Modernism and Exile ― Liminality and the Utopian Imagination

This book explores exile and utopia as correlated phenomena in Western culture, arguing that they have engendered the exilic-utopian imagination as one of the major components of the modern, power-oriented mentality. Spariosu argues that utopian projects, whether religious or socio-political, virtual or actual, are often generated by an exilic consciousness that attempts to compensate for its groundlessness, which it perceives negatively, as ontological lack or emptiness. The author supports his argument with a wealth of examples, ranging from the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Old Testament, Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus and Plato's dialogues in Antiquity to 20th century literary masterpieces produced at the height of European Modernism, including Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Thomas Mann's Joseph and his Brothers, and Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.

Mihai I. Spariosu is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Georgia, Athens, in the USA. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University, USA, and has taught at several prominent universities around the world. He is the founder of a new field of study and practice, Intercultural Knowledge Management, which he proposed and developed in two books: Global Intelligence and Human Development (2005) and Remapping Knowledge (2006).