Contemporary Utopia between Neo-liberalism and Globalism

The last half of the 20th century brings up a pessimistic note for the utopian studies, born out of the delusions of history. Improving the world on a global scale (by means of neo-liberalism and globalism, which influenced the utopian literature) becomes a tireless obsession of the utopian dreams. The role of imagination within this context is an unrewarding one: it refuses reality, incapable of solving the problems of mankind, but at the same time, it cannot detach from reality, being inspired by it in the process of imagining parallel worlds. This complex phenomenon is approached in this paper. However, maintaining the imaginary perspective, the study describes the evolution and distortion of a characteristic usually assigned to utopia - the illusive desire to organize and "structure" mankind, a wish whose legitimacy and impact upon the individual (at present as well as in antiquity) represents an endless opportunity of characterizing the human being.