The estranging perspective of science in Eduardo Holmberg’s utopia Olimpio Pitango de Monalia (1915)
Abstract
It is customary to think of utopia as a genre that deals mostly with socio-political issues and that takes a revolutionary approach to a status quo. This paper reflects on the impossibility of identifying a common and original aim behind the utopian genre, especially that of cognitive estrangement, if understood as a critical-dialectical, liberating and dubitative epistemological approach. The analysis of a utopian novel by Argentinian writer Eduardo Holmberg shows that the presence of estranging procedures does not necessarily lead to scepticism about the ‘normality’ of social facts. On the contrary, it can serve the purpose of persuading about the existence of a more valid and normal social order compared to the existing one. The paper proposes then a key to interpret utopian texts in relation to the problem of evil and suggests expanding the meaning of the word ‘estrangement’ to take into account the different aims which can coexist within the same literary procedure.
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