This article investigates the forms of compossibility between utopia and realism in Mario Tronti’s political thought, taking Miguel Abensour’s theorization of utopiques as its initial hermeneutic cue. Building on Abensour’s attempt to restitute historical and political density to utopia by inscribing it within a theory of history, the essay reconstructs how Tronti radicalizes this gesture within a political theory of history structured by the conflict between politics and history and by the two coupled polarities realism–transcendence and pragmatism–immanence. It follows Tronti from the modern beginnings of politics, in the Machiavelli/More constellation, through the “intermediate time” and the sunset of twentieth-century politics, to the displacement of the utopian register into the domain of prophecy and theological-political motifs. The article argues that the triad utopia–realism– prophecy outlines a distinctive way of thinking the “beyond” of the present: not as an external elsewhere, but as the critical possibility of interrupting the self-legitimating continuity of capitalist modernity, while preserving and reactivating the truth contained in the beginnings of the workers’ revolution in spite of its historical failure.
AGLI INIZI E AL TRAMONTO DELLA POLITICA. UTOPIA, REALISMO E PROFEZIA NEL PENSIERO DI MARIO TRONTI
Matteo Cavalleri
2026-01-01
Abstract
This article investigates the forms of compossibility between utopia and realism in Mario Tronti’s political thought, taking Miguel Abensour’s theorization of utopiques as its initial hermeneutic cue. Building on Abensour’s attempt to restitute historical and political density to utopia by inscribing it within a theory of history, the essay reconstructs how Tronti radicalizes this gesture within a political theory of history structured by the conflict between politics and history and by the two coupled polarities realism–transcendence and pragmatism–immanence. It follows Tronti from the modern beginnings of politics, in the Machiavelli/More constellation, through the “intermediate time” and the sunset of twentieth-century politics, to the displacement of the utopian register into the domain of prophecy and theological-political motifs. The article argues that the triad utopia–realism– prophecy outlines a distinctive way of thinking the “beyond” of the present: not as an external elsewhere, but as the critical possibility of interrupting the self-legitimating continuity of capitalist modernity, while preserving and reactivating the truth contained in the beginnings of the workers’ revolution in spite of its historical failure.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
