The pragmatic paradox of utopia. The agonistic relation between the statement and its enunciation in Plato, More and Zamiatine

By reading some extracts of Plato's Republic, More's Utopia and Zamiatine's We, in which the enunciation process is thematized, the author shows that utopia, at least in its most canonic form, is based on a pragmatic paradox, on a contradiction between the statement describing the eternal and peacef ul truth of the ideal community and its turbulent and precarious enunciatio n. The agonistic relation between the statement and its enunciation, that i s shown through the topics of violence, deafness and solipsism, unveils not only pragmatic contradictions, but also epistemological, historical and po litical ones, and open the possibility of truly pragmatic ethics for postmo dern utopias.