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Hope Gurur Ertem
I began thinking about hope on January 11th 2016, when a group of scholars representing Academics for Peace held a press conference to read the petition, “We Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government’s security operations against the youth movement of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. They were concerned about the devastating impact the military involvement had on the region’s civilian population.[1] The petition also called for the resumption of peace negotiations with the PKK. In reaction, the President of the Turkish State deemed these academics “pseudo-intellectuals,” “traitors,” and “terrorist-aides.”[2] On January 13, 2016, an extreme nationalist/convicted criminal threatened the academics in a message posted on his website: “We will spill your blood in streams, and we will take a shower in your blood.”[3]
As I’m composing this text, I read that the indictment against the Academics for Peace has become official. The signatories face charges of seven and a half years imprisonment under Article 7(2) of the Turkish Anti-Terror Act for “propaganda for terrorism.” This afternoon, the moment I stepped into the building where my office is, I overheard an exchange between two men who I think are shop owners downstairs:
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“I was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“I wish you sent him my greetings.”
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Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. I thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” It is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
I began taking hope seriously on July 16, 2016, the night of the “coup attempt” against President Erdoğan. The public still doesn’t know what exactly happened on that night. Perhaps, hope was one of the least appropriate words to depict the mood of the day in a context where “shit had hit the fan.” (I’m sorry I lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).[4] Perhaps, it was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. It is like a flame in the darkness; it isn't like a confidence and a promise.”
On November 4th, 2016, Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, the co-chairs of the HDP (The People’s Democratic Party),[5] were imprisoned. Five days later, the world woke up to the results of the US Presidential election, which was not surprising at all for us mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. I began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope[6] - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online among academic circles.[7] So, why “hope,” and why now? How can we release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can we even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before they find the opportunity to grow into fully-fledged social movements? What resources and visions can hope offer where an economic logic has become the overarching trope to measure happiness and success? How could hope guide us when access to arms is as easy as popcorn? Can hope find the ground to take root and flourish in times of market fundamentalism? What could hope mean when governments and their media extensions are spreading lies, deceptions, and jet-black propaganda? Can hope beat the growing cynicism aggravated by distrust in politics? In brief, are there any reasons to be hopeful despite the evidence? I don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. I definitely can’t. I can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings I’ve assigned myself as part of the “Hope Syllabus” I’ve been compiling for an ongoing project I tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” I am thankful that Words for the Future gives me the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, I argue that if we are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible again. Then, I briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy to discuss how the image of a “democracy to come” is connected with the notion of hope as an engagement with the world instead of a cynical withdrawal from it regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. I conclude by reflecting on how critical social thought and the arts could contribute to new social imaginaries by paying attention to “islands of hope” in the life worlds of our contemporaries.
The Contemporaneity of “Hope”
In the essay “What is the Contemporary?” Agamben describes contemporaneity not as an epochal marker but as a particular relationship with one’s time. It is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, it entails seeing the darkness in the present without being blinded by its lights while at the same time perceiving in this darkness a light that strives but cannot yet reach us. Nobody can deny that we’re going through some dark times; it’s become all we perceive and talk about lately. Hope—as an idea, verb, action, or attitude—rings out of t
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I leave it to you for now to imagine the shapes it could take.
Footnotes
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1. 1,128 academics from 89 universities in Turkey, and over 355 academics and researchers from abroad including some well-known figures such as Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Etienne Balibar, and David Harvey signed the petition. For the full text of the declaration and more information about Academics for Peace see the website: https://barisicinakademisyenler.net/node/63
2. For excerpts of Erdogan’s speech in reaction to the Academics for Peace Petition see (in Turkish): Merkezi, Haber. "Erdoğan'dan Akademisyenlere: Ey Aydın Müsveddeleri." Bianet - Bagimsiz Iletisim Agi. January 12, 2016. Accessed November 2017. http://bit.ly/2zkwpdT.
3. ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. http://bit.ly/2yww6gX.
4. The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the opposition, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: https://turkeypurge.com/
5. HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
6. A copy of this bibliography can be found here: http://www.gururertem.info/syllabi.html
7. See for instance, the “Trump 101” published by The Chronicle of Higher Education on June 19, 2016. http://www.chronicle.com/article/Trump-Syllabus/236824/. A group of African American intellectuals criticized the “Trump 101” syllabus for its omission of issues regarding racial and gender equalities and referred to it “as white as the man himself.” Subsequently they published an amended version of the syllabus entitled “Trump 2.0” http://www.publicbooks.org/trump-syllabus-2-0/
8. Agamben, Giorgio. 2009. “What is the Contemporary?” In [i]What is an Apparatus?: and Other Essays[i]. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
9. Giroux, Henry A. 2014. [i]The Violence of Organized Forgetting: Thinking Beyond America's Disimagination Machine[i]. San Francisco: City Lights Books.
10. Negativity bias refers to the asymmetrical way we perceive negative experiences versus positive ones, an evolutionary trait we developed for survival. Negative experiences, events, and images exert a stronger and lasting impact on us than positive experiences of the same magnitude.
11. Solnit, Rebecca. 2016. [i]Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities[i]. Chicago, Ill: Haymarket Books. iBook.
12. Zunes, Stephen. 2014. “Arab Revolutions.” In [i]The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times[i], edited by Paul Rogat Loeb. New York: Basic Books. iBook.
13. One could argue that the creative process and artistic production are not exempt from this instrumental logic that focuses on measurable outcomes. While I agree with this observation, with the “creative process” I use here I mean a more ‘old-fashioned’ understanding of the term.
14. Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 2002. “Hope, Passion, Politics.” In Hope: New Philosophies for Change, edited by Mary Zournazi, 122-148. Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press Australia.
15. Ibid.
16. Aronson, Ronald. 2017. [i]We: Reviving Social Hope[i]. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
17. Freud, Sigmund. 1964. “The Future of an Illusion,” in [i]The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 21[i], edited by James Stratchey. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis.
18. Smith, David Livingstone. 2017. “Confessions of a Cassandra.” [i]Philosophy Talk[i], January 31, 2017.
https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/confessions-cassandra
19. For an astute empirical analysis of the phenomenon in Nazi speech rallies, see Roger Money-Kyrle’s [i]Psychology of Propaganda[i] (1941). Also see Theodor W. Adorno’s 1951 essay “Freudian
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References:
XAgamben, Giorgio. 2009. “What is the Contemporary?” In [i]What is an Apparatus?: and Other Essays[i]. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Adorno, Theodor W. 1991 [1951]. “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda.” In [i]The Culture Industry[i], edited by J. M. Bernstein. London: Routledge.
XAronson, Ronald. 2017. [i]We: Reviving Social Hope[i]. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
XBack, Les. 2015. “Blind Optimism and the Sociology of Hope.” [i]DiscoverSociety[i], December 1, 2015.
http://discoversociety.org/2015/12/01/blind-pessimism-and-the-sociology-of-hope/
XDemirtaş, Selahattin. 2017. [i]Seher[i]. Ankara: Dipnot Yayınları.
Ertem, Gurur. 2017. “Gezi Uprising: Performative Democracy and Politics of the Body in an Extended Space of Appearance.” In [i]Media Practices, Social Movements, and Performativity: Transdisciplinary Approaches[i], edited by Margreth Lünenborg, Susanne Foellmer, Christoph Raetzsch, pp. 81-99. London: Routledge.
XFreud, Sigmund. 1964. “The Future of an Illusion,” in [i]The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 21[i], edited by James Stratchey. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis.
XGiroux, Henry A. 2014. [i]The Violence of Organized Forgetting: Thinking Beyond America's Disimagination Machine[i]. San Francisco: City Lights Books.
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 2014 (1987). [i]Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics[i]. London: Verso.
X Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 2002. “Hope, Passion, Politics.” In Hope: [i]New Philosophies for Change[i], edited by Mary Zournazi, 122-148. Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press Australia.
X Levine, Stephen K. 2009. [i]Trauma, Tragedy, Therapy: The Arts and Human Suffering[i]. London: JessicaKingsley
Loeb, Paul Rogat. 2014. “The Real Rosa Parks.” In [i]The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Time[i]s, edited by Paul Rogat Loeb. New York: Basic Books. iBook.
Mills, C.Wright. 2000 [1959]. [i]The Sociological Imagination[i]. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Money-Kyrle, Roger. 1978. “The Psychology of Propaganda,” In [i]The Collected Papers of Roger Money-Kyrle[i], edited by Strath Tay, 165-66. Perthshire: The Clunie Press.
XRoy, Arundhati. 2002. “Come September.” Talk delivered at Lannan Foundation Lecture, Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, New Mexico. September 18, 2002.
http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/politics/comeSeptember.pdf
Sinclair, Jennifer. 2008. “Towards an Affirmative Sociology: The Role of Hope in Making a Better World.” Paper presented at TASA Sociologists Conference, August 2008.
https://tasa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Sinclair-Jennifer-Session-84.pdf
Smith, David Livingstone. 2017. “Confessions of a Cassandra.” [i]Philosophy Talk[i], January 31, 2017.
https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/confessions-cassandra
XSmith, David Livingstone. 2016. “The Politics of Illusion: From Socrates and Psychoanalysis to Donald Trump.” Philosophy Talk, January 3, 2016.
https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/politics-illusion-socrates-and-psychoanalysis-donald-trump
XSolnit, Rebecca. 2016. [i]Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities[i]. Chicago, Ill: Haymarket Books. iBook.
Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In [i]The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times[i], edited by Paul Rogat Loeb. New York: Basic Books. iBook.
XZunes, Stephen. 2014. “Arab Revolutions.” In [i]The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times[i], edited by Paul Rogat Loeb. New York: Basic Books. iBook.
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