Form of Appearance and Deep Structure: On the Problem of the Historicity of Utopias

In what has been said so far, the specific form of the utopian figure of thought has been explained as practical reflection – analysis and mediation of reality and possibility at the same time. Formally, the process of reflection has a constant structure; actually – i.e. as concrete utopia – utopian fiction is subject to the same changes as history itself due to its functional connection with the respective historical reality. Irrespective of this connection – of dynamic change of current contents on the one hand and formally unchanging structure of reflection on the other – a realm opens up in the utopias whose mythical contents in their symbolic representation run through the utopian texts from their beginning to the present, whose elements thus seem to elude the definition of ‘historicity’, since at first glance no development can be detected in them.