Hope, Critique, and Utopia
TL;DR: The authors assesses the extent to which the category of hope assists in preserving and redefining the vestiges of utopian thought in critical social theory, arguing that the current philosophical and everyday interest in social hope can be traced to the limited capacity of liberal conceptions of freedom to articulate a vision of social transformation apposite to contemporary suffering and indignity.
Abstract: This paper assesses the extent to which the category of hope assists in preserving and redefining the vestiges of utopian thought in critical social theory. Hope has never had a systematic position among the categories of critical social theory, although it has sometimes acquired considerable prominence. It will be argued that the current philosophical and everyday interest in social hope can be traced to the limited capacity of liberal conceptions of freedom to articulate a vision of social transformation apposite to contemporary suffering and indignity. The background to these experiences is the structural changes associated with the injustices of globalisation, the mobilisation of the capitalist imaginary and the uncertainties of the risk society. The category of hope could assist in sustaining the utopianism of critical theory through con joining normative principles with a temporal orientation. Yet, the paradoxes of the current phase of capitalist modernisation have further denuded notions of...
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Book•
01 Jan 2013TL;DR: In this paper, the authors take up affect, emotion, and emplacement and consider them in relation to one another and how they work to produce and are produced by certain temporal and spatial dimensions.
Abstract: Ecologies of Affect offers a synthetic introduction to the felt dynamics of cities and the character of places. The contributors capture the significance of affects including desire, nostalgia, memory, and hope in forming the identity and tone of places. The critical intervention this collection of essays makes is an active, consistent engagement with the virtualities that produce and refract our idealized attachments to place. Contributors show how place images, and attempts to build communities, are, rather than abstractions, fundamentally tied to and revolve around such intangibles. We understand nostalgia, desire, and hope as virtual; that is, even though they are not material, they are nevertheless real and must be accounted for. In this book, the authors take up affect, emotion, and emplacement and consider them in relation to one another and how they work to produce and are produced by certain temporal and spatial dimensions. The aim of the book is to inspire readers to consider space and place beyond their material properties and attend to the imaginary places and ideals that underpin and produce material places and social spaces. This collection will be useful to practitioners and students seeking to understand the power of affect and the importance of virtualities within contemporary societies, where intangible goods have taken on an increasing value.
29 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined two predominant prototypes of utopia derived from previous research and theory (the Green and Sci-Fi utopias) and found that the Green utopia was perceived to entail a range of other positive characteristics (e.g., warmth, positive emotions) and, provided it was positively evaluated, tended to elicit both motivation and behaviour for social change.
Abstract: One way in which individuals can participate in action to change the society they live in is through the pursuit of an ideal society or “utopia”; however, the content of that utopia is a likely determinant of its motivational impact. Here we examined two predominant prototypes of utopia derived from previous research and theory—the Green and Sci‐Fi utopias. When participants were primed with either of these utopias, the Green utopia was perceived to entail a range of other positive characteristics (e.g., warmth, positive emotions) and—provided it was positively evaluated—tended to elicit both motivation and behaviour for social change. In contrast, the Sci‐Fi utopia was associated with low motivation, even when it was positively evaluated. Furthermore, the Green utopia was shown to elicit greater perceptions of participative efficacy, which in turn predicted the increase in social change motivation.
25 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an alternative view of musical creativity as a deeply social and political form of human praxis is proposed, by proposing a perspective rooted in the thought of the political philosopher and activist Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997).
Abstract: Do psychological perspectives constitute the only way through which the role of musical creativity in education can be addressed, researched and theorised? This essay attempts to offer an alternative view of musical creativity as a deeply social and political form of human praxis, by proposing a perspective rooted in the thought of the political philosopher and activist Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997). This is done in two steps. First, an attempt is made to place the pursuit of the concept of musical creativity within a larger educational and societal context of conflicting trajectories that run through (a) Modernity and (b) Education. Then, I revisit the issue of educational value of improvising and composing through creating conceptual links between the process of music-making through improvisation and composition and the project of political autonomy as conceived by Castoriadis. By foregrounding instituting imaginary over instituted imaginary, improvising and composing become active processes of positing new legitimacies, and of creating a music-making context that searches for its own foundations. It is in and through creative musical praxis that we can think about issues of hierarchies, musical values, social dimensions of different music-making processes, our relationship to past values and to historical dimensions of music. By arguing that improvisation and composition might be seen as ways of positing the issue of political autonomy in musical terms, this paper emphasises the role of improvisation and composition as a mode of potentially transformative educational practice that may foster the development of critical consciousness, linking music education to a larger project of re-discovering and at the same time re-defining democracy.
21 citations
Book Chapter•
01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: The authors argue that different deployments of crisis thinking have different "affect-effects" and consequences for ethical and political practice, and argue that the first deployment can easily justify closing down of political debate, discouraging radical experimentation and critique for the sake of resolving problems in a timely and decisive way.
Abstract: This paper departs from this point to consider whether and how crisis thinking contributes to practices of affirmative critique and transformative social action in late-capitalist societies. I argue that different deployments of crisis thinking have different ‘affect-effects’ and consequences for ethical and political practice. Some work to mobilize political action through articulating a politics of fear, assuming that people take most responsibility for the future when they fear the alternatives. Other forms of crisis thinking work to heighten critical awareness by disrupting existential certainty, asserting an ‘ethics of ambiguity’ which assumes that the continuous production of uncertain futures is a fundamental part of the human condition (de Beauvoir, 2000). In this paper, I hope to illustrate that the first deployment of crisis thinking can easily justify the closing down of political debate, discouraging radical experimentation and critique for the sake of resolving problems in a timely and decisive way. The second approach to crisis thinking, on the other hand, has greater potential to enable intellectual and political alterity in everyday life—but one that poses considerable challenges for our understandings of and responses to climate change...
21 citations
Cites background from "Hope, Critique, and Utopia"
...4 For many critical theorists, this is an impasse to the development of an emancipatory politics; some even suggest that it constitutes a ‘crisis of hope’ (Bauman, 2004; Binde, 2001; Browne, 2005; Davis and Monk, 2007; Jameson, 2004; Kompridis, 2006: 245; Smith, 2005)....
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TL;DR: In this paper, a taxonomy of modes of hope is presented, which distinguishes between non-utopian (estimative) and "resolute", patient (patient), critical (critical) and transformative (transformative) modes of hoping.
Abstract: This article outlines a framework for exploring the relationship between hope and utopia. Hope is conceptualised as a socially mediated human capacity that can be experienced in different modes. A taxonomy of modes of hoping is presented. This differentiates between non-utopian (‘estimative’ and ‘resolute’), anti-utopian (‘patient’) and utopian (‘critical’ and ‘transformative’) modes of hoping. When critical or transformative hope predominates within the collective emotional orientation of a society, it is suggested that utopian ideas are likely to thrive both as a product and a source of hope. A contemporary utopian politics thus requires the institutions of social life to be reconstituted so that they once again foster critical and transformative hope.
13 citations
Cites background from "Hope, Critique, and Utopia"
...Confronted with contemporary suffering and injustice, utopianism is widely heralded as a means of recapturing the category of hope for critical social theory (Anderson, 2006; Browne, 2005)....
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References
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Book•
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: The Rise of the Network Society as discussed by the authors is an account of the economic and social dynamics of the new age of information, which is based on research in the USA, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, it aims to formulate a systematic theory of the information society which takes account of fundamental effects of information technology on the contemporary world.
Abstract: From the Publisher:
This ambitious book is an account of the economic and social dynamics of the new age of information. Based on research in the USA, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, it aims to formulate a systematic theory of the information society which takes account of the fundamental effects of information technology on the contemporary world.
The global economy is now characterized by the almost instantaneous flow and exchange of information, capital and cultural communication. These flows order and condition both consumption and production. The networks themselves reflect and create distinctive cultures. Both they and the traffic they carry are largely outside national regulation. Our dependence on the new modes of informational flow gives enormous power to those in a position to control them to control us. The main political arena is now the media, and the media are not politically answerable.
Manuel Castells describes the accelerating pace of innovation and application. He examines the processes of globalization that have marginalized and now threaten to make redundant whole countries and peoples excluded from informational networks. He investigates the culture, institutions and organizations of the network enterprise and the concomitant transformation of work and employment. He points out that in the advanced economies production is now concentrated on an educated section of the population aged between 25 and 40: many economies can do without a third or more of their people. He suggests that the effect of this accelerating trend may be less mass unemployment than the extreme flexibilization of work and individualization of labor, and, in consequence, a highly segmented socialstructure.
The author concludes by examining the effects and implications of technological change on mass media culture ("the culture of real virtuality"), on urban life, global politics, and the nature of time and history. Written by one of the worlds leading social thinkers and researchers The Rise of the Network Society is the first of three linked investigations of contemporary global, economic, political and social change. It is a work of outstanding penetration, originality, and importance.
15,639 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1990
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a Phenomonology of modernity and post-modernity in the context of trust in abstract systems and the transformation of intimacy in the modern world.
Abstract: Part I:. Introduction. The Discontinuities of Modernity. Security and Danger, Trust and Risk. Sociology and Modernity. Modernity, Time and Space. Disembedding. Trust. The Reflexivity of Modernity. Modernity and Post-- Modernity?. Summary. Part II:. The Institutional Dimensions of Modernity. The Globalizing of Modernity. Two Theoretical Perspectives. Dimensions of Globalization. Part III:. Trust and Modernity. Trust in Abstract Systems. Trust and Expertise. Trust and Ontological Security. The Pre--Modern and Modern. Part IV:. Abstract Systems and the Transformation of Intimacy. Trust and Personal Relations. Trust and Personal Identity. Risk and Danger in the Modern World. Risk and Ontological Security. Adaptive Reactions. A Phenomonology of Modernity. Deskilling and Reskilling in Everyday Life. Objections to Post--Modernity. Part V:. Riding the Juggernaut. Utopian Realism. Future Orientations. The Role of Social Movements. Post--Modernity. Part VI: . Is Modernity and Western Project?. Concluding Observations. Notes.
14,544 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors consider a situation where a subject's only appropriate response to an injury to its own person is to defend itself actively against its assailant, which they call a "struggle".
Abstract: ness of law' does not yet have its reality and support in something itself universal'.\" and thus lacks the executive power found in state authority every subject must defend its rights by itself and, hence, each subject's entire identity is threatened by theft.\" The affected subject's only appropriate response to this injury to its own person is to defend itself actively against its assailant. This 'repercussion' of the crime for its perpetrator in the form of the injured person's resistance is the first sequence of actions that Hegel explicitly calls a 'struggle'. What emerges is a struggle of 'person' against 'person', that is, between two rights-bearing subjects, a struggle for the recognition of each party's different claim: on the one hand, the nflict-generating claim to the unrestricted development of that subjcct's subjectivity; on the other hand, the reactive claim to social respect for property rights. Hegel considers the outcome of the struggle un1('OHlwd by the collision of these two claims to be a foregone conclulon, In Ihlll only one of the two divided parties can refer the threat 22 Hegel's Original Idea unconditionally back to itself as a personality, because only the injured subject struggles, in resisting, for the integrity of its whole person, whereas the criminal is actually merely trying to accomplish something in his or her own particular interest. Therefore, as Hegel quickly concludes, it is the first, attacked subject that 'must gain the upper hand' in the struggle, because it 'makes this personal injury a matter of its entire personality'r\" Hegel follows this social conflict, which starts with a theft and ends with the 'coercion' of the criminal, with a third and final stage of negation, namely, the struggle for honour. With regard to its starting conditions alone, this case of conflict represents the most demanding form of intersubjective diremption [Entzweiungj. This conflict is based not on a violation of an individual assertion of rights, but rather on a violation of the integrity of the person as a whole. Admittedly, Hegel once again leaves the particular motives behind this conflict-generating crime indeterminate here. The reasons, in each case, why a person sets about destroying the framework of an existing relationship of recognition by injuring or insulting the integrity of another subject remain unclear. At this point, however, the reference to a totality is presupposed for both participants in the conflict, in the sense that each is fighting for the' entirety' of his or her individual existence. This can be understood to mean that the intention behind the criminal's insulting act is to demonstrate one's own integrity publicly and thereby make an appeal for the recognition of that integrity, but then the criminal's insulting act would, for its part, have its roots in a prior experience of being insufficiently recognized as an individuated personality. In any case, the two opposing parties in the emerging conflict both have the same goal, namely, to provide evidence for the 'integrity' of his or her own person. Following the usage of his day, Hegel traces this mutually pursued intention back to a need for 'honour'. This is initially to be understood as a type of attitude towards oneself, as it is phrased in the text, through which 'the singular detail becomes something personal and whole'.\" 'Honour', then, is the stance I take towards myself when I identify positively with all my traits and peculiarities. Apparently, then, the only reason that a struggle for 'honour' would occur is because the possibility of such an affirmative relationto-self is dependent, for its part, on the confirming recognition of other subjects. Individuals can only identify completely with themselves to the degree to which their peculiarities and traits meet with the approval and support of their partners to interaction. 'Honour' is thus used to characterize an affirmative relation-to-self thol hi flll'll('ll/rally tied to the presupposition that each individunl jlllI'lklllililly l'I'I'!·!vt'/\"l Crime and Ethical Life 23 intersubjective recognition. For this reason, both subjects in the struggle are pursuing the same goal, namely, the re-establishment of their honour which has been injured for different reasons in each case by attempting to convince the other that their own personality deserves recognition. But they are only able to do this, Hegel further asserts, by demonstrating to each other that they are prepared to risk their lives. Only by being prepared to die do I publicly show that my individual goals and characteristics are more significant to me than my physical survival. In this way, Hegel lets the social conflict resulting from insult turn into a life-and-death struggle, a struggle which always occurs outside the sphere of legally backed claims, since 'the whole [of a person] is at stake' .36 However unclear this account may be on the whole, it offers, for the first time, a more precise overview of Hegel's theoretical aims in the intermediate chapter on 'crime'. The fact that, in the progression of the three stages of social conflict, the identity claims of the subjects involved gradually expand rules out the possibility of granting a merely negative significance to the acts of destruction that Hegel describes. Taken together, the various different conflicts seem rather to comprise precisely the process that prepares the way for the transition from natural to absolute ethical life by equipping individuals with the necessary characteristics and insights. Hegel not only wants to describe how social structures of elementary recognition are' destroyed by the negative manifestation of freedom; he also wants to show, beyond this, that it is only via such acts of destruction that ethically more mature relations of recognition can be formed at all, relations that represent a precondition for the actual development of a 'community of free citizens' .37 Here, one can analytically distinguish two aspects of intersubjective action as the dimensions along which Hegel ascribes to social conflicts something like a moral-practical potential for learning. On the one hand, it is apparently via each new provocation thrust upon them by various crimes that subjects corne to know more about their own, distinctive identity. This is the developmental dimension that Hegel seeks to mark linguistically with the transition from 'person' to 'whole person'. As in the earlier section on 'natural ethical life', the term 'person' here designates individuals who draw their identity primarily from the intersubjective recognition of their status as legally -ompetent agents, whereas the term 'whole person', by contrast, refers io individuals who gain their identity above all from the intersubjective I'\\'l'ognit:ion of their 'particularity'. On the other hand, however, the 1'11111(' hy which subjects gain greater autonomy is also supposed to 111'11\\\\· jlllih 10 1;I'1'111t·1' knowledge of their mutual dependence. This is 24 Hegel's Original Idea the developmental dimension that Hegel seeks to make clear by letting the struggle for honour, in the end, change imperceptibly from a conflict between single subjects into a confrontation between social communities. Ultimately, after they have taken on the challenges posed by different crimes, individuals no longer oppose each other as egocentric actors, but as 'members of a whole'.\" When these two dimensions are considered together and as a unity, then one begins to see the formative process with which Hegel aims to explain the transition from natural to absolute ethical life. His model is guided by the conviction that it is only with the destruction of legal forms of recognition that a consciousness emerges of the moment within intersubjective relationships that can serve as the foundation for an ethical community. For, by violating first the rights and then the honour of persons, the criminal makes the dependence of individuals on the community a matter of common knowledge. To this extent, the social conflicts that shattered natural ethical life prepare subjects to mutually recognize one another as persons who are dependent on each other and yet also completely individuated. In the course of his argument, however, Hegel continues to treat this third stage of social interaction, which is supposed to lead to relations of qualitative recognition among the members of a society, merely as an implicit presupposition. In his account of 'absolute ethical life', which follows the crime chapter, the intersubjective foundation of a future community is said to be a specific relationship among subjects, for which the category of 'mutual intuition' emerges here. The individual 'intuits himself as himself in every other individual' .39 As the appropriation of Schelling's term 'intuition' [Anschauung] suggests, Hegel surely intends this formulation to designate a form of reciprocal relations between subjects that goes beyond merely cognitive recognition. Such patterns of recognition, extending even into the sphere of the affective (for which the category of 'solidarity' would seem to be the most likely label),\" are apparently supposed to provide the communicative basis upon which individuals, who have been isolated from each other by legal relations, can be reunited within the context of an ethical community. In the remaining parts of the System of Ethical Life, however, Hegel does not pursue the fruitful line of thought thus outlined. At this point, in fact, the thread of the argument drawing specifically on a theory of recognition breaks off entirely, and the text limits itself, from here on, to an account of the organizational elements that are supposed to characterize political relations in 'absolute ethical life'. As a result, however, the difficulties and pl'Obll'\"1H 1'11111 flegel's reconstructive analysis had already failed 10 ndd\"I'1I11 III 1111'IlI'('vioUfl slages rornain open nt Ih(, ('1
2,813 citations
01 Jan 1989
TL;DR: A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accordance with following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accordance with following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history. The class struggle, which is always present to a historian influenced by Marx, is a fight for the crude and material things without which no refined and spiritual things could ehindxist. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at moment of danger. "In relation to the history of organic life on earth," writes a modern biologist, "the paltry fifty millennia of homo sapiens constitute something like two seconds at close of a twenty-four-hour day. The present, which, as a model of Messianic time, comprises entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgment, coincides exactly with the stature which the history of mankind has in the universe. Historicism contents itself with establishing a causal connection between various moments in history.
2,119 citations
TL;DR: Ghassan Hage as discussed by the authors argues that public concern about immigration stems from the distress that white Australians feel in the face of their declining power in multicultural Australia, and draws the two phenomena together.
Abstract: Both MairiAnne Mackenzie and Alastair Davidson (this issue) comment on the relationship between immigration and multiculturalism. The following extract is reprinted with permission from the last seven pages for Ghassan Hage’s new book, White Nation. It draws the two phenomena together and argues that public concern about immigration stems from the distress that ‘White Australians’ feel in the face of their declining power in multicultural Australia. The term ‘White’ stands for people of European origin while the term ‘Third World-looking’ people denotes most of the rest.
1,712 citations