Realism and Utopianism Reconsidered
Realism and Utopianism Reconsidered

A Political Theoretical Reading of A Song of Ice and Fire

Author(s): Zoltán Gábor Szűcs
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Political Theory
Published by: Central European University Press
Keywords: utopianism;realism;Realism in Fiction;
Summary/Abstract: This essay was written as a contribution to The Paradox of Realism project (National Research, Development and Innovation Office – NKFIH K 117041). George R. R. Martin’s fantasy book series, A Song of Ice and Fire (1996–, followed by the Game of Thrones TV series based on the books, 2011–) was critically acclaimed as a dystopian depiction of a world of dynastic wars, civil discontents, and feudal feuds. Its plot is centered around power hunger, violence, conspiracies, and treachery. Not surprisingly, many reviewers welcomed the series as a textbook example of Machiavellian political realism. Self-contradictory as it may seem, a story of imagined lands, decadelong winters, zombies, magic, and dragons proves to be markedly realistic, at least in comparison with the classics of the fantasy genre, especially J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. How can this be possible? If political realism, in a nutshell, is the refutation of the Kantian assertion that “all politics must bend its knee before right,”1 then Tolkien’s novels may justly be described as representing Kant’s ideal, while Martin’s books present us a world where “might is right.” Most of Martin’s characters would readily concur with the crude sincerity of the Athenians recorded in Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, an unsurpassed classic of realist thinking, that “you know as well as we do that when we are talking on the human plane questions of justice only arise when there is equal power to compel: in terms of practicality the dominant exact what they can and the weak concede what they must.”

• Details
• Contents