Utopia and morality: Social movements in contemporary ideology

Δεν διατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικάDeliberately disregarding the classical Mannheimian distinction between ideology and utopia, the author of this article attempts to deal with the question of social movements in the ideological realm by drawing attention to how these relate to utopian constructions on the one hand and to Kantian morality on the other. What is called in question is the conventional distinction between social movements and social classes, which, in the author’s opinion, has contributed a great deal to the disparagement of the former’s political importance, as well as to the traditional “scientific-socialist” illusion of socialism’s teleological inevitability. Utilitarian ideology is also examined in terms of morality and utopia, and it is a central contention of the article that social movements acquire their specific ideological significance by being radically opposed to utilitarian logic. Finally, the importance of the sexual liberation movement in particular is investigated, and the author takes the occasion to reassess Michel Foucault’s well-known critique, and his -not unrelated- aloofness regarding utopia