Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity

Rating:
Summary: All the World's a Theory
Review: In Imaginary Communities, Wegner glides from heady theorists like Jameson and Zizek to popular fiction like Dissposessed and to "cannonical classics" like 1984. Always readable, always introducing and always challenging, Wegner traces the evolution of the 'uptopia' novel while reorienting our reading of distopias by asking 'who's utopia are they?' Wegner sets up the concept of utopia as a mode of reading, asking us to position the texts we encounter in terms of it and in terms of social space as well, thus he discusses nation building and the onset of modernity in terms of the development of the utopia novel. Far reaching and deeply penetrating, whether you're a professor of literature, an avid sci-fi fan, an activist, or even an urban design specialist, Imaginary Communities is a 'place' worth visiting.

Rating:
Summary: All the World's a Theory
Review: In Imaginary Communities, Wegner glides from heady theorists like Jameson and Zizek to popular fiction like Dissposessed and to "cannonical classics" like 1984. Always readable, always introducing and always challenging, Wegner traces the evolution of the 'uptopia' novel while reorienting our reading of distopias by asking 'who's utopia are they?' Wegner sets up the concept of utopia as a mode of reading, asking us to position the texts we encounter in terms of it and in terms of social space as well, thus he discusses nation building and the onset of modernity in terms of the development of the utopia novel. Far reaching and deeply penetrating, whether you're a professor of literature, an avid sci-fi fan, an activist, or even an urban design specialist, Imaginary Communities is a 'place' worth visiting.

Rating:
Summary: Buy this book!
Review: You have to buy this book! To explain it would only to be to rewrite it. You must experience this for yourself. Looking for an existential explanation of how you participate within communities, make decisions and share the bond with so many others, those that you will never meet? This is the explanation.

Frank...