Contextual Quote

Utopia: Modern // Eutopia: Postmodern // Protopia: Metamodern

"Conceptually, we can connect Utopia to the “modern project”, i.e. to the growth of rationalism since the fifteenth century, Eutopia to the postmodern critique thereof, i.e. to the many ways that artists and intellectuals have picked apart the modern behemoth since the 19th century, and Protopia to what I call the metamodern synthesis (of modern and postmodern thinking) — and thus to the cultural currents that are growing in today’s digitized world.

I thus argue that Protopia, properly understood, is — somewhat paradoxically — the synthesis of “nowhereland” and “the good place”. I will start from Kelly’s way of defining the term, expand upon it, and invite people to take it up as a concept to carry our shared dreams all the way to fruition.

As such, Protopia constitutes what I hold to be the best term for the massive set of interlinked projects of activists, thinkers, and practitioners around the world who seek to contribute to the necessary and desirable transformations of societies around the world."

- Hanzi Freinacht [1]