"And Yet the Dawn Is Ours Before We Knew It": Desire and Radical Hope

• In Event: Ontologies of Promise: Cultivating Equity

Abstract

Objectives
1. Examine pedagogical and curricular outcomes that are both desirous of change and undefinable.
2. Propose anti-racist pedagogy that is thought through (or with) radical hope and Afro-pessimism.
3. Seek theoretical tools that better prepare new teachers to be anti-racist.

Theoretical framework
Afro-pessimism is a meta-theory that posits that “blackness is inextricably tied to slaveness” (Ross, 2021, p. 8) and that this “condition [is] permanent, one that will never be undone in this current world” (ibid.). Yet, “being emancipated and socially and politically enslaved again…didn’t cause Blacks (collectively) to engage in suicidal despair. […] [E]ducation continued to be their spark of radical hope for…having their children live an even better life” (Grant, 2021, p. 69). This despite Dumas’ (2016) argument that schools now try “to educate a group of people who were never meant to be educated and, in fact, were never meant to be, to exist as humans” (p. 17). In this society racism has been shown to be endemic and thus permanent (Alexander, 2010; Bell, 1992) and yet we still strive for the worthy goal of ending it. This contradiction begs the question, what is the “radical hope” that Grant (2021) and others refer to that it can not only stand against permanent racism but also potentially produce victory?

One way to understand this conception of radical hope is through a discussion of it as thought with Buchanan's explanation of Deleuzoguattarian “desire.” According to Buchanan (2021), “Desire is primary; it is desire that selects materials and gives them the properties that they have in the assemblage” (p. 56). The methodological question he poses is, “Given a certain effect, what machine is capable of producing it?” (p. 63). Thus, the question: given the effect of ending racism, what machine is capable of producing it?
Taking the conclusions of Afro-pessimism into account, this question becomes more complex because the end of racism is not definable. Thus, to answer the question we need a machine that can engage with indefinability. Radical hope, as defined by Lear (2006) as hope that “anticipates a good for which those who have the hope as yet lack the appropriate concepts with which to understand it” (p. 103).

Mode of inquiry
This paper is a theoretical engagement with Afro-pessimism, Deleuzoguattarian “desire” as explained by Buchanan (2021), and the concept of “radical hope” as defined specifically by Lear (2006).

Results and significance
Given the qualities of humanism as described by Afro-pessimism and mentioned above, I conclude that radical hope is the machine which can produce an end to racism. Further, this conclusion is already understood on some level by teachers, activists, and Amanda Gorman (2021) who wrote, “And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.” Regardless of the lack of ability to describe it, experienced teachers who are already successful at resisting racism in their classes engage with the desiring machine of radical hope. Thus, to better prepare new teachers to be anti-racist, teacher educators need to be more explicit in their explanations of radical hope.

Author

• Alexander B. Pratt, Pennsylvania State University - Altoona