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Hope: New Philosophies for Change
How is hope to be found amid the ethical and political dilemmas of modern life? Writer and philosopher Mary Zournazi brought her questions to some of the most thoughtful intellectuals at work today. She discusses "joyful revolt" with Julia Kristeva, the idea of "the rest of the world" with Gayatri Spivak, the "art of living" with Michel Serres, the "carnival of the senses" with Michael Taussig, the relation of hope to passion and to politics with Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau. A dozen stimulating minds weigh in with their visions of a better social and political order.
The result is a collaboration - of writing, of thinking, and of politics - that demonstrates more clearly than any single-authored project could how ideas encountering one another can produce the vision needed for social change.
The result is a collaboration - of writing, of thinking, and of politics - that demonstrates more clearly than any single-authored project could how ideas encountering one another can produce the vision needed for social change.
- GenresPhilosophy
370 pages, Paperback
First published February 4, 2003
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49 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 30, 2011
Hope is a funny (as in peculiar) thing and is certainly at odds with the current dominant trends in theorising and thought, where there is such a potent attachment to evidence-driven discussion and activity that the hope for something seems vaguely indulgent. This is even more so given the powerful political demands for "realism". Yet, strangely, hope doesn’t seem to go away even at the worst of times (there is a book by the great oral historian Studs Turkel, one I’ve not yet read, called Hope Dies Last that seems, by the title at least, to sum up the resilience of hope). Despite all this and hope’s staying power we’ve not got much a sense of what it is – it seems vague, wishful thinking, utopian (as opposed to realism). In this excellent collection of interviews, however, we can get a good sense of hope, of its contours and topography, of its limits and of its politics. We also get Isabelle Stegners’ pithy definition – that hope is the difference between probability and possibility; others also reflect on hope’s existence and persistence despite the evidence.
Hope is an intriguing thing to think about when the world around us seems to rely on faith as an organising principle, as a source of inspiration and of politics, but for me faith is often a faith in something or someone else, an expectation that something that is not us (a deity or some such) will act for us. That is, it seems that so many forms that faith currently takes are backward looking and disempowering, and in many cases rely on our ability to enter a new world – a life after death – or this world in a different form – as reincarnated – as their sources of improvement in life, or of making somewhere better. Many of the forms faith takes seems to me to be particularly hope-less (but that is a different argument).
Despite all of this, however, this is not a book I would normally have picked up, but I got it as part payment for some scholarly work (I forget what) and it has sat on my shelf for several years; for some reason I have recently picked it up just before I have headed off on two trips out of the country – and travelling relies on waiting – for trains, planes and the like – so allows lots of time for reading. Even so, it seemed more than a little intimidating – Hope: New Philosophies for Change made it sound altogether too much like popular psychology or that huge self-help that seems to dominate ‘non-fiction’ sections of too many bookshops. The contributors, however, seemed utterly non-self-help-literature types – Michael Taussig, Julie Kristeva, Gayatri Spivak, Chatal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau and so forth. They are not necessarily people I agree with (or in some cases even find reading enjoyable) – but definitely not self-help charlatans.
What I found instead was a series of interviews (the cover says conversations, but there is a whole lot more of the ‘stars’ than there is of Mary Zournazi) with an eclectic set of theorists, philosophers, political scientists, historians and assorted intellectuals about what hope means, the politics of hope and the potential for revolutionary hope. In this sense, the book is fantastically defiant – it challenges the pessimism that seems to underpin demands for ‘realism’, and in presenting the interviews with only a brief introductory section (about a page in each case) Zournazi allows the diversity of views she gets to stand for themselves and demands that we, as readers, make sense in our own ways.
Three interviews stood out for me. The first is the one with Michael Taussig that explores hope as a sense or a bodily experience, considers the role of envy and hope as a source of resistance in bad times and action in better times, and hope as source of authenticity, as in truthfulness to oneself. The second was the one with Brian Massumi (most of which I disagreed with) where he argued (correctly) that to be utopian is the reject hope because there is often a failure to take the small steps we need to make this world a better place, and because Massumi so carefully and insightfully draws in the work of the Italian post-autonomist, post-Marxists to his discussion. Finally, there is Isabelle Stegners whose discussion of ‘hope’ grounds it in practical political struggles and adds a nuance to Massumi’s critique of utopianism by presenting it not as an ideal image of somewhere better that will come, but as somewhere better that we have to make.
Zournazi gently challenges her discussants, draws them into areas they perhaps had not considered, and demands that they think beyond their current limits. Some do it better than others – Taussig, Stegners, Massumi, Spivak, Michael Serres, Nikos Papastergiades – while others seem limited or less agile (including Laclau & Mouffe).
At a time when much around us seems bleak – living in Europe (although not the Euro-zone) in 2011 is hardly a source of confidence about the future – reading this and being reminded that ‘hope’ exists in spite of the evidence is a good thing to have done.
Hope is an intriguing thing to think about when the world around us seems to rely on faith as an organising principle, as a source of inspiration and of politics, but for me faith is often a faith in something or someone else, an expectation that something that is not us (a deity or some such) will act for us. That is, it seems that so many forms that faith currently takes are backward looking and disempowering, and in many cases rely on our ability to enter a new world – a life after death – or this world in a different form – as reincarnated – as their sources of improvement in life, or of making somewhere better. Many of the forms faith takes seems to me to be particularly hope-less (but that is a different argument).
Despite all of this, however, this is not a book I would normally have picked up, but I got it as part payment for some scholarly work (I forget what) and it has sat on my shelf for several years; for some reason I have recently picked it up just before I have headed off on two trips out of the country – and travelling relies on waiting – for trains, planes and the like – so allows lots of time for reading. Even so, it seemed more than a little intimidating – Hope: New Philosophies for Change made it sound altogether too much like popular psychology or that huge self-help that seems to dominate ‘non-fiction’ sections of too many bookshops. The contributors, however, seemed utterly non-self-help-literature types – Michael Taussig, Julie Kristeva, Gayatri Spivak, Chatal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau and so forth. They are not necessarily people I agree with (or in some cases even find reading enjoyable) – but definitely not self-help charlatans.
What I found instead was a series of interviews (the cover says conversations, but there is a whole lot more of the ‘stars’ than there is of Mary Zournazi) with an eclectic set of theorists, philosophers, political scientists, historians and assorted intellectuals about what hope means, the politics of hope and the potential for revolutionary hope. In this sense, the book is fantastically defiant – it challenges the pessimism that seems to underpin demands for ‘realism’, and in presenting the interviews with only a brief introductory section (about a page in each case) Zournazi allows the diversity of views she gets to stand for themselves and demands that we, as readers, make sense in our own ways.
Three interviews stood out for me. The first is the one with Michael Taussig that explores hope as a sense or a bodily experience, considers the role of envy and hope as a source of resistance in bad times and action in better times, and hope as source of authenticity, as in truthfulness to oneself. The second was the one with Brian Massumi (most of which I disagreed with) where he argued (correctly) that to be utopian is the reject hope because there is often a failure to take the small steps we need to make this world a better place, and because Massumi so carefully and insightfully draws in the work of the Italian post-autonomist, post-Marxists to his discussion. Finally, there is Isabelle Stegners whose discussion of ‘hope’ grounds it in practical political struggles and adds a nuance to Massumi’s critique of utopianism by presenting it not as an ideal image of somewhere better that will come, but as somewhere better that we have to make.
Zournazi gently challenges her discussants, draws them into areas they perhaps had not considered, and demands that they think beyond their current limits. Some do it better than others – Taussig, Stegners, Massumi, Spivak, Michael Serres, Nikos Papastergiades – while others seem limited or less agile (including Laclau & Mouffe).
At a time when much around us seems bleak – living in Europe (although not the Euro-zone) in 2011 is hardly a source of confidence about the future – reading this and being reminded that ‘hope’ exists in spite of the evidence is a good thing to have done.
June 24, 2015
bet book i've ever read in my whole life
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews