S2, E7 On Hope

In this episode, hope is not read as ‘naïve hope’ that wishes only for a better future; hope here is a more radical version, sometimes called ‘educated hope,’ because we must learn how to hope in ways that do not deny the intolerability of the present or the necessity of striving for a different future. We talk about the role of hopelessness and despair as partners for hope as well as make the case for a kind of hope that would rather fail or be disappointed than forfeit imagining a better future or ‘not yet.’ SHOW NOTES In this episode, I cited the following texts: The Principle of Hope (Ernst Bloch): https://www.amazon.com/Principle-Studies-Contemporary-German-Thought/dp/0262521997 ‘Despair is Not a Luxury’ from No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain (Rebecca Solnit): https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2517-no-straight-road-takes-you-there Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (Jose Manuel Munoz): https://nyupress.org/9781479874569/cruising-utopia-10th-anniversary-edition/ ‘Hope in Refusal: Feminist, Queer Futurity’ (Rachel Silverbloom) Signs: Vol. 49 (4): Summer 2024, 807-830.