Joshua Kotin’s Utopias of One (Princeton University Press, 2017) analyzes a particular and peculiar sub-genre of utopian literature. Kotin identifies works by Thoreau, Dubois, the Mandel’shtams, and the poets Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and J.H. Prynne as “utopias of one.” In these works, the authors at one and the same time publish for an external audience, but sketch out modes of living and being that are in important ways both non-accessible and non-replicable. This is much different way of thinking about “utopia” than the more standard communal experiments of reality and fiction.
Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. He teaches courses on Russian and Soviet History, World History, and Philosophy of History. His research interests include the sociological theorist Philip Rieff and the influence of Russian nihilism on American libertarianism.
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