Disappointed Hopes: Reclaiming the Promise of Resistance

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The panel addresses a pressing question within critical theory: how can we respond to the pervasive sense of disappointment and left melancholia lingering in the wake of the failed projects of revolutionary societal transformation? Among theorists and activists alike, twentieth-century narratives of inevitable progress and universal human emancipation have been replaced by a sober reckoning with past disappointments, failures and defeats. At the same time, narratives of loss can have a stifling effect on our sense of political possibility, quenching any residual hopes for a better world. Moving beyond lamentation of failure, this workshop asks how an engagement with past disappointments, losses and defeats can help us creatively respond to the difficulties and failures of resistance – and inspire our imagination of political alternatives in the present.

The panel brings together perspectives from social and political theory, sociology, the history of political thought and literature. The contributors address the conjunction of high aspirations and deep disappointments within the modern revolutionary experience, with a focus on the multipronged struggles for justice and equality today. The purpose is to confront the challenges involved in resisting oppression in the present era of political disillusion and identify sustainable strategies for tackling disengagement from public sphere. Among the themes addressed are: the ambivalences of hope and loss in the struggles for reparations for slavery and its legacies; the role of grief and loss in black freedom projects that shed a critical light on narratives of left melancholia; the relationship between negative affects, such as despair, and political (de)mobilisation in the street AIDS movement in the US, and the politically transformative potential of disappointment among the Arab Spring protesters in Egypt.

Contributed by a mix of senior and junior scholars, the papers speak to a host of interrelated questions. 1) Conceptually, they inquire into the ways that past losses, defeats and disappointments can increase our attentiveness to the challenges involved in resisting oppression and help us confront the paralyzing spectre of disappointment today. What do past failures tell us about the ambiguities of resistance in conditions of systemic oppression? How can they help us rethink resistance beyond the confines of sovereign agency, virtuous commitment and unified subjects of resistance? 2) Normatively, they explore how an engagement with past defeats and failures bears upon the possibilities of utopian thinking today. How can past losses encourage us to avoid the twofold danger of utopian hope and cynical despair? What are the risks associated with lingering on past failures? 3) Empirically, the papers exemplify the political value of engaging with past disappointments and failures on particular examples of protest movements and resistance politics – from the struggles for racial justice and reparations to the AIDS movement and the Arab Spring uprisings. They delve into the grassroots knowledges of resistance to explore how the resisters dealt with the difficulties and failures or resistance, and examine how their insights can enrich our political and theoretical imagination in the present moment.

Sub Unit

• Division 3: Normative Theory

Individual Presentations

• Demands for Reparations and White Freedom Dreams - Lawrie Balfour, University of Virginia

• Race and Loss: Between Resistance and Refusal - Juliet Hooker, Brown University

• Negative Affect and Political (De)Mobilization - Deborah B. Gould, UC Santa Cruz

• Disappointed Hope: Reimagining Resistance in the Wake of the Egyptian Revolution - Masa Mrovlje, University of Vienna

Chair

• Masa Mrovlje University of Vienna

Discussant

• Jamie Mayerfeld University of Washington