Utopia as Method and Metamodernism: A Synthesis

This note explores the convergence and productive tensions between Ruth Levitas’s Utopia as Method and Metamodernism, examining how their combination might generate new frameworks for social transformation and futures thinking.

Academic Context: The Unexplored Intersection

Current scholarship has not yet systematically combined Levitas’s methodological framework with metamodernism. The closest existing work comes from Ana Šporčič’s 2023 paper, “Oscillating Utopias: Oscar Wilde and the Utopian Discourse of Metamodernism,”¹ which explores metamodern utopianism without referencing Levitas.

Šporčič’s literary analysis confirms that oscillation is central to contemporary utopianism—the “continual necessity and impossibility of utopian desire” makes oscillation a structuring metaphor rather than a problem to solve. Our synthesis builds on this insight by providing the systematic methodology and social transformation focus that literary analysis alone cannot offer.

Core Convergences

Process Over Product

Both frameworks reject static endpoints in favor of dynamic practices. Levitas transforms utopia from blueprint to methodology through IROS², while metamodernism emphasizes oscillation as ongoing movement³. This shared commitment to process enables metamodern oscillation to provide temporal rhythm for Levitas’s three modes, while the modes offer structural content for metamodern movement.

Sophisticated Engagement with Possibility

Levitas’s “educated hope” and metamodern “as if” engagement are remarkably aligned⁴³. Both involve wholehearted engagement with possibility while maintaining critical awareness—acting with conviction without dogmatism, maintaining transformative vision while understanding constraints.

Integration of Critique and Construction

Both frameworks refuse the false choice between criticism and construction. Levitas integrates archaeological excavation with architectural design, while metamodernism oscillates between critique and construction. This suggests transformation requires holding both capacities simultaneously.

Productive Tensions

Methodology and Experience

The Tension: Levitas provides structured methodology (three analytical modes) while metamodernism emphasizes lived oscillation and embodied both/and thinking.

The Resolution: The three modes become oscillatory practices rather than sequential steps. Practitioners move between archaeological excavation, ontological inquiry, and architectural design as context demands—transforming systematic framework into dynamic practice.

Scale: Individual and Collective

The Tension: How does individual metamodern capacity translate to collective social transformation?

The Resolution: Individual oscillatory skills serve as preparation for collective IROS. Personal capacity for both/and thinking and provisional commitment enables more effective participation in social imagination. The scaling happens through enhanced collective capability rather than aggregation.

Depth of Commitment

The Tension: Can provisional commitment support the deep engagement required for social transformation?

The Resolution: Provisional yet wholehearted engagement—acting “as if” transformation matters deeply (because it does) while recognizing your reconstruction as one possibility among many. This maintains transformative energy without dogmatism.

Emergent Framework: Oscillatory Social Imagination

The synthesis produces a new methodological approach that transforms both frameworks:

What Makes This Framework Distinctive

Oscillatory Social Imagination combines Levitas’s analytical rigor with metamodern temporal dynamics. Rather than sequential analysis (archaeological → ontological → architectural), practitioners oscillate between modes based on context, holding multiple reconstructions simultaneously without forcing resolution.

This represents a methodological innovation beyond either framework alone:

• From Levitas: Systematic analytical structure through three modes
• From Metamodernism: Dynamic temporal rhythm and provisional commitment
• Emergent Quality: Structured oscillation that maintains analytical depth while embracing fluidity

Applications for Futures Studies

The synthesis transforms futures practice by replacing scenario selection with oscillatory engagement. Rather than creating alternatives and choosing, practitioners move between possibilities as living options. The three modes provide structure: archaeological excavation of embedded futures, ontological examination of implied subjects, and architectural design of transitional institutions.

For Critical Futures Studies, this offers tools to address power dynamics through oscillation between perspectives on whose futures matter, maintaining provisional commitment while remaining open to alternatives.

Applications for Social Change

The framework enables oscillatory advocacy—passionate engagement with specific changes while maintaining strategic flexibility. Advocates act “as if” their goals are essential while using opposition as information for refinement.

For institutional design, the synthesis suggests creating systems that embody productive tension through adaptive governance with built-in review cycles, both/and policy approaches, and provisional implementation periods.

Democratic renewal becomes possible through institutions that oscillate between expert knowledge and popular wisdom, enabling provisional consensus without permanent closure.

New Research Questions Enabled by This Synthesis

The combination of these frameworks opens specific lines of inquiry that neither approach alone would generate:

How Oscillation Transforms Method

• What happens when Levitas’s three modes operate simultaneously rather than sequentially?
• How does oscillatory practice change the nature of social imagination itself?
• Can institutions be designed to embody rather than suppress productive tension?

Scaling Paradoxes

• How do individual oscillatory capacities aggregate into collective transformation?
• What institutional forms can maintain both stability and fluidity?
• Does metamodern social policy require new democratic processes?

Temporal Innovation

• How does oscillatory methodology transform our relationship to time and change?
• Can “revolutionary” transformation occur through oscillation rather than rupture?
• What does progress mean when conceived as oscillatory rather than linear?

Contemporary Relevance

The synthesis addresses current meta-crisis through oscillatory navigation rather than forced choices. For climate change, practitioners oscillate between technological and degrowth approaches while committing provisionally to specific strategies. Democratic renewal requires holding both institutional reform and cultural transformation simultaneously.

In post-truth contexts, the framework enables advocacy for evidence-based approaches “as if” truth matters while maintaining awareness of knowledge’s constructed nature—oscillating between truth claims to understand their partial validity.

Global-local tensions resolve through both/and governance operating at multiple scales simultaneously, honoring both autonomy and interdependence.

Limitations and Future Directions

The primary challenge is scaling: How do individual oscillatory capacities translate to institutional transformation? Current examples focus on personal or small-group practice.

The approach also demands significant cognitive and emotional energy—maintaining oscillation and provisional commitment requires sustained meta-awareness not always available or sustainable.

Both frameworks may embed cultural assumptions about rational reflection and individual agency that require adaptation across contexts.

Conclusion: Transformation as Oscillatory Practice

The convergence of Utopia as Method and Metamodernism reveals that social transformation requires not resolving tensions but dancing with them skillfully. Rather than choosing between hope and critique, individual and collective, the synthesis offers enhanced capacity for dynamic engagement with complexity.

The framework’s power lies in reframing transformation from achievement to practice—ongoing, embodied, provisional engagement with collective possibility. This suggests the answer to contemporary paralysis is not better positions but better movement between positions.

Social transformation becomes something we practice through oscillatory engagement rather than something we achieve through final resolution.

Related Notes

• Utopia as Method
• Metamodernism
• Critical Futures Studies
• Real Utopias
• Metamodernism and Futures Studies

References

Additional Sources

• Storm, Jason Ā. Josephson. Metamodernism: The Future of Theory. University of Chicago Press, 2021. Publisher page

• Freinacht, Hanzi. The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One. Metamoderna ApS, 2017. Available at Metamoderna

• Wright, Erik Olin. Envisioning Real Utopias. Verso, 2010.

• Moylan, Tom. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination. Methuen, 1986.

• Levitas, Ruth. “Against Work: A Utopian Incursion into Social Policy.” Inaugural lecture, University of Bristol, 2005. Available PDF

• Critical Design. “Utopia as a Method.” Analysis of Levitas’s methodological innovation. Available online

This synthesis represents an experimental framework combining two distinct but compatible approaches to social transformation. Further development would benefit from practical experimentation and dialogue with practitioners of both methodologies.