Howe on For a Justice-To-Come: Milo Rau's Utopian Realism

Steven Howe, University of Lucerne, has published For a Justice-to-Come: Milo Rau’s Utopian Realism at 60 Seminar 108 (May 2024). Here is the abstract.

One of the most prolific political theatre makers in Europe today, Milo Rau is known for his commitment to a realist art of possibility—a "Möglichkeitsrealismus," as he defines it, devoted to opening space for envisioning possible alternatives to the status quo. Drawing on Ernst Bloch's writings on utopia, this article argues for an understanding of Rau's artistic practice as a kind of "concrete utopianism" that materially engages the world so as to imagine—and enact—new possibilities for improvement and transformation. Via a reading of Rau's Kongo Tribunal (2015), an attempt is made to show how, by staging the tribunal in the here and now of performance, the artist seeks to disclose the real but not yet realized possibilities available in the present, giving form to an alternative institutionality—and an alternative practice of justice—that is made fully graspable in the imagination and in reality. As a material act of imagining otherwise, the Kongo Tribunal refuses the closure of the present, inviting spectators to step back and recognize the institutionalized forms of law and justice not as fixed but variable—and thus (still) open to change.

Theilen on Philip Allott's Legal Utopianism @jtthei @ChloeJSKennedy

Jens T. Theilen, Walther Schücking Institute, University of Kiel, has published Of Wonder and Changing the World: Philip Allott's Legal Utopianism at 2017 German Yearbook of International Law 60. Here is the abstract.

Utopian perspectives on law are rare – both within legal theory, which generally eschews utopianism as frivolous and unrealistic, and within utopian studies, which have largely neglected to analyse the role that law plays in utopia or on the path towards it. Philip Allott’s work, and his latest monograph 'Eutopia' in particular, constitutes a notable exception which is positioned at the intersection between law and utopianism, and this paper aims to explore that intersection with a view to identifying the conceptualisation of law that it implies. To tease out the utopian elements in Allott, I suggest reading 'Eutopia' in light of Ernst Bloch’s 'The Principle of Hope'. Three related utopian themes can thus be identified: the orientation towards the future based on dreams, imagination, and educated hope; the defamiliarisation from the present to open up possibilities of change; and the situation of utopian thought in relation to present reality, dynamically construed, with an emphasis on the need for action by human beings to propel society towards a utopian future. I argue that this framework leads to a specifically utopian account of law which is critical of the law as it stands, dynamically oriented towards an open future, and in the hands of human beings who have the power to shape and transform its content. The conclusion considers the implications of this analysis for the genre of text to which 'Eutopia' belongs: if the point is to transform law and society by way of human action, then it constitutes a utopian manifesto that aims to instigate a sense of responsibility among its readers, and thus achieve the world as it could be.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.