66david

[permian-tropos]

pathologic using the word 'chimera' to mean something related to or analogous to 'utopia' was always interesting to me but now I'm learning it's actually an established phrasing at least in political theory—definitely in socialist theory

it's not just a russophone term bc I found it scattered throughout marx. all the way back in 1844 he uses 'chimera' like this: "let us liberate them from the chimeras, the ideas, dogmas, imaginary beings under the yoke of which they are pining away."

then it's found in lenin, there's a number of instances of 'chimera' and 'utopia' being semantically juxtaposed eg. "it is neither a chimera nor a utopia", and there's "speaking of Plato's republic and of the current opinion that it is a chimera"

and the reason I went on this dive is that I found it in anarchist revolutionary nestor makhno's writings "in our day, the anarchist society or harmonious human society no longer seems a chimera"

but as an english speaker, I hadn't come across the word 'chimera' being used in political theory before playing pathologic