Rupture, Radicalization, Reinvention: The Utopian Process in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future

Anna Gilarek

doi:10.18290/rh257311.5

Published : 2025-12-19

Vol. 73 No. 11 (2025)

Rupture, Radicalization, Reinvention: The Utopian Process in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future

Anna Gilarek

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7700-9025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh257311.5

Abstract

The article discusses the utopian mechanisms of transformation behind the postcapitalist transition envisioned by Kim Stanley Robinson in The Ministry for the Future (2020). Drawing on Tom Moylan’s work on the concept of utopian radicalization, as well as on Ernst Bloch’s distinction between abstract and concrete utopia, the article looks at the formation of radical subjectivity and utopian agency in the characters of the novel. Precipitated by a disruptive environmental event, this process culminates in deliberate and collective efforts to secure a postcapitalist future, which can be regarded as a concrete utopia. Dynamic, flexible and open-ended, it constitutes an extrapolation of utopian latencies concealed within the crisis-ridden contemporary world.

Keywords:

Kim Stanley Robinson, Ernst Bloch, Tom Moylan, utopia, radicalization, postcapitalism, concrete utopia

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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