Meditations on utopia : metamodernist science-fiction media

Abstract

This essay politicizes utopia in our times. When postmodernism has proved the futility of a grand totalizing narrative to history, metamodernism manifests a strive for hope with an affective turn in our unstable socio-political conditions of the 21st century. The challenges on a utopic vision to society therefore become what is left in the imaginations: How is utopia renewed in face of time and tide? Responding to the latest paradigm shift in art forms, this essay writes about metamodernism, the sentiment that claims the end of postmodernity. The science-fiction media by Christopher Nolan and Alan Walker, namely the movie Interstellar (2014) and music albums Different World (2018) and World of Walker (2021) are analyzed for their metamodernist qualities. Serving as the bridge that connects metamodernism and Fredric Jameson’s utopian theory, these media construct utopia that critically reflects our political systems and their mode of production. This essay utilizes these utopian forms as a site of meditation and articulates the political dialectics in utopia according to our social background. It is argued that metamodernism supplements to the contradictions in the impossibility of utopian realization, thus understanding the existing political structures with a humanistic interrogation. Eventually, it calls for the significance of a renewed utopian imagination that extends the narration of hope.