Hope Dialectics

Abstract

 Ours is a time of accelerating social, political, economic and environmental crises. In this conjuncture, dread, despair and resignation dominate the affective terrain; hope is urgently necessary, but in short supply. This article draws upon a utopian current of Marxism, especially the work of ‘philosopher of hope’ Ernst Bloch, to offer a theoretical optic for the maintenance of hope in hopeless times. As Bloch draws out, the dialectical core of historical materialism offers a utopian structure of thought, attentive to the open multivalence of the world, how that that is destructive holds creative potential, how the future is in emergence in the present. Bringing the immanence of utopian possibility into view, this is an orientation capable of sustaining hope in otherwise hopeless times. Finally, I put this optic to work to offer some gestural reflections on the utopian valences of our current conjuncture, of the hopeful prospects of ‘the end of the world’.