Social dreaming and world building in the Anthropocene

In a climate-changed world, utopian social dreaming promises to educate our desires for alternative ways of being and living. This Forum Exchange examines the possibilities and limitations of the anti-perfectionist utopianism advocated by Mathias Thaler in his book No Other Planet, which he develops by combining theory-building and storytelling. Considering the three functions of utopianism that Thaler identifies (to estrange, galvanize or caution its audience), the contributors reflect on how our attitudes to the future shape our sense of political possibilities in the present. They assess whether reflexivity about the risks of utopian thinking provides an adequate basis for social critique in a climate-changed world. How, and to what extent, does utopian social dreaming and world-building enable us to recognize the reality of the Anthropocene as ‘something yet to be invented’?