Complex Democracy, Complex Utopianism

ABSTRACT Longtime utopian scholar Fátima Vieira draws from a variety of contemporary social theorists, Anglophone and European, to argue for the notion of a “complex” utopianism that departs from previous, traditional models of utopian narrative, thought and practice. To resist the seemingly dystopian spirit of our own time, Vieira argues, we need to define, and then establish, a new “utopian class” akin to (and perhaps coinciding with) Latour’s and Schultz’s proposal for an “ecological class.” Wide-ranging in its theoretical sources, the article invites scholarly conversation about “what’s next” for human sustainability—and for utopian thinking.