia, Dystopia, and Power

When we read Kim Stanley Robinson’s science fiction novel The Ministry for the Future, which deals with climate change and global warming, two matters catch our attention: the nearness of this future, since it was published in 2020 and the Ministry to which it refers is founded in 2025, and the fact that it is a novel on political action. In January 2021, in the midst of an expectedly dystopic present, the Escola Europea d’Humanitats organised a seminar entitled “Fear and Hope: utopias and dystopias in mass culture and art,” whose contributions were published as a thematic dossier in issue 46 of La Maleta de Portbou. This pairing, utopia and dystopia, is now joined by a third term, power, which means that the discussion is not limited to the field of fiction, of the imagining of future possibles, but now involves politics. To bring about this change, the debate’s starting point will be another text published in La Maleta de Portbou, Marina Garcés’ article “La fuerza de una promesa” (No. 59, July-August 2023).

• María Ruido, visual artist, researcher and cultural producer
• Clara Serra, philosopher, researcher at the University of Barcelona, author of de Leonas y zorras
• Antonio Monegal, Professor of Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature at the Pompeu Fabra University