The present special issue of Utopian Studies is devoted to utopia and solidarity considered from philosophical, sociopolitical, cultural, and literary perspectives. It was inspired by the 18th Utopian Studies Society Conference "Solidarity and Utopia," which took place in Gdańsk in July 2017. As the papers presented at that conference clearly demonstrated, the most immediate connotations of the word solidarity used in different contexts tend to be positive, invariably inducing utopian or messianic thinking, despite the fact that solidarity is "not morally (...) good per se, it is good only to the extent that its inclusiveness, goal and implications for the individual are morally acceptable."1 Unless it concerns deviant... (shrink)

Focusing on the broadly conceived principle of hospitality, the essay offers an analysis of Joshua Barnes's Gerania, a highly original but little-studied late seventeenth-century utopia set in India and featuring the Pygmies as utopians and Homer as their lawgiver. It is argued that Barnes's utopia offers a radical alternative to the policy of closure and isolation adopted in early modern utopian commonwealths. Its peculiar construction results in the unique openness of the narrator's discourse to an alien word and of the (...) ideal world to outsiders, their outlandish beliefs, rules and artifacts. (shrink)

Regardless of its ontological status and seemingly subsidiary role, the beyond—real, oneiric, imaginary, or otherworldly—constitutes, I intend to argue, an indispensable and complementary component of any dystopian reality. Paradoxically, it may be claimed that what lies outside a given dystopia—beyond its impassable boundaries—determines, ultimately, whether we deal with the Orwellian or the Hollywood type of "bad world."1 Contrary to the latter, the former systematically compromises and eliminates one kind of the beyond after another, leaving its inhabitants with neither space nor (...) time nor discourse that could allow them to imagine that they are behind the confines of dystopia. No matter how far Winston Smith... (shrink)