Choosing Utopia: Reading, Interpretation, Agency

Through autobiographical and theoretical reflections, as well as literary and cultural essays from across his career, Tom Moylan reviews his personal, political and professional trajectory of choosing, and becoming, utopian. An exploration of the relationship between vocation and activism, in Choosing Utopia Moylan offers a threaded narrative composed of memoir and theoretical and methodological explication. Beginning with an account of his reading practice and its relationship to an increasingly self-conscious use of interpretation, the book then traces the entwined activities of writing and political activism across three decades. Following up this review, Moylan presents an integrated series of literary and cultural essays exemplifying the utopian quest.

With an emphasis on the development of a utopian hermeneutic practice and how it can offer a barrier to, and opportunity for, radical utopian agency, Choosing Utopia is a timely, holistic reflection on how humanity can confront and transform the conditions produced by environmental, economic, political, and cultural crises.