Revolutionary Hope in a Time of Crisis

Revolutionary Hope in a Time of Crisis consists of new cutting-edge essays written by interdisciplinary scholars, bringing together a range of intellectual traditions and perspectives. The contributors confront the challenge of relearning hope by exploring the politically transformative potential of past disappointments and defeats.

Revolutionary Hope in a Time of Crisis takes up the question of how to theorize and revive revolutionary hope in the present era of political disillusion. The collection consists of new cutting-edge research essays written by an interdisciplinary mix of established and emerging scholars, bringing together a wide range of intellectual traditions and perspectives. The contributors confront the challenge of relearning hope by exploring the politically transformative potential of past disappointments and defeats. They encourage us to acknowledge, come to terms with and learn from the complexities, failures, and losses entailed in resistance, and to consider them as an occasion for rethinking the established patterns of revolutionary thought. Specifically, the essays question how engagement with past disappointments, losses, and defeats can help us creatively respond to the difficulties and failures of resistance-and inspire our imagination of revolutionary possibilities in the present.

Written in an accessible tone without theoretical density or academic jargon, Revolutionary Hope in a Time of Crisis provides theoretical and historical contexts to what it means to engage in left activism today. A vital resource for those interested in intellectual history, political history, radical politics, democracy, and contemporary political theory.

Autorentext

Maa Mrovlje is Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Leeds. Her research interests are located within contemporary political thought, with a specific emphasis on theories of resistance and resistance movements. She is the author of Rethinking Political Judgement: Arendt and Existentialism (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). Her articles appeared in leading international journals, including The Journal of Politics, Millennium, Philosophy & Social Criticism and Political Theory . Her current project, entitled Disappointment: Reclaiming the Unfulfilled Promise of Resistance , explores the political potentials of disappointment within the modern revolutionary tradition.

Alex Zamalin is Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. He is the author of six books, African American Political Thought and American Culture: The Nation's Struggle for Racial Justice (New York: Palgrave, 2015), Struggle on their Minds: The Political Thought of African American Resistance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), Antiracism: An Introduction (NYU Press, 2019), Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism (Columbia University Press, 2019) which was named a 2020 Choice Outstanding Title by the American Library Association, and Against Civility: The Hidden Racism in Our Obsession with Civility (Beacon, 2021). His most recent book is All Is Not Lost: 20 Ways to Revolutionize Disaster (Beacon Press, spring 2022). Zamalin is also a co-editor for a collection of scholarly essays aimed at reinterpreting the American political tradition, American Political Thought: An Alternative View (New York: Routledge, 2017). His scholarly essays have appeared in various edited book collections and journals like New Political Science , Contemporary Political Theory and Political Theory . Zamalin has been a guest on NPR and MSNBC and his work has been featured in The Guardian , Literary Hub , Religion Dispatches , ESPN's Undefeated , and YES! magazine.

Klappentext

Revolutionary Hope in a Time of Crisis consists of new cutting-edge essays written by interdisciplinary scholars, bringing together a range of intellectual traditions and perspectives. The contributors confront the challenge of relearning hope by exploring the politically transformative potential of past disappointments and defeats.

Inhalt

Introduction
Maa Mrovlje and Alex Zamalin
Part 1: Rethinking the Relationship Between Loss and Revolutionary Politics

1. Gramsci and the Problem of Fatalism
   Lukas Slothuus
2. The Promise of Solidarity: Learning from Failure with Rosa Luxemburg
   Maa Mrovlje
3. Between Loss and Hope: Reflections on the Black Revolutionary Tradition
   Alex Zamalin
4. Displacing Hope: A Black Thought Experiment
   Joseph Winters
   Part 2: Negative Affect, Mobilisation and the Troubles of Democracy
5. Staying with melancholy? An archive of the future's past
   Brigitte Bargetz
6. Negative Affect and Political (De)Mobilization
   Deborah Gould
7. Politics as Breath-work
   David McIvor
   Part 3: Resisting Resistance, Disavowal and Resilience
8. Existential Political Commitment and Radical Love as Resources Against Resisting Resistance
   Lewis R. Gordon
9. Revolutionary Nonviolence and the Problem of Disavowal
   Erin Pineda
10. The Promise of Resilience: Governance and Resistance in 'Complex Times'
    Alix Olson