Abstract :
This article aims to reinvigorate the utopian imagination as a vital and necessarycomponent in IR theory. Since the First Great Debate between the Realists and theUtopianists (or more accurately, the Liberal-Internationalists) the utopian tradition has beenviewed as being both subjective and arbitrary, leading to its dismissal as vain idealism inworld politics. This article re-interrogates the arguments of Carr and Morgenthau and findsthat they have relevance today only as against closed systems of utopia and have littlebearing against the open-dialectical utopianism which is advocated here as a viablealternative to the sterility of realism. The article also examines the historical nexus betweenrealism’s dismissal of utopianism and the wider movements in political philosophy via acritical engagement with the works of Popper, Berlin and Arendt. Finally, after exploringthe limitations of Booth’s idea of ‘Utopian Realism’, the article argues that utopianismshould no longer be assumed to be a blueprint for a future, perfect society, a traditionfraught with the danger of proto-totalisation, but as a critical imaginary that acts as aheuristic device to reveal the fissures in existing reality and as an ideational motivating forcefor progressive change in world politics
