Nowadays there is a paradox ruling utopia. The place for the ‘spirit of youth’ in our society, apart from the traditional age groups, ought to mean a strong upswell of utopian projects, since youth is the age for questioning the world as it is, and idealistically rebuilding the future. And yet there is a paralysis of optimistic imagination as to the future. It is the unpredictability of the future, in a world that makes creating the new in every field its very driver, that makes any imaginings about a future society so perilous and uncertain. However, the demand for diversity and the aesthetic dimension are two factors that could characterize the contemporary vision, in contrast to the old austere utopias that are now bankrupt.

This is the obituary of Alice Thorner, an American scholar-specialist of the social history of India, who spent most of her career in France. She first worked with her husband, Daniel Thorner (1915-74), who briefly taught in Pennsylvania before being expelled from the USA by McCarthy. They lived in India from 1952 to 1960, where they worked on Land and Labor. They settled in Paris in 1960 when Daniel was appointed to the EPHE 6th section (now EHESS) where he taught the economic (especially agrarian) history of India up to his death, and became a member of the Centre of Indian Studies created by Louis Dumont. Alice, who travelled to India every year, continued her own research on gender studies, on working-class women, and on the town of Bombay. This paper, written by a younger colleague and friend, uses personal anecdotes to sketch Alice's career; it also lists her principal publications.

While democracy is usually perceived as a Greco-European development, it is noteworthy that some of its roots can be found in the Bible. The Covenant between God and the tribes of Israel at Mount Sinai is based on the people's consent. God is seen as the King of Israel: theocracy means the rule of God literally, and not the rule of priests. The earthly kings are the people's brethren and must submit to the divine law. Freedom of speech is practised by Abraham when he argues with the Almighty about His resolve to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Such freedom became part and parcel of the Israelite tradition, exemplified by the prophets and in subsequent ages. Indeed, the vitality of democracy in the modern state of Israel may be largely due to its biblical antecedents.

Immortality is humanity's great quest, the supreme utopia. In his science fiction novel Le Grand Secret, René Barjavel reflects on the convergence between love that defies time, science that conquers sickness and wisdom that triumphs over death. Spinoza reminds us that death cannot ontologically have a place in thinking about the living and Bergson assumes a ‘current of life’ running through bodies and generations, dividing up and flowing together without losing its force. That life force has no connection with the new philosophies of the trans-human or post-human which imagine a post-humanity living longer, healthier and less miserably, thanks to biotechnology. If human beings were an exceptional diversion in the course of evolution, it is one of intensification, creation and emancipation, and not of extension and addition as the life-sciences would have it.

This paper suggests an approach to the various possibilities of reading as a practice responsible for generating thought. It might be said that it is an approach to the dismissal of reading as the origin of other paths of thought. Utopia, understood as anticipation, yields its place to the figure of redemption (in Benjamin's sense of the word) as imminence of the absolutely other, expectation and extreme attention. The text invites the reader to try other routes in the practice of reading (other than solitary silent reading), in which the body and the senses play a part, and - especially - the other, to allow the advent of a thinking that welcomes justice. In an act of memory, reading - as heteronomy - opens onto the future.

Poetry is essentially connected with silence and may be thought of in that sense as a sort of resistance against the din of the present or rebellion against the commonplace. Alert for the primal sound that travels across cultures, it attempts to express the inexpressible. For poetry is the interplay of possibilities. In treating possibilities lightly, it encourages human beings to inhabit their world differently.

With Peach Blossom Spring and other poetical works written by Tao Qian in the 5th century, there was born a vision of utopia that remains forever etched into the Chinese collective imaginary. Thirteen centuries later, Cao Xueqin drew inspiration from it when he gave form to the ‘Grandview Garden’, a universe with fundamentally female characteristics and one of the centres for the plot of The Story of the Stone, a masterpiece of Chinese romantic fiction also known as ‘Dream of the Red Chamber/Mansions’. Reading the two works in parallel, in both the figurative and the literal sense, points up the message of the Daodejing that utopia cannot be planned or imposed. In fact it emerges from a spirit of openness, an attitude of patient waiting, listening with the ear of the other. This intuition leads to reflection on difference, based on Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream.

The real, thought of as human reality, that is, a mixture of the imaginary, mythology, emotions, flesh, passions, suffering, love, is always surprising, full of possibilities and hard to grasp. A thinking adapted to the complex reality of our earthly homeland cannot be a trivial realism content with the established order and accepting the victory of the victorious. On the contrary, understanding of reality, lucidity are often the result of an ethical revolt against the fait accompli, against certainty. The thinking suggested by Morin attempts to move beyond the alternatives between, on the one hand, the worst option: the utopia that thinks it is realistic, and on the other the utopia that knows it is utopia, and is therefore harmless, outside the real. The hope is to introduce the poetry of intensity into reality, to resist the oppressive forces of pseudo-realism by cultivating the garden of our earthly homeland.

To the extent that our future depends on our ability to change and ‘live together’, we cannot do without utopian thought. We know utopia goes astray when it puts off indefinitely confronting the present, trying to prolong the temptation to go back to complete, stable models. It goes astray when its totality merges into totalitarianism. But if utopia was shattered, broken into pieces, divided into lots, would it still be utopia? Turned into a listed heritage, a legacy that is both fertile and too weighty, utopia demands an approach at the same time critical and self-critical.