Anticipation as Critique: Objective Phantasy from Ernst Bloch to Günther Anders

This paper aims to interpret the role of “objective phantasy” in the utopian tradition of critical theory, with an emphasis on Bloch, but also the evolution of its usage with authors such as Marcuse and Adorno. The main function of phantasy taken into consideration is its capacity to go beyond present facts (what is made possible by an anti-positivist concept of truth in critical theory) and to anticipate. This anticipatory element of phantasy is dependent, as we try to demonstrate, on a reflection of affects around expectation. Ultimately, we oppose two models of anticipatory imagination (while showing their inner relation): a utopian one (primarily conceptualized by Bloch) and its counterpoint, catastrophist anticipation, which assumes its most radical form in Günther Anders’ reflections on the atomic age, and whose actuality and urgency we seek to emphasize.