Keyvan Shafiei

In this chapter, the author defends the claim that utopias can, and _should_, inform attempts to craft and effectuate successful programs of radical change. Specifically, it is argued that social and political organizing, even in response to seemingly intractable issues like systemic racial injustice, must ultimately be grounded in _realistic utopian_ visions. This concept is borrowed from Erik Olin Wright and refined to argue that realistic utopias highlight the human potential for radical change and force us to recognize that the boundaries of what is possible are structurally contestable. The author conjoins this analysis with Elizabeth Anderson’s recent discussion of social movements as experiments in morality. For Anderson, social movements extend moral critique beyond the domain of mere theory by offering unique experiments in living morally. Along these lines, the chapter argues that the Movement for Black Lives offers a valuable case study in how we can experiment with realistic utopias.

The brain matters. Says the opening line from Victoria Pitts-Taylor’s The Brain’s Body: Neuroscience and Corporeal Politics. On the face of it, the human brain matters inasmuch as it is the body’s central information processing organ; the CEO that presides over many of our executive bodily functions. But the brain matters beyond the ways in which it has biologically evolved and currently processes information. The brain also matters in social thought, as neuroscientific research has historically informed widespread perceptions of certain bodies and persons at the social and institutional level. Moreover, the brain is embodied, and bodies accrue social and political meanings beyond what they represent at the level...