On Communism, Science Fiction, and Utopia: The Blagoevgrad Theses
Abstract
Following Hesiod’s proceeding of splitting the good and bad Eris, in the three parts of these Theses, Communism, Science Fiction, and Utopia/nism are split between the two poles and examined. In SF the role of Estrangement and the Novum is revisited; both are now seen as subject to encroaching fakery. Most articulated is Part 3 on good and bad utopianism, with a discussion of anti-utopia, defined as a targeted and openly political use of a closed horizon to refute, ridicule, and render unthinkable both the eutopia of a better possible world and the dystopia. Entropic closure and the early Disneyland and disneyfication are explored to understand the anti-utopia that lives us. As different from all earlier variants of utopia/nism, people are now wholly and permanently inside this fake utopia. The theory of utopia/nism, axiomatically postulating utopias are not realizable, can be salvaged by assuming eutopia is in anti-utopia latently present as a constituted absence.
References
[Freud, Sigmund]. "Dynamics of Transference". In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 12.
Aldiss, Brian W. The Pale Shadow of Science. [Seattle] Serconia P, 1985.
Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis. Doubleday, 1957.
Baudrillard, Jean. "Simulacra and Simulations". In Selected Writings. Ed. M. Poster. Stanford UP, 1988. 166-84.
Benjamin, Walter. Gesammelte Schriften. Suhrkamp, 1972-83.
Bloch, Ernst. Das Prinzip Hoffnung, 2 vols. Suhrkamp, 1959.
Clastres, Pierre. La société contre l'état. Minuit, 2009 [prvo 1974].
Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle.
Eco, Umberto. "Dictionary vs. Encyclopedia. In Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Indiana UP, 1986. 46-86. Crossreff
Extended Release Contemporanea No. 1 (2003): 71-89. Crossreff
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Prevod C. L. Markmann. Grove, 1967.
Foucault, Michel. Naissance de la biopolitique. Ed. M. Senellart. Gallimard, 2004.
Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas. The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. toExcel, 1999 [first 1971].
Goldmann, Lucien. Le Dieu caché. Gallimard, 1956.
Hesiod. Erga kai hemerai/ Esiodo. Le opere e i giorni [Bilingual Edition]. Rizzoli, 1998.
Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. Beacon P, 1964.
Marin, Louis. Utopiques: jeux d'espaces. Minuit, 1973.
Matvejević, Predrag. Pane nostro. Garzanti, 2009; Kruh naš. VBZ, 2009.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Birth of Tragedy. Prevod W. Kaufmann. Vintage, 1967.
Rancière, Jacques. Hatred of Democracy. Prevod S. Corcoran. Verso, 2014.
Ricoeur, Paul. Interpretation Theory. Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Texas Christian UP, 1976.
Sobchack, Vivian. Screening Space. Ungar, 1987.
Suvin, Darko. "A Tractate on Dystopia 2001". In Defined by a Hollow: Essays on Utopia, Science Fiction, and Political Epistemology. P. Lang, 2010. 381-412.
Suvin, Darko. "Communism Can Only Be Radical Plebeian Democracy: Remarks on the Experience of S.F.R. Yugoslavia and on Civil Society". International Critical Thought 6.2 (2016): 165-89; "Komunizam može biti samo radikalna plebejska demokracija". U S. Pulig ur., Ljevica nakon opovrgnute revolucije. Jesenski & Turk i Arkzin (u štampi). Crossreff
Suvin, Darko. "Considering the Sense of 'Fantasy' or 'Fantastic Fiction'." Extrapolation 41.3 (2000): 209-47. Crossreff
Suvin, Darko. "Introductory Pointers toward an Economics of Physical and Political Negentropy (2009)". In Leviathan's Belly: Essays for a Counter-Revolutionary Time. Wildside P for Borgo P, 2012. 331-50.
Suvin, Darko. "Of Starship Troopers and Refuseniks: War and Militarism in US Science Fiction". In D. Suvin Ed., Fictions, Special number about US Science Fiction and War/Militarism. [Pisa & Roma] IEPI, 2005. 107-54; Chapter 1 reedited in Hassler and Wilcox Ed., New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction, 2008; Chapter 2 in Extrapolation 48.1 (2007); "O zvjezdanim jurišnicima i prigovaračima savjesti...." UBIQ, br. 5 (2009): 175-226. Crossreff
Suvin, Darko. "On Cognitive Emotions and Topological Imagination". Versus No. 68 69 (1994): 165 201.
Suvin, Darko. "Parables and Uses of a Stumbling Stone". Arcadia 5.2 (2017): 271-300. Crossreff
Suvin, Darko. "Power without Violence: A Lesson from Tribal Communism".
Suvin, Darko. "Moć bez nasilja".
Suvin, Darko. "Reflections on What Remains of Zamyatin's We after the Change of Leviathans: Must Collectivism Be Against People?" In Envisioning the Future: Science Fiction and the Next Millennium. Ed. M. Barr. Wesleyan UP, 2003. 51-81
Suvin, Darko. "To Explain Fascism Today". Critique [Glasgow] 45.3 (2017): 259-302; "Objašnjenje fašizma za današnje vrijeme". Gordogan br. 33-34 (2016): 99-127. Crossreff
Suvin, Darko. "What and How Are Poets For in Our Age of Want: Cognition, Emancipation, Communism." Minnesota R br. 91 (2018): 111-35. Crossreff
Suvin, Darko. Defined by a Hollow: Essays on Utopia, Science Fiction, and Political Epistemology. P. Lang, 2010.
Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. Yale UP, 1979; Expanded Edition, Ed. G. Canavan. P. Lang, 2016; Metamorfoze znanstvene fantastike. O poetici i povijesti jednog književnog žanra. Zagreb: Profil, 2010 [prevod 1. izdanja].
Suvin, Darko. Pouke iz Ruske revolucije. Prev. M. Mrčela. Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Southeast Europe, 2017. 48pp. Lessons from the Russian Revolution and Its Fallout: An Epistemological Approach. Ibidem.
Suvin, Darko. Splendour, Misery, and Possibilities: An X-ray of Socialist Yugoslavia. Foreword F. Jameson. Brill, 2016; Haymarket P, 2017; Samo jednom se ljubi… Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2014. Link 3. izd. 2016. Crossreff
Suvin, Darko. To Brecht and Beyond: Soundings in Modern Dramaturgy. Harvester P, and Barnes & Noble, 1984.
Tamás, G. M. "Words from Budapest". New Left R No. 80 (2013): 5-26.
Wallis, Victor. "Innovation". Historical Materialism 16.3 (2008): 227-32. Crossreff
Wallis, Victor. Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism. Political Animal P, 2018.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their published articles online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website, social networks like ResearchGate or Academia), as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).


