Abstract

This article examines the concept of the “education of desire,” which undergirds literary utopian studies’ response to postmodernism’s challenge to the modern utopian impulse. The analysis returns to two classic utopian texts—the work of Miguel Abensour, who coined the term “education of desire,” and Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel about ecological sustainability, “The Dispossessed”—to argue that the education of desire involves a more intimate relationship between desire and domination than literary utopian studies has allowed. This article not only transforms our understanding of a mainstay of utopian studies; it relates this discussion to utopian strains in environmental thought, tracing the tension between the desire for ecological sustainability and the social, political, and economic prescriptions this would entail.