America Is a Preview of the Future: Giorgos Theotokas’ Cosmopolitan Vision of Europe Vis à Vis America during the 1950s

This paper examines the emergence of the idea of America as a utopian ideal in the minds of European intellectuals who sought to discover ways to re-organize society around cosmopolitical ideals of social co-existence. The appearance of the latter in utopian works during this period was common and can be associated with popular perceptions of American society as “many worlds in one”—as a result of transnational migrations—the belief in the newness of the American polity in comparison with the older European societies and their malfunctions and the fascination—particularly on the part of social reformers and visionaries such as H.G. Wells—with the vivacity of social politics and movements in the United States. Through the case study of Greek intellectual Georgios Theotokas and his writing on America in the 1950s, this paper attempts to throw some light on the interrelation between the cosmopolitical visions and European perceptions of America.