Monstrous Utopia in Toni Morrison’s Paradise

Contemporary US literature appears to have shied away from considerations of utopia. “Monstrous Utopia in Toni Morrison's Paradise” argues that Morrison creates two utopian communities to explore the ambiguous relationship between utopia and political imagination. The importance of communication in the small, unplanned utopian community of the Convent starkly exposes the danger of closing narrative possibilities as represented by the planned utopian community of Ruby. Utopian narratives, more than any other genre, create an argument for alternatives to the status quo. By examining intersections between utopian theory, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's concept of the multitude, and Morrison's Paradise, a space opens up for reconsidering ambiguous narratives of utopia in contemporary US fiction