Hope, Desire and the Work of Becoming: Transcending Marginalization in Bangladesh, India and Nepal II

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

Ernst Bloch defines hope as an emotional condition of human beings. He asserts: “The work of this emotion requires people who throw themselves actively into what is becoming…” (1986.1: 3). In a similar vein Lyman Sargent sees in hope the condition for carving out the space where a better reality can be created (2000: 15). But hope additionally mediates waiting. Thus hope is evoked when something is out of our immediate reach and control, when the thing we wish for is so distant in the future that it remains vague in its fulfilment. Desire in contrast is based on articulations of “wants and needs” of a more immediate tomorrow. It is therefore not only more urgent than hope, but also more active since it “presupposes human agency” (Crapanzano, 2003: 6) through the articulations of concrete solutions. Though both emotions are directed towards the future they nevertheless are informed through past experiences while they are lived in the present.
The panel concentrates on marginalized groups in India, Bangladesh and Nepal and the ways they productively and creatively overcome social, political, economic disadvantages and attempt to transform legitimate desire and hope for “preferred futures” (Alam) into action.
The panel will address the following topics:
- Immediate and everyday strategies and tactics of overcoming marginalization, coping with danger, loss and challenges; but also long-term perspectives and struggles like social movements.
- Conflicts over desire and preferred futures within communities
- The way communities construct the past to legitimate the future

Area of Study

• South Asia

Session Organizers

• Eva Rozalia Hölzle, Bielefeld University

• Antje Linkenbach-Fuchs, Max-Weber-Kolleg, University of Erfurt

Chair

• Eva Rozalia Hölzle, Bielefeld University

Individual Presentations

• Searching for a Language of Hope: Dalits’ Contested Frameworks of Possibility - Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka, Bielefeld University

• Living at the Margins: An Ethnography of Hope - Rosa Maria Perez, ISCTE-University of Lisbon Institute

• Radical Hope and the Crisis of Being - Eva Rozalia Hölzle, Bielefeld University

• "Bought Bride" to "Wife": The Work of Negotiating Marginalization in Northern India - Ravinder Kaur, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi