Zahi Zalloua

“The undercommons “cannot be satisfied with the recognition and acknowledgement generated by the very system that denies a) that anything was ever broken and b) that we deserved to be the broken part.”
― Zahi Zalloua, Universal Politics

“A new revolutionary grammar also begins with a cold defense of hopelessness. One of the system’s most effective tricks is the cruel lie of reform. Hope gives life to the system, prolonging its brutal existence. It breeds nostalgia. The system—with a new president, a new prime minister, and so on—will be redeemed. Liberal democracy can get a reboot. It can still deliver on its emancipatory promises. Hopelessness interrupts this postpolitical calculus. Without this sense of hopelessness, we would never demand something qualitatively different. Politics as such would be inexistent. Hopelessness opens onto pessimism, onto a critical and skeptical hermeneutics. Pessimism is a political doing; it embodies an active and vigilant disposition vis-à-vis power.”
― Zahi Zalloua, Universal Politics