This volume examines the concept of the utopic figure, focusing on the textual procedures through which utopian texts negotiate the limits of the imaginable. Drawing from literary theory and criticism, political philosophy, social history, cartography and geography, urban studies and visual culture, it discusses utopian figuration in relation to classical, early modern, and (post)modern contexts, dwelling on the aversion to stasis or civil war and the import of animality in the cl...

«Antonis Balasopoulos is to be heartily thanked for bringing back into print A. L. Morton’s marvelous book The English Utopia – and for providing us with not only a useful and insightful Introduction, but also a comprehensive bibliography of Leslie Morton’s many writings. We definitely need such works in these difficult times when democracy is under siege by authoritarian forces. Morton’s chapters may well truly serve both to empower our critical thinking and to inspire our radica...

Reading Texts on Sovereignty charts the development of the concept from the classical period to the present day. Defined in antiquity as an absolute or supreme type of power, sovereignty's history has been marked ever since by numerous moments of crisis and contestation through which its meaning has been redefined and reconfigured. Using extracts of key texts selected and analysed by leading contributors from the USA, the UK, New Zealand, Japan, Cyprus, Finland, France, Austria, I...