Imaginary Power, Real Horizons: The Practicality of Utopianism A Conversation with Richard Gilman-Opalsky Hosted by Dan Friedman

Richard Gilman-Opalsky is Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy at the School of Politics and International Affairs, University of Illinois, Springfield and one of the most important political philosophers in the United States. To help celebrate the publication of his new book, Imaginary Power, Real Horizons: The Practicality of Utopianism by AK Press, the East Side Institute is hosting a conversation with its author.

Imaginary Power is a collection of essays, lectures and seminars covering a wide range of questions important to today’s social justice activists, developmentalists and revolutionaries.  Among the topics explored in the book are: the need to generate environments conducive to radical imagining; the knowledge created through and embodied in the activity of insurrection; and the importance of avoiding the closed answers of ideology and embracing the open questioning of philosophy.

Dan Friedman, a teacher, researcher and organizer with the East Side Institute, will host this special opportunity to dialogue with a creative and challenging 21st century communist thinker.

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BIOGRAPHIES

Richard Gilman-Opalsky is professor of political theory and philosophy in the School of Politics and International Affairs at the University of Illinois. He is the author of nine books, including Communist Ontologies, Imaginary Power, The Communism of Love, Specters of Revolt, and Precarious Communism. Gilman-Opalsky has lectured widely throughout the world, and his work has been translated and published in Greek, Spanish, French, and German. In 2018-2019, he was named University Scholar at the University of Illinois. Gilman-Opalsky explores the powers of everyday people, particularly those typically regarded as “powerless.”

Dan Friedman is a playwright, director, theatre historian and life-long grassroots educator and activist.  He is a founder of the Castillo Theatre and a co-convener of Performing the World.  His book, Performance Activism: Precursors and Contemporary Pioneers, the first book-length study of performance activism, was published by Palgrave in 2021.  He currently is on the faculty of the East Side Institute, managing producer of Institute’s podcast, All Power to the Developing, and project manager of Let’s Learn! a  global community-engaged educational project of Lloyd International Honors College of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in collaboration with the  East Side Institute.