Abstract

To articulate the past historically … means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.On the face of it, the quincentennial of Thomas More’s Utopia arrives at a time dramatically inappropriate for celebrations of the actuality of its vision. Consider what seems to be a new stage in the long global economic crisis, just as much as it is an indication of the intensification of imperialist aggression following in its wake: the dramatic swelling in the numbers of uprooted and terrorized populations seeking refuge, especially on European shores. In June 2015, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced that the number of people forcibly displaced from...