Utopian project and practices in the Auroville intentional community

The paper focuses on the concept of utopia to highlight its epistemological ambiguity and therefore identify the different interpretation of it within the Utopia Studies literature. The intentional community of Auroville, Tamil Nadu, India, will be taken as case study to deepen the tension between an interpretation of utopia as perfection, characterized by the definition of blueprints for the imagined space, and one that looks at the concept as a transformative and dynamic process of imagining possible alternatives. Beside the comparative, critical, prefigurative and transformative functions of utopia, the attention given to the experimental and concrete dimension will serve as a bridge for an in-depth reflection on the emancipatory and political nature of utopian everyday practices.