As we discussed in the Introduction, social and political events following the Second World War generated a wave of anti-utopian reactions and, by the 1970s, unleashed a widespread demise of utopia narrative. The demise of utopia narrative does, however, stretch back farther than the late twentieth century, and is complexly entwined with critical traditions of socio-political thought — though often tinted by misunderstanding and ill-advised denigration. Hence, we believe that a brief reflection on the broader historical trend of critique and utopianism is necessary at the conclusion of this book. While utopianism can of course be traced back to classical Greece, as Rorty (1999) suggests it came to prominence as a central feature of modernity, spurred on by the political-religious debates of the sixteenth century, the ideals of Renaissance humanism, and the conquest of the Americas. Utopianism figured in many of the Enlightenment discourses concerning the improvement of humanity through civilization, which informed the Atlantic revolutions and the aspiration of emancipating society through the political action of free and equal citizens. The fusion of critique and social hope reached its most romantic heights in the work of the European utopian socialists of the early nineteenth century. Saint-Simon, Fourier, Cabet, Owen, Babeuf, Morris, and others developed visionary plans for the reconstruction of society on the principles of equality, social progress, harmonious collaboration, and communal production and distribution — principles which later reverberated through the Revolutions of 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1871 (Geoghegan, 1987, pp. 8–21).