After Utopia: Topos of Otherness and Social Observer Position

Miklukho-Maklay St., 10/2, Moscow, Russia, 117198 The article deals with peculiarities of utopian imagination and its mutations in infomedia. The emphasis is made on mutopia which includes utopia as a text, intended for reading on the margins of other texts, but excludes demands for utopian meta-otherness, transforming attitudes towards current society. A social observer in mutopia is first of all a critical reader without superior position of Reason and Reality and a kind of skilled surfer using indefinite, changeable, abundant mental environment for creating his/her own textual routs. Post-utopian thought emerges out of the special social observer experience and is analyzed in this article with inspiration from and on the basis of “Notes of Mutopia” by I. Csicsery-Ronay.

utopian imagination, mutopia, post-utopian thought, information space, cyber-mobility, critical reader, experience of otherness