Disaster utopia and the state: Success, failure and the fear of co-option

This article explores disaster utopias in relation to two interconnected questions regarding utopian and prefigurative political projects. The first question concerns assessments of success and failure: Disaster utopias complicate assessment in these terms because they appear more effective at achieving immediate practical goals than existing systems, while this very effectiveness raises the spectre of a distinct kind of failure , in the form of co-option. The second question concerns the relationship of such projects to existing states: Fears of co-option tend to treat the state's entrance onto the scene as simply neutralising utopian potential. While such fears are well-grounded, it is important to also consider how such encounters might change the state itself. Moreover, these two questions inform each other: the question of how the state (and ideas of it) might be transformed can also inform assessments of success or failure.