<body><divclass="nav"><h1><ahref="zero.html">H<br>O<br>P<br>E</a></h1><p><ahref="index_ori.html"><buttonclass="button">∙</button></a><br><ahref="index.html"><buttonclass="button">∶</button></a><br><inputtype="button"class="button"value="∴"onClick="randomlinks()"><br><inputtype="button"class="button"value="⎙"onClick="window.print()"><br><buttonclass="button"><ahref="../"style="font-size: 14px;">☖</a></button></p><pclass="credit">Original Contribution<br> by Gurur ERTEM <br> Reinpreted <br> by Euna LEE</p></div><divclass="printtit"><h1>Hope</h1><br>Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM / Reinpreted by Euna LEE<br><br><br><br></div><divclass="line"><spanclass="PRP">I</span> 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, “<spanclass="PRP">We</span> Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish <aname="government"></a><spanclass="link">government</span><aclass="lilink"href="../ECO-SWARAJ/#government">E</a>’s security operations against the youth <aname="movement"></a><spanclass="link">movement</span><aclass="lilink"href="../LIQUID/#movement">L</a> of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. <spanclass="PRP">They</span> 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: “<spanclass="PRP">We</span> will spill your blood in streams, and <spanclass="PRP">we</span> will <aname="kill"></a><spanclass="link">take a shower in your blood</span><aclass="lilink"href="../TENSE/#kill">T</a>.” ³</div><br><divclass="line">As <spanclass="PRP">I</span>’m composing this text, <spanclass="PRP">I</span> 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 <spanclass="PRP">I</span> stepped into the building where my office is, <spanclass="PRP">I</span> overheard an exchange between two men who <spanclass="PRP">I</span> think are shop owners downstairs:</div><br><divclass="anno">ⓡ Article 7 (2) of Turkey’s Anti-Terrorism Law: prohibits “making propaganda for a terrorist organisation”. Is a vague and overly-broad article with no explicit requirement for propaganda to advocate violent criminal methods. <spanclass="PRP">It</span> has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.</div><br><divclass="anno">ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/</div><br><imgclass="anno"src="image/muslim.png"><figcaptionclass="anno">fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy</figcaption><br><divclass="line">“<spanclass="PRP">I</span> was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”</div><br><divclass="line">“<spanclass="PRP">I</span> wish <spanclass="PRP">you</span> sent <spanclass="PRP">him</span> my greetings.”</div><br><divclass="anno">ⓞ <spanclass="PRP">I</span> guess at first <spanclass="PRP">she</span> is contextualizing her thoughts</div><br><divclass="anno">ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true</div><br><divclass="anno">ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. <spanclass="PRP">He</span> is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker</div><br><divclass="anno">ⓡ Pan-Turkism i
<divclass="line"><h3>The Contemporaneity of “Hope”</h3>In the essay “What is the Contemporary?” Agamben describes contemporaneity not as an epochal marker but as a particular relationship with one’s time. <spanclass="PRP">It</span> is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, <spanclass="PRP">it</span> 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 can not yet reach <spanclass="PRP">us</span>. Nobody can deny that <spanclass="PRP">we</span>’ re going through some dark times; <spanclass="PRP">it</span>’s become all <spanclass="PRP">we</span> perceive and talk about lately. Hope—as an idea, verb, action, or attitude—rings out of tune with the reality of the present. But, if <spanclass="PRP">we</span> follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify <spanclass="PRP">us</span> as “true contemporaries.” What <spanclass="PRP">we</span> need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.</div><br><divclass="line">Second level of dissonance Agamben evokes is related to history and memory. The non-coincidence with one’s time does not mean the contemporary is nostalgic or utopian; <spanclass="PRP">she</span> is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to <spanclass="PRP">it</span>. Echoing Walter Benjamin’s conception of time as heterogeneous, Agamben argues that being contemporary means putting to work a particular relationship among different times: citing, recycling, making relevant again moments from the <aname="past"></a><spanclass="link">past</span><aclass="lilink"href="../LIQUID/#past">L</a>, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.</div><br><divclass="anno">ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.</div><br><divclass="anno">ⓞ In which point of the human development have <spanclass="PRP">we</span> started “asking” for more than is needed? How do <spanclass="PRP">we</span> define the progress? The continuos improvement of human' knowledge? Also, when, in order to supply while being fed by population’s ever-changing needs, did we destroy the world?</div><br><divclass="anno">ⓞ <spanclass="PRP">I</span> totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, <spanclass="PRP">we</span> don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. <spanclass="PRP">It</span>’s all about the present and future considerations.</div><br><divclass="line">Agamben’s observations about historicity are especially relevant regarding hope. As many other writers and thinkers have noted, hopelessness and its cognates such as despair and cynicism are very much linked to amnesia. As Henry A. Giroux argues in The Violence of Organized Forgetting, under the conditions of neoliberalism, militarization, securitization, and the colonization of life worlds by the economistic logic, forms of historical, <aname="political"></a><spanclass="link">political</span><aclass="lilink"href="../00/#political">M</a><aclass="lilink"href="../ECO-SWARAJ/#political">E</a><aclass="lilink"href="../PRACTICALVISION/#political">P</a>, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. <aname="massmedia"></a><spanclass="link">Mainstream media</span><aclass="lilink"href="../00/#massmedia">M</a><aclass="lilink"href="../UNDECIDABILITY/#massmedia">U</a> media’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes <spanclass="PRP">us</span> lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because <spanclass="PRP">it</span> offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and ac
<divclass="line"><h3>Radical Politics and Social Hope</h3>Over a series works since the mid-1980s, Chantal Mouffe has challenged existing notions of the “political” and called for reviving the idea of “radical democracy.” Drawing on Gramsci’s theoretizations of hegemony, Mouffe places conflict and disagreement, rather than consensus and finality, at the center of her analysis. While “politics” for Mouffe refers to the set of practices and institutions through which a society is created and governed, the “political” entails the ineradicable dimension of antagonism in any given social order. <spanclass="PRP">We</span> are no longer able to think “politically” due to the uncontested hegemony of liberalism where the dominant tendency is a rationalist and individualist approach that is unable to come to terms with the pluralistic and conflict-ridden nature of the social world. This results in what Mouffe calls “the post-political condition.” The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension. The question is not how to negotiate a compromise among competing interests, nor is <spanclass="PRP">it</span> how to reach a rational, fully inclusive consensus. What democracy requires is not overcoming the us/them distinction of antagonism, but drawing this distinction in such a way that is compatible with the recognition of <aname="pluralism"></a><spanclass="link">pluralism</span><aclass="lilink"href="../LIQUID/#pluralism">L</a><aclass="lilink"href="../OTHERNESS/#pluralism">O</a><aclass="lilink"href="../PRACTICALVISION/#pluralism">P</a>. In other words, the question is how can <spanclass="PRP">we</span> institute a democracy that acknowledges the ineradicable dimension of conflict, yet be able to establish a pluralist public space in which these opposing forces can meet in a nonviolent way. For Mouffe, this entails transforming antagonism to “agonism” ¹⁴. <spanclass="PRP">It</span> means instituting a situation where opposing political subjects recognize the legitimacy of their opponent, who is now an adversary rather than an enemy, although no rational consensus or a final agreement can be reached.</div><br><divclass="anno">ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)</div><br><divclass="anno">ⓞ <spanclass="PRP">We</span> should acknowledge the otherness and not judge others. Like in Otherness, Dutch mom doesn’t need to judge Pirahas mom who left her child to play with a knife. ➞ yes and also in those words having a different sense of conflict, giving <spanclass="PRP">them</span> the name of an adversary rather than enemy is being aware of the differences. And that’s the otherness consciousness. ➞ The otherness, in this case, the adversaries, must be recognized as a fundamental part of the whole demochratic system. The purpose shouldn’t be only the final aggreement, but the clear representation of all needs and thoughts.</div><br><divclass="anno">ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed</div><br><divclass="anno">ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful</div><br><divclass="line">Another crucial dimension in Mouffe’s understanding of the political is “hegemony.” Every social order is a hegemonic one established by a series of practices and institutions within a context of contingency. In other words, every order is a temporary and precarious articulation. What is considered at a given moment as ‘natural’ or as ‘<aname="commoning"></a><spanclass="link">common sense</span><aclass="lilink"href="../RESURGENCE/#commoning">R</a><aclass="lilink"href="../PRACTICALVISION/#commoning">P</a>’ is the result of sedimented historical practices based on the exclusion of other possibilities that can be reactivated in different times and places when conditions are ripe. That is, every hegemonic order can be challenged by counterhegemonic practices that will att
<divclass="line"><h3>Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope</h3>As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, <spanclass="PRP">I</span> observe both fields are practicing a critical way of thinking that exposes the contingent nature of the way things are, and reveal that nothing is inevitable.²² However, at the same time, by focusing only on the darkness of the times—as <spanclass="PRP">it</span> has become common practice lately when, for instance, a public symposium on current issues in the contemporary dance field becomes a collective whining session—I wonder if <spanclass="PRP">we</span> may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are <spanclass="PRP">we</span>, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?</div><br><divclass="line">If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making <spanclass="PRP">it</span> a better place, <spanclass="PRP">it</span> could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among <spanclass="PRP">us</span>. <spanclass="PRP">It</span> would require an empirical sensibility—a documentary and ethnographic approach of sorts—that pay attention to the moments when “islands of hope” are established and the social conditions that make their emergence possible.²³ One could pay attention to the overlooked, quiet, and hopeful developments that may help <spanclass="PRP">us</span> to carve spaces where the imagination is not colonized by the neoliberal, nationalist, and militarist siege. That is, for a non-cynical social and artistic inquiry, one could explore how <aname="communities"></a><spanclass="link">communities</span><aclass="lilink"href="../ECO-SWARAJ/#communities">E</a><aclass="lilink"href="../ATATA/#communities">A</a> make sense of their experiences and come to terms with trauma and defeat. These developments may not necessarily be present in the art world, but could offer insights to <spanclass="PRP">it</span>. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful <aname="interpretation"></a><spanclass="link">interpretations</span><aclass="lilink"href="../TENSE/#interpretation">T</a><aclass="lilink"href="../00/#interpretation">M</a><aclass="lilink"href="../OTHERNESS/#interpretation">O</a> and creative coping <aname="strategy"></a><spanclass="link">strategies</span><aclass="lilink"href="../00/#strategy">M</a> than the art world’s handling of these issues. <spanclass="PRP">It</span> is necessary for <spanclass="PRP">us</span> to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. <spanclass="PRP">It</span> is essential to explore these issues not only in a theoretical manner but through an empirical sensibility: by deploying ethnographic modes of research, paying close attention to the life worlds of our contemporaries to explore their intellectual, practical, imaginative, and affective strategies to make lives livable. Correspondingly, one could focus on the therapeutic and redeeming <aname="dimensions"></a><spanclass="link">dimensions</span><aclass="lilink"href="../LIQUID/#dimensions">L</a> of art as equally crucial to its function as social critique. For this, one could pay more attention to the significant role of poeisis - the creative act that affirms our humanity and dignity — ²⁴to rework trauma into symbolic forms.</div><br><divclass="anno">ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical</div><br><divclass="line">One such endeavor <spanclass="PRP">I</span> came across is the storytelling movement <spanclass="PRP">I</span> observed in Turkey.²⁵ More and more people have taken up storytelling, and more and more national and international organizations are popping up. The first national storytelling conference took place last May at Yildiz University. <spanc
is a social scientist and performance studies scholar specializing in the sociology of culture and the arts; and the body and social theory. she is the founding co-director of iDANS (Istanbul) where she has been responsible for curatorial research and publications. Being immersed in the contemporary dance culture for (almost) two decades as dancer, dramaturge, programmer, and scholar, she edited several books on the topic such as Dance on Time (2010); Solo? in Contemporary Dance (2008), and Yirminci Yüzyılda Dans Sanatı (2007). Ertem specialized in the sociology of culture and arts; the body and social theory; and critical theory. She obtained her Ph.D. in Sociology from The New School for Social Research (New York) in 2016. Her current research focuses on cultures of protest and the body and political psychology. Ertem is selected as an Akademie Schloss Solitude Fellow in the Humanities for the period 2017-2019.
<b>References</b>
Adorno, Theodor W. 1991 [1951]. “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda.” In <em>The Culture Industry</em>, edited by J. M. Bernstein. London: Routledge.
Ertem, Gurur. 2017. “Gezi Uprising: Performative Democracy and Politics of the Body in an Extended Space of Appearance.” In <em>Media Practices, Social Movements, and Performativity: Transdisciplinary Approaches</em>, edited by Margreth Lünenborg, Susanne Foellmer, Christoph Raetzsch, pp. 81-99. London: Routledge.
Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe. 2014 (1987). <em>Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics</em>. London: Verso.
Loeb, Paul Rogat. 2014. “The Real Rosa Parks.” In <em>The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Time</em>s, edited by Paul Rogat Loeb. New York: Basic Books. iBook.
Money-Kyrle, Roger. 1978. “The Psychology of Propaganda,” In <em>The Collected Papers of Roger Money-Kyrle</em>, edited by Strath Tay, 165-66. Perthshire: The Clunie Press.
Sinclair, Jennifer. 2008. “Towards an Affirmative Sociology: The Role of Hope in Making a Better World.” Paper presented at TASA Sociologists Conference, August 2008.
Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In <em>The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times</em>, edited by Paul Rogat Loeb. New York: Basic Books. iBook.
<b>Footnotes</b>
[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 <aname="opposition"></a><spanclass="link">opposition</span><aclass="lilink"href="../00/#opposition">M</a>, 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 <em>What is an Apparatus?: and Other Essays</em>. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
[9]: Giroux, Henry A. 2014. </em>The Violence of Organized Forgetting: Thinking Beyond America's Disimagination Machine</em>. 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. <em>Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities</em>. Chicago, Ill: Haymarket Books. iBook.
[12]: Zunes, Stephen. 2014. “Arab Revolutions.” In <em>The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times</em>, 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. <em>We: Reviving Social Hope</em>. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
[17]: Freud, Sigmund. 1964. “The Future of an Illusion,” in <em>The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 21</em>, edited by James Stratchey. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis.
[18]: Smith, David Livingstone. 2017. “Confessions of a Cassandra.” <em>Philosophy Talk</em>, January 31, 2017.
[19]: For an astute empirical analysis of the phenomenon in Nazi speech rallies, see Roger Money-Kyrle’s <em>Psychology of Propaganda</em> (1941). Also see Theodor W. Adorno’s 1951 essay “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda.”
[20]: Smith, David Livingstone. 2016. “The Politics of Illusion: From Socrates and Psychoanalysis to Donald Trump.”
[21]: Freud, “The Future of Illusion”
[22]: I’ve discussed elsewhere the similarities of “sociological imagination” (Mills, C.Wright. 2000 [1959]. <em>The Sociological Imagination</em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) and institutional critique in the arts. See: Gurur Ertem, “European Dance: The Emergence and Transformation of a Contemporary Dance Art World (1989-2013),” (PhD diss, The New School for Social Research), p.30.
[23]: Back, Les. 2015. “Blind Optimism and the Sociology of Hope.” <em>DiscoverSociety</em>, December 1, 2015. (http://discoversociety.org/2015/12/01/blind-pessimism-and-the-sociology-of-hope/)
[24]: See Stephen K. Levine’s <em>Trauma, Tragedy, Therapy: The Arts and Human Suffering</em> for an extended discussion of poeisis with regards to coming to terms to trauma through the creative act.
[25]: See the transcript of my talk “Field Notes on Instituting” delivered at the Inventory #2 Conference, Tanzhaus nrw Düsseldorf, June 1, 2017. (http://www.gururertem.info/uploads/8/8/7/6/88765342/gurur_ertem_field_notes_on_instituting_inventur_2.pdf)
[27]: Roy, 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)
