The ‘critical utopia’ does not offer an unequivocal alternative. It is, for Moylan, critical in three senses: it implies an Enlightenment sense of critique; a postmodern reflexivity and provisionality; and a political critical mass leading to change – the latter existing by implication outside the text. Levitas, Utopia as Method, p. 111

Dystopia portrays the darkness of the lived moment, the difficulty of finding a way out of a totalizing system. It is not necessarily anti-utopian: anti-utopianism actively opposes the imagination and pursuit of alternatives. Much hangs on whether the dystopia points to unremitting closure or to another possible future, and the ending and framing of the dystopia is crucial here. Baccolini and Moylan argue that these are dystopian ‘texts that maintain a utopian impulse’. Their emphasis on totality and transformation, argues Moylan, is one of the key distinctions between the critical and the classical dystopia. They both intend political change and inscribe it in the text by way of eutopian enclaves and appendices that indicate the dystopian world is history. But if the critical dystopia can be a vehicle of resistance, it is much less able to register transformation and redemption. It may point to the exit, but it does not suggest what we might find, or make, when we leave. Levitas, Utopia as Method, p. 110-111

My own more pessimistic view is that the political impetus and intent of the critical utopia is not necessarily matched by political effectiveness. This depends on the conditions of cultural reproduction. A politically quiescent context and reading enables them to function only as critique. Levitas, Utopia as Method, p. 111

On the other hand, the very reflexivity and provisionality means they can be seen as examples of utopia as method – the self-conscious promotion of interrogation of possible alternative futures from a position which registers both the necessary indeterminacy of the future and the plurality of the agents who will create it. Levitas, Utopia as Method, p. 111

Moylan also argues that the utopias published in the 1970s, many of them feminist, differ in both form and content from those of the fin de siècle. These works, for which Moylan coined the term ‘critical utopias’, have a more fragmented narrative structure than earlier utopias. The discrete register of plot and character is foregrounded; the iconic register, describing the social structure of both utopian society and its foil, recedes. Again, the emphasis is on subjects and on agency. As sociology, the combination of discrete and iconic registers is a double perspective on structure and agency; in Boltanski’s terms, it combines exteriority and interiority. Levitas, Utopia as Method, p. 110

The shift to a greater pluralism, provisionality and reflexivity in fictional utopias is paralleled in a theoretical commentary which treats utopia as heuristic rather than telic. Like the utopias themselves, this focuses on process rather than content, but the process is of dialogue with, rather than within, the text. Neo-Marxism, critical theory, postmodernism, and feminism converge in exploring utopia in terms of desire, in terms of form and process rather than content, in terms of how the text works rather than what it means. It is a move which has encouraged rich and deep readings of literary texts, surfacing utopian surplus and dystopian shadows that overspill the conscious intentions of authors. But this preoccupation with representation rather than figuration, or with the process of representation rather than what is represented, again tends to limit the possible function of both utopia and literary and social theory to one of critique. For Bammer, the two movements of feminism and deconstruction that converged in the 1970s are presented as unproblematically congruent. But the postmodern and deconstructive turn can also pull in the opposite direction, away from the political intention of the critical utopia. It also raises the question of whether there has, in fact, been a profound change in the nature of utopian writing, or whether utopian texts are simply read differently in the context of late modernity. Levitas, Utopia as Method, p. 111-112

[In News from Nowhere] Political difference is resolved through direct democracy. The system works for differences of opinion about the common interest; no fundamental differences of interest arise. Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, an exemplar of the critical utopia, brings cultural difference and conflicts of interest into the utopian society, Mattapoisett, itself, with cultural pluralism deliberately and actively separated from any connection with ‘race’. She posits the need for institutional processes to address differences of interest. The process of conflict resolution is extended discussion: ‘We argue. … How else?’. This continues until agreement is reached; after a major dispute, the winners have to feed and give presents to the losers. Contra Gray, there is here no claim that utopia is a perfect world where all desires and all interests are harmonized. But the problem with ‘we argue, how else?’ – especially in a society which is not culturally homogeneous – is the presumption that agreement will be reached. This assumes that shared interests will override conflicting ones. It also assumes agreement over the terms of the debate, the procedures of discussion, the frame of the argument. A more radical challenge to the utopian imagination arises if the frame of argument is contested. How can utopia handle absence of agreement on the rules of the game as well as conflicts of interest? This difficulty contributes to the dystopian turn. If utopia is a space for the fictional resolution of problems that humankind has not (yet) solved, incommensurability can only enter as a dystopian shadow. Levitas, Utopia as Method, p. 111-112

Like Bammer, Moylan sees the new utopianism as a product of the politics of the 1960s and 1970s. Authors like Marge Piercy were politically involved and trying to live differently; texts, like Sally Miller Gearhart’s The Wanderground, were part of the building of the political movements themselves. Levitas, Utopia as Method, p. 110

For Moylan, the societies portrayed are decentralized and differentiated. Their values and institutions are interrogated within the utopian society and less unequivocally endorsed. The gap between individual experience and public discourse in utopia itself, Boltanski’s unease, is opened up: this is a strong theme in Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. Many novels contain possible dystopian as well as utopian futures, breaking down the sense of an inevitable move towards utopia and refusing grand narrative. Such texts ‘reject utopia as blueprint while preserving it as dream’. Levitas, Utopia as Method, p. 110