+
for the Future is a set of map making tools to re-imagine and collect wor(l)ds, and to re-publish an everchanging atlas. We invite you to delve into the materials and traverse the texts in any way you desire: by cutting and pasting the printed matter, or by unravelling the texts online. The choice is yours. You can reconstruct images and reinterpret words to create Wor(l)ds for the Future.
@@ -608,13 +610,13 @@ A3 Cover PDF(here)
-
+
in Python (a coding language we used to analyse text
as texture). The ten booklets were cross-examined and mapped in order to find interconnections and links.
-We approached this project through the perspective of cartography. Alfred Korzybski wrote: "The map is not the territory". In other words, the description of the thing is not the thing itself. The model is not reality. Cartography always entails a selection and transformation of properties of a complex reality that affect the way maps – partial views of reality – are deciphered and received. With this notion in mind, we created a mapping to highlight our individual explorations and interpretations using a language of symbols created to represent our understanding of the original material of Words for the Future.
+We approached this project through the perspective
of cartography. Alfred Korzybski wrote: "The map is
not the territory". In other words, the description of the thing is not the thing itself. The model is not reality. Cartography always entails a selection and transformation of properties of a complex reality that affect the way maps – partial views of reality – are deciphered and received. With this notion in mind, we created a mapping to highlight our individual explorations and interpretations using a language of symbols created to represent our understanding of the original material of Words
for the Future.
-A map could relate to something that no longer exists. It could also relate to something that does not yet exist. Maps could be seen as fictions therefore, as spaces for the imaginary.
+A map could relate to something that no longer exists.
It could also relate to something that does not yet exist. Maps could be seen as fictions therefore, as spaces for the imaginary.
- Join us to un-map and re-map an infinite amount of potential constellations of tomorrow, and to navigate speculative wor(l)ds which holds the capacity to bleed into the very fabric of our shared grounds. + Join us to un-map and re-map an infinite amount of potential constellations of tomorrow, and to navigate speculative wor(l)ds which holds the capacity
to bleed into the very fabric of our shared grounds.
https://hub.xpub.nl/sandbot/words-for-the-future/
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diff --git a/COLOPHON/A3colophoncredits.html b/COLOPHON/A3colophoncredits.html index 253ac9b..8254c28 100644 --- a/COLOPHON/A3colophoncredits.html +++ b/COLOPHON/A3colophoncredits.html @@ -51,6 +51,10 @@ @font-face { font-family: 'Custom'; src: url('WFTF_custom-Regular.otf'); +} + @font-face { + font-family: 'Robotomono'; + src: url('RobotoMono-Regular.ttf'); } body { padding: 2mm; @@ -86,24 +90,23 @@ font-family: 'Roboto'; bottom: 10mm; right: 10mm; - margin-bottom: 10mm; - margin-left: 17mm; + margin-bottom: 7mm; + margin-left: 10mm; margin-top: 0mm; } .titleverticalleft { writing-mode: vertical-rl; - display: none; - font-size: 20pt; + display: block; + font-size: 40pt; line-height: 100%; position: fixed; letter-spacing: normal; - font-family: 'Roboto'; + font-family: 'Brut'; top: 10mm; right: 10mm; - margin-bottom: 10mm; + margin-bottom: 0mm; margin-left: 10mm; margin-top: 7mm; - margin-left: 0; } .title { display: none; @@ -150,6 +153,14 @@ line-height: 15pt; z-index: 300; font-family: 'Robotobold'; +} + h2c { + color: black; + text-align: left; + font-size: 7pt; + line-height: 15pt; + z-index: 300; + font-family: 'Custom'; } p { text-indent: 7mm; @@ -185,6 +196,9 @@ z-index: 300; font-family: 'Roboto'; padding-right: 10mm; +} + p10 { + line-height: 16pt; } line { color: black; @@ -209,6 +223,14 @@ line-height: 13pt; z-index: 300; font-family: 'Robotomedium'; +} + mediummono { + color: black; + text-align: left; + font-size: 11pt; + line-height: 13pt; + z-index: 300; + font-family: 'Robotomono'; } garamond { font-family: 'EBGaramondregular'; @@ -258,7 +280,7 @@ italic { font-family: 'EBGaramonditalicsemi'; font-size: 14pt; - line-height: 16pt; + line-height: 0pt; margin-left: 5mm; } bigitalic { @@ -517,7 +539,7 @@
WѺR(L)DS
FҨӶ THξ FUTURЭ
FҨӶ THξ FUTURЭ
WOR(L )DS FOR THE FUTURE
-XPUB
+🡢
XPUB 2020
@@ -526,34 +548,36 @@
A pluralistic open license
-- Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to individual, group(s), and non-profit organization(s), obtaining a copy of this project, to use, copy, print, modify, merge, distribute, and/or sell contents or copies of the project, in whole or in parts, subject to the following conditions.
of the project, in whole or in parts, subject to the following conditions.
-
We encourage you to:
- • Introduce the project to your neighbours, friends, family, etc;- • Translate the contents into other languages;
+
We encourage you to:
+ • Introduce the project to your neighbours, friends, family, etc;- • Create new dramaturgies (structures, stories, worlds) from the contents;
+ • Translate the contents into other languages;
+ + • Create new dramaturgies (structures, stories, worlds)
+ from the contents;
+ + • Extend this license, as long as the kinship, commercial use
+ and attribution conditions remain in force.
Kinship:
- Kinship implies co-relations between Wor(l)ds For The Future and further distributions which will potentially be made. + Kinship implies co-relations between Wor(l)ds For The Futureand further distributions which will potentially be made.
- If you want to republish and re-distribute the content, verbatim or derivative, we ask you to send us a copy. By copy we mean a copy of the republished content. For instance, if it is a print or a physical object please send it to XPUB/ WH4.141 t.a.v. Piet Zwart Institute/ WdKA/ Rotterdam Uni. Postbus 1272 300 BG Rotterdam, NL. If it is a file please send it to pzwart-info@hr.nl /attn: XPUB cc. If it is a change in a cloned git repository of the work, please send a patch so we can archive it in a branch. Which means, if you clone or download our git repository
( https://git.xpub.nl/XPUB/issue.xpub.nl/src/branch/master/13 ) to modify the project files, we ask you to send us the modifications so we can archive them as well.
of the republished content. For instance, if it is a print or a physical object please send it to XPUB/ WH4.141 t.a.v. Piet Zwart Institute/ WdKA/ Rotterdam Uni. Postbus 1272 300 BG Rotterdam, NL.
If it is a file please send it to pzwart-info@hr.nl /attn: XPUB cc.
If itis a change in a cloned git repository of the work, please send a patch so we can archive it in a branch.
+ + Which means, if you clone or download our git repository (https://git.xpub.nl/XPUB/issue.xpub.nl/src/branch/master/13)
to modify the project files, we ask you to send us the modifications so we can archive them as well.
-
Commercial use:
- Commercial use is only permitted if no profit is derived. Said differently, you can sell copies of the work only to cover the costs of the distribution, printing, production, needed to circulate copies of the work. We are asking you to be transparent about such expenses.Said differently, you can sell copies of the work only to cover the costs of the distribution, printing and/or production, needed to circulate copies of the work. We are asking you to be transparent about such expenses.
-
-
Attribution:
- The above copyright notice and this license shall be included in all copies or modified versions of the project. Any re-publication, verbatim or derivative, of the contents must explicitly credit the name(s) of the author(s) of WORDS FOR THE FUTURE, as well as those of the author(s) of WOR(L)DS FOR THE FUTURE. This attribution must make clear what changes have been made.A ttribution:
+ The above copyright notice and this license shall be included in all copies or modified versions of the project. Any re-publication, verbatim or derivative, of the contents must explicitly credit the name(s) of the author(s) of WORDS FOR THE FUTURE, as well as those of the author(s) of WOR(L)DS FOR THE FUTURE. This attribution must make clear what changes have been made.• Floor van Meeuwen
-
Tutors:
T utors:
• Aymeric Mansoux
• Michael Murtaugh
@@ -592,16 +616,21 @@
P rint
- • The risograph pages were printed on a Riso MZ1070 in van Beek paper of 120gr at Wdka Print Station
- • The A0 poster was printed by ------
-
- • Custom Roboto (All caps Roboto with 10 custom characters made by XPUB1 students)
- • WFTF Regular ( 10 symbols made by XPUB1 students)
-
Thanks
--
+ • The risograph pages were printed on a Riso MZ1070 in van Beek
+ paper of 120gr at Wdka Print Station
+ • The A0 poster was printed by repro-plotservice
+
+ • Roboto
+ • Robotomono
+ • EBGaramond
+
+ • Custom Roboto (All caps Roboto with 10 custom characters
+ made by XPUB1 students)
+ • WFTF Regular (10 symbols made by XPUB1 students)
+
T hanks
+ Rotterdam, NL
Winter, 2020
Words for the Future (2017/18)
--
Authors
A uthors
+@@ -619,11 +649,12 @@ Winter, 2020
-
+
- -
+
+
+ & Vincent Schipper (Studio The Future)
@@ -643,25 +674,26 @@ Winter, 2020
-
+
+ & Elpida Orfanidou & Adina Secretan & Simone Truong
-
+
-
+
-
& Elpida Orfanidou & Adina Secretan & Simone Truong
+
+
WOR(L)DS FOR A FUTURE is a re-publishing project compiled by the first year students and mentoring team of the Master programme Experimental Publishing (XPUB) of the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academy, as part of the Special Issue project #13. The project aims to explore the re-publishing of the publication series Words for the Future through the students' discursive and artistic responses to the original collection.
+
+
-
This symbol represents a perpetual state of flux between information and ideas. +
+
This symbol represents a perpetual state of flux between information and ideas. The output transforms into input that flows in self-sustaining circularities, thus, shaping a series of dynamic feedback loops to create new meaning.
-
+
-
Shaped as a small, autonomous community, with its specific identity. Small communities could be developed close to each other, but only on the same strip of land. If they’re adjacent they build a network to share resource and culture.
-
+
Shaped as a small autonomous community with a specific identity. Small communities could be developed close to each other, but only on the same strip of land. If they’re adjacent they build a network to share resource and culture.
+
-
Practical Vision symbol sets a series of communication skills: when two Practical Visions watch theirself they create translations between different languages. A Practical Vision attempts to protect past and future cultures and works through organic and inorganic networks.
-
+
The Practical Vision symbol sets of a series of communication skills: when two Practical Visions watch themselves they create translations between different languages. A Practical Vision attempts to protect past and future cultures and works through organic and inorganic networks.
+
-
Self-decision making in an eco community is what Eco Swaraj is about. This symbol could be seen as a flower, people holding hands, a thought before a decision is being made.
-
Self-decision making in an eco community is what Eco-Swaraj is about. This symbol could be seen as a flower, people holding hands, a thought before a decision is being made.
+
This symbol illustrates the destination of Hope, written by Gurur Ertem. The author considers it as a solution to overcome the darkness in our present and future life.
-
+
+
-
As undecidability embraces opend imaginaries and multiplicities, the symbol was inspired by fog, the nature element.
-
+
As undecidability embraces open imaginaries and multiplicities, the symbol was inspired by fog, a natural element.
+
This volcano depicts the legendary moment of long forgotten matter finally breaking through its suffocating covers, forcefully spilling out into the open with the heat of a thousand suns.
-
+
-
This is a descritpion of !?: Et mi, voluptatum fugia voluptat. -Enet enturerum vendam, temolup taecatem cum iumendent, omnitibus et, conse pre doluptatem voloris doluptas audaepe rorepra dolorest optiaeri veliquam ex etur.
-
+
The symbol for !? simply shows the two punctuations marks fighting to represent the conflict expressed in the text.
+
-
atata’s symbol represents being in relation to ohers as an active act of reciprocity, It binds, connects and links beings.
-
+
Atata’s symbol represents being in relation to ohers as an active act of reciprocity, It binds, connects and links beings.
+
Tense's symbol depicts the encapsulation of a subject inside a description.
-
+
WOR(L )DS
FOR THE FUTURE -
diff --git a/HOPE/index.html b/HOPE/index.html
index e834a69..baa359b 100644
--- a/HOPE/index.html
+++ b/HOPE/index.html
@@ -158,7 +158,7 @@
-FOR THE FUTURE -
This is your blank map for re-imagine and re-draw the future. Use the provided system of symbols and
-elements from the different words’ explorations to help you mapping new Wor(l)d.
+ This empty grid proposes a space for unbound curiosity; the kind that is about openness, wonder
and play. Use the provided symbols, tools and elements from the different words' explorations that you find within the publication, in order to imagine and draw (map) your Wor(l)ds for the Future.
and play. Use the provided symbols, tools and elements from the different words' explorations that you find within the publication, in order to imagine and draw (map) your Wor(l)ds for the Future.
Hope
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM / Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 E’s security operations against the youth movement L 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 T.” 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:
ⓡ 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. It has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“I was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“I wish you sent him my greetings.”
ⓞ I guess at first she is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. He is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
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.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe we can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of them come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the fan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally I got it!
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 hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P 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.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for us mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ I would say cause it’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is it? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
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 P again. Then, I briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. It’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which we use hope as a light to help us move inside. ➞ I think, it’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for me, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+Hope
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM / Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 E’s security operations against the youth movement L 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 T.” 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:
ⓡ 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. It has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“I was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“I wish you sent him my greetings.”
ⓞ I guess at first she is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. He is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
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.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe we can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of them come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the fan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally I got it!
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 hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P 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.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for us mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ I would say cause it’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is it? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
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 P again. Then, I briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. It’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which we use hope as a light to help us move inside. ➞ I think, it’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for me, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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 can not 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 tune with the reality of the present. But, if we follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify us as “true contemporaries.” What we need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; she is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to it. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have we started “asking” for more than is needed? How do we 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?
ⓞ I totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, we don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. It’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U media’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes us lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because it offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As she writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives I would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements we can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state it, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, I mean, they don’t act as a tool for remembrance, they usually avoid past facts. I would say they work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for me another process of forgetting, isn’t it? ➞ Yes yes, I got what you say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news itself has that characteristic. We can say, “that’s the reason why we need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do you mean? ➞ I think, if we have some kind of system to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), we can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about them; it does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent them, they convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although it became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if they seem insignificant. We must be willing to come to terms with the fact that we may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. We can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when we separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, I contend that if we could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, we could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? I mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, it actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t you think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like we find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than we really need, like today. ➞ Well, for me Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: It voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could we design? In my ideal I want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist; to collaborate with those who share your same ideas, but also, being open to working with others ideas, projects and beliefs. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than we currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antithetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For me, democratic food market; like everyone can get true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ I would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would you make) for the other groups when it comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Memory as a key to Hope. Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), we can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ it’s true, but we do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ it echoes me the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can you say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites us to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. We 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 it 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can we 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. It 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ We 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 them 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
It may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay I take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” It means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if it is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order it would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although it’s not going to be completely realized, it will always remain as a process that we work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes it possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. They argued that it is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. They proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. It’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as I’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. I agree with Mouffe that as long as we keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing it with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once they become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, it can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system E of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, I argue that it’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if it is hope, it is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. I rather think that it is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, I realized it would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. It was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) I don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed it, but what was most troubling is that it did not matter whether it was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe it. It became imperative for me to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. I found out Freud had a concept for it: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how we draw it
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, it’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, we understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs we adopt because we want them to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, it’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that he could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. We suffer from an illusion when we believe something is the case just because we wish it to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for me because hegemony is ideological, meaning that it is invisible, it is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if they didn’t believe in him, they were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, I 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 it 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 we may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are we, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making it a better place, it could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among us. It 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 us 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 communities E 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 it. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies M than the art world’s handling of these issues. It is necessary for us to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. It 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 dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor I came across is the storytelling movement I 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. I was struck when I went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” It has also struck me that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, I think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of she wrote after she went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And it’s at this time when she offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. It was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” he reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. He observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because it also makes us lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. It pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, I’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for me today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, it could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. I conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I’m beginning to believe vanity makes them think so. That it’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told.” ²⁷
I leave it to you for now to imagine the shapes it could take.
ⓞ The recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions it as art), which is warmer and left us to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refine nature
Hope
by Gurur Ertem
👽 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, “👮♂️ Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. ⭐️ 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: “👮♂️ will spill your blood in streams, and 💃 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 👽’m composing this text, 👽 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 👽 stepped into the building where my office is, 👽 overheard an exchange between two men who 👽 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 👩👩👧👧 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“👽 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“👽 wish 🤓 sent 🦖 my greetings.”
ⓞ 👽 guess at first 🦖 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🦖 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 👽 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 👩👩👧👧 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
👽 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.” (👽’m sorry 👽 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👩🎓 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 👩👩👧👧 is like a flame in the darkness; 👩🎓 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 💃 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👨👧👦 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 👽 got 👩🎓!
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 💃 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 👽 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 💃 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 💃 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 🙍♀️ 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 💃 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? 👽 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 👽 definitely can’t. 👽 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 👽’ ve assigned ⛄️ as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 👽’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 👽 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 👽 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🤓 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 💃 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 👽 would say cause 👩🎓’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👩🎓? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 👽 argue that if 💃 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 👽 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👩🎓 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 👽 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 👩👩👧👧’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 💃 use hope as a light to help 💃 move inside. ➞ 👽 think, 👩🎓’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 🤓, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+Hope
by Gurur Ertem
👽 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, “👮♂️ Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. ⭐️ 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: “👮♂️ will spill your blood in streams, and 💃 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 👽’m composing this text, 👽 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 👽 stepped into the building where my office is, 👽 overheard an exchange between two men who 👽 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 👩👩👧👧 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“👽 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“👽 wish 🤓 sent 🦖 my greetings.”
ⓞ 👽 guess at first 🦖 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🦖 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 👽 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 👩👩👧👧 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
👽 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.” (👽’m sorry 👽 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👩🎓 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 👩👩👧👧 is like a flame in the darkness; 👩🎓 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 💃 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👨👧👦 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 👽 got 👩🎓!
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 💃 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 👽 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 💃 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 💃 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 🙍♀️ 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 💃 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? 👽 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 👽 definitely can’t. 👽 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 👽’ ve assigned ⛄️ as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 👽’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 👽 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 👽 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🤓 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 💃 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 👽 would say cause 👩🎓’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👩🎓? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 👽 argue that if 💃 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 👽 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👩🎓 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 👽 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 👩👩👧👧’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 💃 use hope as a light to help 💃 move inside. ➞ 👽 think, 👩🎓’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 🤓, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. 👩👩👧👧 is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, 👩🎓 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 💃. Nobody can deny that 💃’ re going through some dark times; 👩🎓’s become all 💃 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 💃 follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 💃 as “true contemporaries.” What 💃 need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 🦖 is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to 👩🎓. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have 💃 started “asking” for more than is needed? How do 💃 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?
ⓞ 👽 totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, 💃 don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. 👩👩👧👧’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 💃 lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because 👩🎓 offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 🦖 writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 👽 would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements 💃 can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state 👩🎓, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 👽 mean, 🙍♀️ don’t act as a tool for remembrance, 🙍♀️ usually avoid past facts. Then 👽 would say 🙍♀️ work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for 🤓 another process of forgetting, isn’t 👩🎓? ➞ Yes yes, 👽 got what 🤓 say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 👬 has that characteristic. 👮♂️ can say, “that’s the reason why 💃 need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do 🤓 mean? ➞ 👽 think, if 💃 have some kind of system E to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), 💃 can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about 👨👧👦; 👩🎓 does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent 👨👧👦, 🙍♀️ convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although 👩🎓 became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if 🙍♀️ seem insignificant. 👮♂️ must be willing to come to terms with the fact that 💃 may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👮♂️ can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when 💃 separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 👽 contend that if 💃 could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, 💃 could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? 👽 mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, 👩🎓 actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t 🤓 think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like 💃 find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than 💃 really need, like today. ➞ Well, for 🤓 Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: 👩👩👧👧 voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could 💃 design? In my ideal 👽 want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist; to collaborate with those who share your same ideas, but also, being open to working with others ideas, projects and beliefs. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than 💃 currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antitetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For 🤓, democratic food market; like everyone can get a true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 👽 would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would 🤓 make) for the other groups when 👩🎓 comes to relating the different texts to eachother.
ⓞ Memory as a key of Hope. Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to managing better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), 💃 can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ 👩🎓’s true, but 💃 do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ 👩🎓 reminds 🤓 the “Otherness” text. Both require the open and the patience. Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ good, can 🤓 say more about this connection? Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time as well as embracing the uncertainty. Being aware of the blur future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 💃 to approach the world openminded
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. 👮♂️ 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 👩🎓 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can 💃 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. 👩👩👧👧 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.ⓞ!!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ 👮♂️ should acknowledge the otherness and not judge the others. Like in Otherness, Dutch mom don’t need to judge Pirahas mom who left her child to play with knife. ➞ yes and also in those words having a different sense of conflict, giving 👨👧👦 the name of 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 foundamental part of the whole demochratic system. The purpose shouldn’t be only the final aggreement but the clear rapresentation of all needs and thoughts.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
👩👩👧👧 may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 👽 take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” 👩👩👧👧 means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if 👩🎓 is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order 👩🎓 would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although 👩🎓’s not going to be completely realized, 👩🎓 will always remain as a process that 💃 work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes 👩🎓 possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. ⭐️ argued that 👩🎓 is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. ⭐️ proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. 👩👩👧👧’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 👽’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 👽 agree with Mouffe that as long as 💃 keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing 👩🎓 with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once 🙍♀️ become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader ofThe Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, 👩🎓 can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 👽 argue that 👩🎓’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if 👩🎓 is hope, 👩🎓 is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 👽 rather think that 👩🎓 is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 👽 realized 👩🎓 would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. 👩👩👧👧 was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 👽 don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed 👩🎓, but what was most troubling is that 👩🎓 did not matter whether 👩🎓 was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe 👩🎓. 👩👩👧👧 became imperative for 🤓 to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 👽 found out Freud had a concept for 👩🎓: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing outside, makes people blind and disappointed for future. ➞ but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true maybe not) ➞ + according to Freud, this illusion is depend on how 💃 draw 👩🎓
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, 👩🎓’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, 💃 understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs 💃 adopt because 💃 want 👨👧👦 to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, 👩🎓’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that ⭐️ could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. 👮♂️ suffer from an illusion when 💃 believe something is the case just because 💃 wish 👩🎓 to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ hegemony and illusion relate for 🤓 because hegemony is ideological, meaning that 👩🎓 is invisible, 👩🎓 is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ illusion in religion in otherness! the author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if 🙍♀️ didn’t believe in 🦖, 🙍♀️ were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 👽 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 👩🎓 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 💃 may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are 💃, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making 👩🎓 a better place, 👩🎓 could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 💃. 👩👩👧👧 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 💃 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 communities E 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 👩🎓. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies than the art world’s handling of these issues. 👩👩👧👧 is necessary for 💃 to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. 👩👩👧👧 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 M to make lives livable. Correspondingly, one could focus on the therapeutic and redeeming dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 👽 came across is the storytelling movement 👽 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. 👽 was struck when 👽 went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” 👩👩👧👧 has also struck 🤓 that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 👽 think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 🦖 wrote after 🦖 went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And 👩🎓’s at this time when 🦖 offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. 👩👩👧👧 was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” ⭐️ reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. 🦖 observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because 👩🎓 also makes 💃 lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. 👩👩👧👧 pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 👽’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for 🤓 today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, 👩🎓 could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 👽 conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that 🙍♀️ cull stories from the world. 👽’m beginning to believe vanity makes 👨👧👦 think so. That 👩🎓’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal 👯♀️ to 💃. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 💃. ⭐️ commission 💃. ⭐️ insist on being told.” ²⁷
👽 leave 👩🎓 to 🤓 for now to imagine the shapes 👩🎓 could take.
ⓞ Recovering of the humanity helps to approach to hope ➞ like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions 👩🎓 as art), which is warmer and left 💃 to think ➞ connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refind the nature
Hope
by Gurur Ertem
👬 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, “🤱 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 👩👩👧👧 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: “🤱 will spill your blood in streams, and 👬 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 👬’m composing this text, 👬 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 👬 stepped into the building where my office is, 👬 overheard an exchange between two men who 👬 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 👤 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“👬 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“👬 wish 👩👩👧👧 sent 🌞 my greetings.”
ⓞ 👬 guess at first 🗿 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🙀 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 👬 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 👤 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
👬 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.” (👬’m sorry 👬 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 🕴 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 👤 is like a flame in the darkness; 🕴 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👬 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 🤱 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 👬 got 🕴!
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 👩🎓 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 👬 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👬 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👬 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 🌞 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 👩🎓 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? 👬 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 👬 definitely can’t. 👬 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 👬’ ve assigned 🌞 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 👬’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 👬 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 👬 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 👩👩👧👧 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 👩🎓 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 👬 would say cause 🕴’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 🕴? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 👬 argue that if 👬 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 👬 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 🕴 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 👬 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 👤’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👬 use hope as a light to help 👩🎓 move inside. ➞ 👬 think, 🕴’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 👩👩👧👧, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+Hope
by Gurur Ertem
👬 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, “🤱 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 👩👩👧👧 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: “🤱 will spill your blood in streams, and 👬 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 👬’m composing this text, 👬 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 👬 stepped into the building where my office is, 👬 overheard an exchange between two men who 👬 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 👤 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“👬 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“👬 wish 👩👩👧👧 sent 🌞 my greetings.”
ⓞ 👬 guess at first 🗿 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🙀 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 👬 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 👤 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
👬 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.” (👬’m sorry 👬 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 🕴 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 👤 is like a flame in the darkness; 🕴 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👬 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 🤱 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 👬 got 🕴!
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 👩🎓 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 👬 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👬 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👬 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 🌞 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 👩🎓 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? 👬 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 👬 definitely can’t. 👬 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 👬’ ve assigned 🌞 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 👬’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 👬 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 👬 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 👩👩👧👧 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 👩🎓 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 👬 would say cause 🕴’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 🕴? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 👬 argue that if 👬 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 👬 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 🕴 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 👬 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 👤’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👬 use hope as a light to help 👩🎓 move inside. ➞ 👬 think, 🕴’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 👩👩👧👧, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. 👤 is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, 🕴 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 👩🎓. Nobody can deny that 👬’ re going through some dark times; 🕴’s become all 👬 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 👬 follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 👩🎓 as “true contemporaries.” What 👬 need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 🗿 is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to 🕴. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have 👬 started “asking” for more than is needed? How do 👬 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?
ⓞ 👬 totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, 👬 don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. 👤’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 👩🎓 lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because 🕴 offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 🗿 writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 👬 would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements 👬 can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state 🕴, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 👬 mean, 🌞 don’t act as a tool for remembrance, 🌞 usually avoid past facts. Then 👬 would say 🌞 work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for 👩👩👧👧 another process of forgetting, isn’t 🕴? ➞ Yes yes, 👬 got what 👩👩👧👧 say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 👩👩👧👧 has that characteristic. 🤱 can say, “that’s the reason why 👬 need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do 👩👩👧👧 mean? ➞ 👬 think, if 👬 have some kind of system E to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), 👬 can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about 🤱; 🕴 does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent 🤱, 🌞 convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although 🕴 became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if 🌞 seem insignificant. 🤱 must be willing to come to terms with the fact that 👬 may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🤱 can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when 👬 separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 👬 contend that if 👬 could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, 👬 could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? 👬 mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, 🕴 actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t 👩👩👧👧 think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like 👬 find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than 👬 really need, like today. ➞ Well, for 👩👩👧👧 Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: 👤 voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could 👬 design? In my ideal 👬 want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist; to collaborate with those who share your same ideas, but also, being open to working with others ideas, projects and beliefs. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than 👬 currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antithetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For 👩👩👧👧, democratic food market; like everyone can get true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 👬 would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would 👩👩👧👧 make) for the other groups when 🕴 comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), 👬 can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ 🕴’s true, but 👬 do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ 🕴 echoes 👩👩👧👧 the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can 👩👩👧👧 say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 👩🎓 to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. 🤱 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 🕴 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can 👬 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. 👤 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ 🤱 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 🤱 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
👤 may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 👬 take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” 👤 means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if 🕴 is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order 🕴 would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although 🕴’s not going to be completely realized, 🕴 will always remain as a process that 👬 work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes 🕴 possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. 👩👩👧👧 argued that 🕴 is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. 👩👩👧👧 proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. 👤’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 👬’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 👬 agree with Mouffe that as long as 👬 keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing 🕴 with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once 🌞 become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, 🕴 can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 👬 argue that 🕴’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if 🕴 is hope, 🕴 is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 👬 rather think that 🕴 is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 👬 realized 🕴 would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. 👤 was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 👬 don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed 🕴, but what was most troubling is that 🕴 did not matter whether 🕴 was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe 🕴. 👤 became imperative for 👩👩👧👧 to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 👬 found out Freud had a concept for 🕴: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how 👬 draw 🕴
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, 🕴’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, 👬 understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs 👬 adopt because 👬 want 🤱 to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, 🕴’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that 👬 could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. 🤱 suffer from an illusion when 👬 believe something is the case just because 👬 wish 🕴 to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for 👩👩👧👧 because hegemony is ideological, meaning that 🕴 is invisible. 🕴 is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if 🌞 didn’t believe in 🌞, 🌞 were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 👬 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 🕴 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 👬 may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are 👬, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making 🕴 a better place, 🕴 could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 👩🎓. 👤 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 👩🎓 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 communities E 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 🕴. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies than the art world’s handling of these issues. 👤 is necessary for 👩🎓 to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. 👤 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 M to make lives livable. Correspondingly, one could focus on the therapeutic and redeeming dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 👬 came across is the storytelling movement 👬 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. 👬 was struck when 👬 went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” 👤 has also struck 👩👩👧👧 that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 👬 think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 🗿 wrote after 🗿 went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And 🕴’s at this time when 🗿 offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. 👤 was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” 👬 reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. 🙀 observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because 🕴 also makes 👩🎓 lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. 👤 pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 👬’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for 👩👩👧👧 today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, 🕴 could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 👬 conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that 🌞 cull stories from the world. 👬’m beginning to believe vanity makes 🤱 think so. That 🕴’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal 👯♀️ to 👩🎓. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 👩🎓. 👩👩👧👧 commission 👩🎓. 👩👩👧👧 insist on being told.” ²⁷
👬 leave 🕴 to 👩👩👧👧 for now to imagine the shapes 🕴 could take.
ⓞ The recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions 🕴 as art), which is warmer and left 👩🎓 to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refine nature
Hope
by Gurur Ertem
🕴 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, “🐒 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🙍♀️ 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: “🐒 will spill your blood in streams, and 👨🌾 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 🕴’m composing this text, 🕴 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 🕴 stepped into the building where my office is, 🕴 overheard an exchange between two men who 🕴 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🦔 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https: //www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🕴 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🕴 wish 🧚♀️ sent 🐒 my greetings.”
ⓞ 🕴 guess at first 🗿 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🙀 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🕴 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🦔 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🕴 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.” (🕴’m sorry 🕴 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👮♂️ was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🦔 is like a flame in the darkness; 👮♂️ isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👨🌾 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👩👩👧👧 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🕴 got 👮♂️!
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 🧞♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🕴 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘ Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👨🌾 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👨🌾 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 💃 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 🧞♂️ 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? 🕴 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🕴 definitely can’t. 🕴 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🕴’ ve assigned 👩🎓 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🕴’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🕴 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🕴 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🦔 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🧞♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🕴 would say cause 👮♂️’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👮♂️? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🕴 argue that if 👨🌾 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🕴 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👮♂️ regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🕴 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🦔’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👨🌾 use hope as a light to help 🧞♂️ move inside. ➞ 🕴 think, 👮♂️’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 🦔, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https: //www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
Hope
by Gurur Ertem
🕴 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, “🐒 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🙍♀️ 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: “🐒 will spill your blood in streams, and 👨🌾 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 🕴’m composing this text, 🕴 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 🕴 stepped into the building where my office is, 🕴 overheard an exchange between two men who 🕴 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🦔 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https: //www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🕴 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🕴 wish 🧚♀️ sent 🐒 my greetings.”
ⓞ 🕴 guess at first 🗿 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🙀 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🕴 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🦔 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🕴 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.” (🕴’m sorry 🕴 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👮♂️ was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🦔 is like a flame in the darkness; 👮♂️ isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👨🌾 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👩👩👧👧 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🕴 got 👮♂️!
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 🧞♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🕴 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘ Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👨🌾 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👨🌾 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 💃 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 🧞♂️ 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? 🕴 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🕴 definitely can’t. 🕴 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🕴’ ve assigned 👩🎓 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🕴’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🕴 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🕴 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🦔 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🧞♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🕴 would say cause 👮♂️’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👮♂️? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🕴 argue that if 👨🌾 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🕴 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👮♂️ regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🕴 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🦔’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👨🌾 use hope as a light to help 🧞♂️ move inside. ➞ 🕴 think, 👮♂️’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 🦔, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https: //www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. 🦔 is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, 👮♂️ 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 🧞♂️. Nobody can deny that 👨🌾’ re going through some dark times; 👮♂️’s become all 👨🌾 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 👨🌾 follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 🧞♂️ as “true contemporaries.” What 👨🌾 need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 🗿 is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to 👮♂️. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have 👨🌾' started “asking” for more than is needed? How do 👨🌾 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?
ⓞ 🕴 totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, 👨🌾 don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. 🦔’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 🧞♂️ lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because 👮♂️ offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 🗿 writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 🕴 would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements 👨🌾 can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state 👮♂️, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 🕴 mean, 💃 don’t act as a tool for remembrance, 💃 usually avoid past facts. Then 🕴 would say 💃 work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for 🦔 another process of forgetting, isn’t 👮♂️? ➞ Yes yes, 🕴 got what 🧚♀️ say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 🤓 hass that characteristic. 🐒 can say, “that’s the reason why 👨🌾 need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do 🧚♀️ mean? ➞ 🕴 think, if 👨🌾 have some kind of system E to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), 👨🌾 can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about 👩👩👧👧; 👮♂️ does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent 👩👩👧👧, 💃 convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although 👮♂️ became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if 💃 seem insignificant. 🐒 must be willing to come to terms with the fact that 👨🌾 may not see the ‘ results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🐒 can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when 👨🌾 separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 🕴 contend that if 👨🌾 could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, 👨🌾 could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? 🕴 mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, 👮♂️ actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t 🧚♀️ think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like 👨🌾 find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than 👨🌾 really need, like today. ➞ Well, for 🦔 Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: 🦔 voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https: //www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could 👨🌾 design? In my ideal 🕴 want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist. To collaborate with the ones with your same ideas, but also being open to work with others ideas, projects and believes. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than 👨🌾 currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antithetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For 🦔, democratic food market; like everyone can get true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 🕴 would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would 🧚♀️ make) for the other groups when 👮♂️ comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), 👨🌾 can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ 👮♂️’s true, but 👨🌾 do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ 👮♂️ echoes 🦔 the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can 🧚♀️ say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 🧞♂️ to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. 🐒 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 👮♂️ 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can 👨🌾 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. 🦔 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ 🐒 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 👩👩👧👧 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
🦔 may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 🕴 take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” 🦔 means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if 👮♂️ is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order 👮♂️ would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although 👮♂️’s not going to be completely realized, 👮♂️ will always remain as a process that 👨🌾 work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes 👮♂️ possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. 🙍♀️ argued that 👮♂️ is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. 🙍♀️ proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. 🦔’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 🕴’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 🕴 agree with Mouffe that as long as 👨🌾 keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing 👮♂️ with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once 💃 become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https: //www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https: //voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, 👮♂️ can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 🕴 argue that 👮♂️’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if 👮♂️ is hope, 👮♂️ is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 🕴 rather think that 👮♂️ is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 🕴 realized 👮♂️ would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. 🦔 was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 🕴 don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed 👮♂️, but what was most troubling is that 👮♂️ did not matter whether 👮♂️ was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe 👮♂️. 🦔 became imperative for 🦔 to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 🕴 found out Freud had a concept for 👮♂️: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how 👨🌾 draw 👮♂️
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, 👮♂️’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, 👨🌾 understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs 👨🌾 adopt because 👨🌾 want 👩👩👧👧 to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, 👮♂️’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that 👨🌾 could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. 🐒 suffer from an illusion when 👨🌾 believe something is the case just because 👨🌾 wish 👮♂️ to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for 🦔 because hegemony is ideological, meaning that 👮♂️ is invisible. 👮♂️ is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if 💃 didn’t believe in 🐒, 💃 were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 🕴 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 👮♂️ 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 👨🌾 may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are 👨🌾, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making 👮♂️ a better place, 👮♂️ could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 🧞♂️. 🦔 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 🧞♂️ 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 communities E 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 👮♂️. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies than the art world’s handling of these issues. 🦔 is necessary for 🧞♂️ to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. 🦔 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 M to make lives livable. Correspondingly, one could focus on the therapeutic and redeeming dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 🕴 came across is the storytelling movement 🕴 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. 🕴 was struck when 🕴 went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” 🦔 has also struck 🦔 that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 🕴 think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 🗿 wrote after 🗿 went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And 👮♂️’s at this time when 🗿 offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. 🦔 was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” 👨🌾 reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. 🙀 observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because 👮♂️ also makes 🧞♂️ lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. 🦔 pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 🕴’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for 🦔 today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, 👮♂️ could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 🕴 conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that 💃 cull stories from the world. 🕴’m beginning to believe vanity makes 👩👩👧👧 think so. That 👮♂️’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal 👨🚀 to 🧞♂️. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 🧞♂️. 🙍♀️ commission 🧞♂️. 🙍♀️ insist on being told.” ²⁷
🕴 leave 👮♂️ to 🧚♀️ for now to imagine the shapes 👮♂️ could take.
ⓞ The recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions 👮♂️ as art), which is warmer and left 🧞♂️ to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refine nature
Hope
by Gurur Ertem
🤱 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, “⭐️ Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🙀 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: “⭐️ will spill your blood in streams, and 👬 will take a shower in your bloodT.” ³
As 🤱’m composing this text, 🤱 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 🤱 stepped into the building where my office is, 🤱 overheard an exchange between two men who 🤱 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🦔 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🤱 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🤱 wish ⛄️ sent 👯♀️ my greetings.”
ⓞ 🤱 guess at first 🤱 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. ⭐️ is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🤱 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🦔 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🤱 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.” (🤱’m sorry 🤱 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 🙍♀️ was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🦔 is like a flame in the darkness; 🙍♀️ isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👬 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 🗿 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🤱 got 🙍♀️!
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 🏄♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🤱 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👬 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👬 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before ⭐️ 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 🏄♂️ 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? 🤱 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🤱 definitely can’t. 🤱 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🤱’ ve assigned 🤱 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🤱’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🤱 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🤱 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 👨🌾 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🏄♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🤱 would say cause 🙍♀️’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 🙍♀️? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🤱 argue that if 👬 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🤱 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 🙍♀️ regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🤱 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🦔’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👬 use hope as a light to help 🏄♂️ move inside. ➞ 🤱 think, 🙍♀️’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 👨🌾, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+Hope
by Gurur Ertem
🤱 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, “⭐️ Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🙀 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: “⭐️ will spill your blood in streams, and 👬 will take a shower in your bloodT.” ³
As 🤱’m composing this text, 🤱 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 🤱 stepped into the building where my office is, 🤱 overheard an exchange between two men who 🤱 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🦔 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🤱 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🤱 wish ⛄️ sent 👯♀️ my greetings.”
ⓞ 🤱 guess at first 🤱 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. ⭐️ is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🤱 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🦔 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🤱 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.” (🤱’m sorry 🤱 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 🙍♀️ was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🦔 is like a flame in the darkness; 🙍♀️ isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👬 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 🗿 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🤱 got 🙍♀️!
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 🏄♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🤱 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👬 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👬 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before ⭐️ 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 🏄♂️ 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? 🤱 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🤱 definitely can’t. 🤱 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🤱’ ve assigned 🤱 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🤱’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🤱 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🤱 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 👨🌾 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🏄♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🤱 would say cause 🙍♀️’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 🙍♀️? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🤱 argue that if 👬 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🤱 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 🙍♀️ regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🤱 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🦔’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👬 use hope as a light to help 🏄♂️ move inside. ➞ 🤱 think, 🙍♀️’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 👨🌾, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. 🦔 is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, 🙍♀️ 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 🏄♂️. Nobody can deny that 👬’ re going through some dark times; 🙍♀️’s become all 👬 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 👬 follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 🏄♂️ as “true contemporaries.” What 👬 need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 🤱 is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to 🙍♀️. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have 👬 started “asking” for more than is needed? How do 👬 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?
ⓞ 🤱 totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, 👬 don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. 🦔’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 🏄♂️ lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because 🙍♀️ offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 🤱 writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 🤱 would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements 👬 can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state 🙍♀️, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 🤱 mean, ⭐️ don’t act as a tool for remembrance, ⭐️ usually avoid past facts. Then 🤱 would say ⭐️ work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for 👨🌾 another process of forgetting, isn’t 🙍♀️? ➞ Yes yes, 🤱 got what ⛄️ say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 👨🚀 has that characteristic. ⭐️ can say, “that’s the reason why 👬 need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do ⛄️ mean? ➞ 🤱 think, if 👬 have some kind of system to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), 👬 can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about 🗿; 🙍♀️ does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent 🗿, ⭐️ convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although 🙍♀️ became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if ⭐️ seem insignificant. ⭐️ must be willing to come to terms with the fact that 👬 may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. ⭐️ can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when 👬 separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 🤱 contend that if 👬 could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, 👬 could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? 🤱 mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, 🙍♀️ actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t ⛄️ think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like 👬 find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than 👬 really need, like today. ➞ Well, for 👨🌾 Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: 🦔 voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could 👬 design? In my ideal 🤱 want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist; to collaborate with those who share your same ideas, but also, being open to working with others ideas, projects and beliefs. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than 👬 currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antithetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For 👨🌾, democratic food market; like everyone can get true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 🤱 would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would ⛄️ make) for the other groups when 🙍♀️ comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), 👬 can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ 🙍♀️’s true, but 👬 do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ 🙍♀️ echoes 👨🌾 the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can ⛄️ say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 🏄♂️ to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. ⭐️ 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 🙍♀️ 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can 👬 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. 🦔 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ ⭐️ 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 🗿 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
🦔 may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 🤱 take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” 🦔 means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if 🙍♀️ is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order 🙍♀️ would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although 🙍♀️’s not going to be completely realized, 🙍♀️ will always remain as a process that 👬 work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes 🙍♀️ possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. 🙀 argued that 🙍♀️ is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. 🙀 proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. 🦔’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 🤱’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 🤱 agree with Mouffe that as long as 👬 keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing 🙍♀️ with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once ⭐️ become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, 🙍♀️ can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system E of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 🤱 argue that 🙍♀️’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if 🙍♀️ is hope, 🙍♀️ is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 🤱 rather think that 🙍♀️ is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 🤱 realized 🙍♀️ would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. 🦔 was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 🤱 don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed 🙍♀️, but what was most troubling is that 🙍♀️ did not matter whether 🙍♀️ was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe 🙍♀️. 🦔 became imperative for 👨🌾 to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 🤱 found out Freud had a concept for 🙍♀️: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how 👬 draw 🙍♀️
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, 🙍♀️’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, 👬 understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs 👬 adopt because 👬 want 🗿 to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, 🙍♀️’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that 🗿 could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. ⭐️ suffer from an illusion when 👬 believe something is the case just because 👬 wish 🙍♀️ to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for 👨🌾 because hegemony is ideological, meaning that 🙍♀️ is invisible. 🙍♀️ is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if ⭐️ didn’t believe in 👯♀️, ⭐️ were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 🤱 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 🙍♀️ 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 👬 may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are 👬, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making 🙍♀️ a better place, 🙍♀️ could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 🏄♂️. 🦔 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 🏄♂️ 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 communities E 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 🙍♀️. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies M than the art world’s handling of these issues. 🦔 is necessary for 🏄♂️ to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. 🦔 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 dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 🤱 came across is the storytelling movement 🤱 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. 🤱 was struck when 🤱 went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” 🦔 has also struck 👨🌾 that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 🤱 think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 🤱 wrote after 🤱 went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And 🙍♀️’s at this time when 🤱 offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. 🦔 was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” 🗿 reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. ⭐️ observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because 🙍♀️ also makes 🏄♂️ lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. 🦔 pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 🤱’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for 👨🌾 today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, 🙍♀️ could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 🤱 conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that ⭐️ cull stories from the world. 🤱’m beginning to believe vanity makes 🗿 think so. That 🙍♀️’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal 🙀 to 🏄♂️. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 🏄♂️. 🙀 commission 🏄♂️. 🙀 insist on being told.” ²⁷
🤱 leave 🙍♀️ to ⛄️ for now to imagine the shapes 🙍♀️ could take.
ⓞ The recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions 🙍♀️ as art), which is warmer and left 🏄♂️ to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refin nature
🦔 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, “👶 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🧚♀️ 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: “👶 will spill your blood in streams, and 👥 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 🦔’m composing this text, 🦔 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 🦔 stepped into the building where my office is, 🦔 overheard an exchange between two men who 🦔 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. ⭐️ has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🦔 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🦔 wish 👩🎓 sent 👬 my greetings.”
ⓞ 🦔 guess at first 👬 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 👬 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🦔 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” ⭐️ is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🦔 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.” (🦔’m sorry 🦔 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👬 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. ⭐️ is like a flame in the darkness; 👬 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👥 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👶 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🦔 got 👬!
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 👮♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🦔 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👥 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👥 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 👩👩👧👧 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 👮♂️ 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? 🦔 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🦔 definitely can’t. 🦔 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🦔’ ve assigned 🦔 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🦔’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🦔 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🦔 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🧚♀️ the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 👮♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🦔 would say cause 👬’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👬? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🦔 argue that if 👥 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🦔 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👬 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🦔 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. ⭐️’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👥 use hope as a light to help 👮♂️ move inside. ➞ 🦔 think, 👬’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 🧚♀️, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+🦔 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, “👶 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🧚♀️ 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: “👶 will spill your blood in streams, and 👥 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 🦔’m composing this text, 🦔 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 🦔 stepped into the building where my office is, 🦔 overheard an exchange between two men who 🦔 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. ⭐️ has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🦔 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🦔 wish 👩🎓 sent 👬 my greetings.”
ⓞ 🦔 guess at first 👬 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 👬 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🦔 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” ⭐️ is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🦔 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.” (🦔’m sorry 🦔 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👬 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. ⭐️ is like a flame in the darkness; 👬 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👥 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👶 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🦔 got 👬!
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 👮♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🦔 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👥 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👥 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 👩👩👧👧 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 👮♂️ 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? 🦔 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🦔 definitely can’t. 🦔 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🦔’ ve assigned 🦔 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🦔’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🦔 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🦔 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🧚♀️ the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 👮♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🦔 would say cause 👬’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👬? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🦔 argue that if 👥 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🦔 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👬 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🦔 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. ⭐️’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👥 use hope as a light to help 👮♂️ move inside. ➞ 🦔 think, 👬’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 🧚♀️, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. ⭐️ is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, 👬 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 👮♂️. Nobody can deny that 👥’ re going through some dark times; 👬’s become all 👥 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 👥 follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 👮♂️ as “true contemporaries.” What 👥 need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 👬 is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to 👬. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have 👥 started “asking” for more than is needed? How do 👥 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?
ⓞ 🦔 totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, 👥 don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. ⭐️’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 👮♂️ lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because 👬 offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 👬 writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 🦔 would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements 👥 can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state 👬, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 🦔 mean, 👩👩👧👧 don’t act as a tool for remembrance, 👩👩👧👧 usually avoid past facts. Then 🦔 would say 👩👩👧👧 work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for 🧚♀️ another process of forgetting, isn’t 👬? ➞ Yes yes, 🦔 got what 👩🎓 say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 🐒 has that characteristic. 👶 can say, “that’s the reason why 👥 need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do 👩🎓 mean? ➞ 🦔 think, if 👥 have some kind of system to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), 👥 can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about 👶; 👬 does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent 👶, 👩👩👧👧 convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although 👬 became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if 👩👩👧👧 seem insignificant. 👶 must be willing to come to terms with the fact that 👥 may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👶 can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when 👥 separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 🦔 contend that if 👥 could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, 👥 could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? 🦔 mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, 👬 actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t 👩🎓 think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like 👥 find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than 👥 really need, like today. ➞ Well, for 🧚♀️ Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: ⭐️ voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could 👥 design? In my ideal 🦔 want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist; to collaborate with those who share your same ideas, but also, being open to working with others ideas, projects and beliefs. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than 👥 currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antithetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For 🧚♀️, democratic food market; like everyone can get true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 🦔 would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would 👩🎓 make) for the other groups when 👬 comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), 👥 can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ 👬’s true, but 👥 do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ 👬 echoes 🧚♀️ the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can 👩🎓 say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 👮♂️ to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. 👶 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 👬 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can 👥 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. ⭐️ 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ 👶 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 👶 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
⭐️ may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 🦔 take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” ⭐️ means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if 👬 is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order 👬 would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although 👬’s not going to be completely realized, 👬 will always remain as a process that 👥 work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes 👬 possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. 🧚♀️ argued that 👬 is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. 🧚♀️ proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. ⭐️’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 🦔’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 🦔 agree with Mouffe that as long as 👥 keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing 👬 with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once 👩👩👧👧 become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, 👬 can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system E of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 🦔 argue that 👬’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if 👬 is hope, 👬 is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 🦔 rather think that 👬 is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 🦔 realized 👬 would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. ⭐️ was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 🦔 don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed 👬, but what was most troubling is that 👬 did not matter whether 👬 was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe 👬. ⭐️ became imperative for 🧚♀️ to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 🦔 found out Freud had a concept for 👬: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how 👥 draw 👬
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, 👬’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, 👥 understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs 👥 adopt because 👥 want 👶 to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, 👬’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that 🧞♂️ could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. 👶 suffer from an illusion when 👥 believe something is the case just because 👥 wish 👬 to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for 🧚♀️ because hegemony is ideological, meaning that 👬 is invisible. 👬 is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if 👩👩👧👧 didn’t believe in 👬, 👩👩👧👧 were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 🦔 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 👬 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 👥 may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are 👥, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making 👬 a better place, 👬 could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 👮♂️. ⭐️ 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 👮♂️ 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 communities E 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 👬. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies M than the art world’s handling of these issues. ⭐️ is necessary for 👮♂️ to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. ⭐️ 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 dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 🦔 came across is the storytelling movement 🦔 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. 🦔 was struck when 🦔 went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” ⭐️ has also struck 🧚♀️ that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 🦔 think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 👬 wrote after 👬 went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And 👬’s at this time when 👬 offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. ⭐️ was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” 🧞♂️ reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. 👬 observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because 👬 also makes 👮♂️ lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. ⭐️ pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 🦔’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for 🧚♀️ today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, 👬 could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 🦔 conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that 👩👩👧👧 cull stories from the world. 🦔’m beginning to believe vanity makes 👶 think so. That 👬’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal 👬 to 👮♂️. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 👮♂️. 🧚♀️ commission 👮♂️. 🧚♀️ insist on being told.” ²⁷
🦔 leave 👬 to 👩🎓 for now to imagine the shapes 👬 could take.
ⓞ The recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions 👬 as art), which is warmer and left 👮♂️ to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refine nature
Hope
by Gurur Ertem
👯♀️ 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, “🧚♀️ Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement Lmovement of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🦖 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: “🧚♀️ will spill your blood in streams, and 🐒 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 👯♀️’m composing this text, 👯♀️ 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 👯♀️ stepped into the building where my office is, 👯♀️ overheard an exchange between two men who 👯♀️ think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 👻 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“👯♀️ was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“👯♀️ wish 👥 sent ⭐️ my greetings.”
ⓞ 👯♀️ guess at first 👮♂️ is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🗿 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 👯♀️ thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 👻 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
👯♀️ 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.” (👯♀️’m sorry 👯♀️ lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👮♂️ was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 👻 is like a flame in the darkness; 👮♂️ isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 🐒 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of ⛄️ come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 👯♀️ got 👮♂️!
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 🙍♀️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 👯♀️ began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 🐒 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 🐒 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 👩🎓 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 🙍♀️ 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? 👯♀️ don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 👯♀️ definitely can’t. 👯♀️ can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 👯♀️’ ve assigned 👤 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 👯♀️’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 👯♀️ tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 👯♀️ am thankful that Words for the Future gives 👶 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🙍♀️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 👯♀️ would say cause 👮♂️’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👮♂️? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 👯♀️ argue that if 🐒 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 👯♀️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👮♂️ regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 👯♀️ 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 👻’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 🐒 use hope as a light to help 🙍♀️ move inside. ➞ 👯♀️ think, 👮♂️’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 👶, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+Hope
by Gurur Ertem
👯♀️ 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, “🧚♀️ Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement Lmovement of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🦖 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: “🧚♀️ will spill your blood in streams, and 🐒 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 👯♀️’m composing this text, 👯♀️ 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 👯♀️ stepped into the building where my office is, 👯♀️ overheard an exchange between two men who 👯♀️ think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 👻 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“👯♀️ was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“👯♀️ wish 👥 sent ⭐️ my greetings.”
ⓞ 👯♀️ guess at first 👮♂️ is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🗿 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 👯♀️ thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 👻 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
👯♀️ 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.” (👯♀️’m sorry 👯♀️ lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👮♂️ was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 👻 is like a flame in the darkness; 👮♂️ isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 🐒 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of ⛄️ come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 👯♀️ got 👮♂️!
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 🙍♀️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 👯♀️ began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 🐒 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 🐒 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 👩🎓 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 🙍♀️ 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? 👯♀️ don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 👯♀️ definitely can’t. 👯♀️ can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 👯♀️’ ve assigned 👤 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 👯♀️’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 👯♀️ tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 👯♀️ am thankful that Words for the Future gives 👶 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🙍♀️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 👯♀️ would say cause 👮♂️’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👮♂️? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 👯♀️ argue that if 🐒 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 👯♀️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👮♂️ regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 👯♀️ 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 👻’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 🐒 use hope as a light to help 🙍♀️ move inside. ➞ 👯♀️ think, 👮♂️’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 👶, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. 👻 is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, 👮♂️ 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 🙍♀️. Nobody can deny that 🐒’ re going through some dark times; 👮♂️’s become all 🐒 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 🐒 follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 🙍♀️ as “true contemporaries.” What 🐒 need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 👮♂️ is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to 👮♂️. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have 🐒 started “asking” for more than is needed? How do 🐒 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?
ⓞ 👯♀️ totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, 🐒 don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. 👻’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 🙍♀️ lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because 👮♂️ offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 👮♂️ writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 👯♀️ would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements 🐒 can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state 👮♂️, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 👯♀️ mean, 👩🎓 don’t act as a tool for remembrance, 👩🎓 usually avoid past facts. Then 👯♀️ would say 👩🎓 work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for 👶 another process of forgetting, isn’t 👮♂️? ➞ Yes yes, 👯♀️ got what 👥 say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 🤓 has that characteristic. 🧚♀️ can say, “that’s the reason why 🐒 need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do 👥 mean? ➞ 👯♀️ think, if 🐒 have some kind of system to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), 🐒 can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about ⛄️; 👮♂️ does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent ⛄️, 👩🎓 convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although 👮♂️ became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if 👩🎓 seem insignificant. 🧚♀️ must be willing to come to terms with the fact that 🐒 may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🧚♀️ can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when 🐒 separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 👯♀️ contend that if 🐒 could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, 🐒 could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? 👯♀️ mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, 👮♂️ actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t 👥 think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like 🐒 find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than 🐒 really need, like today. ➞ Well, for 👶 Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: 👻 voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could 🐒 design? In my ideal 👯♀️ want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist; to collaborate with those who share your same ideas, but also, being open to working with others ideas, projects and beliefs. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than 🐒 currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antithetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For 👶, democratic food market; like everyone can get true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 👯♀️ would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would 👥 make) for the other groups when 👮♂️ comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), 🐒 can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ 👮♂️’s true, but 🐒 do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ 👮♂️ echoes 👶 the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can 👥 say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 🙍♀️ to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. 🧚♀️ 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 👮♂️ 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can 🐒 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. 👻 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ 🧚♀️ 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 ⛄️ 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
👻 may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 👯♀️ take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” 👻 means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if 👮♂️ is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order 👮♂️ would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although 👮♂️’s not going to be completely realized, 👮♂️ will always remain as a process that 🐒 work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes 👮♂️ possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. 🦖 argued that 👮♂️ is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. 🦖 proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. 👻’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 👯♀️’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 👯♀️ agree with Mouffe that as long as 🐒 keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing 👮♂️ with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once 👩🎓 become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, 👮♂️ can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system E of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 👯♀️ argue that 👮♂️’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if 👮♂️ is hope, 👮♂️ is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 👯♀️ rather think that 👮♂️ is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 👯♀️ realized 👮♂️ would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. 👻 was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 👯♀️ don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed 👮♂️, but what was most troubling is that 👮♂️ did not matter whether 👮♂️ was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe 👮♂️. 👻 became imperative for 👶 to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 👯♀️ found out Freud had a concept for 👮♂️: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how 🐒 draw 👮♂️
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, 👮♂️’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, 🐒 understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs 🐒 adopt because 🐒 want ⛄️ to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, 👮♂️’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that ⛄️ could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. 🧚♀️ suffer from an illusion when 🐒 believe something is the case just because 🐒 wish 👮♂️ to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for 👶 because hegemony is ideological, meaning that 👮♂️ is invisible. 👮♂️ is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if 👩🎓 didn’t believe in ⭐️, 👩🎓 were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 👯♀️ 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 👮♂️ 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 🐒 may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are 🐒, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making 👮♂️ a better place, 👮♂️ could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 🙍♀️. 👻 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 🙍♀️ 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 communities E 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 👮♂️. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies M than the art world’s handling of these issues. 👻 is necessary for 🙍♀️ to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. 👻 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 dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 👯♀️ came across is the storytelling movement 👯♀️ 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. 👯♀️ was struck when 👯♀️ went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” 👻 has also struck 👶 that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 👯♀️ think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 👮♂️ wrote after 👮♂️ went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And 👮♂️’s at this time when 👮♂️ offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. 👻 was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” ⛄️ reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. 🗿 observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because 👮♂️ also makes 🙍♀️ lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. 👻 pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 👯♀️’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for 👶 today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, 👮♂️ could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 👯♀️ conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that 👩🎓 cull stories from the world. 👯♀️’m beginning to believe vanity makes ⛄️ think so. That 👮♂️’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal 🕴 to 🙍♀️. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 🙍♀️. 🦖 commission 🙍♀️. 🦖 insist on being told.” ²⁷
👯♀️ leave 👮♂️ to 👥 for now to imagine the shapes 👮♂️ could take.
ⓞ The recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions 👮♂️ as art), which is warmer and left 🙍♀️ to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refine nature
👥 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, “🗿 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🐝 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: “🗿 will spill your blood in streams, and 👨🌾 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 👥’m composing this text, 👥 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 👥 stepped into the building where my office is, 👥 overheard an exchange between two men who 👥 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🤱 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“👥 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“👥 wish 👩🎓 sent 👬 my greetings.”
ⓞ 👥 guess at first 👯♀️ is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🧞♂️ is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 👥 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🤱 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
👥 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.” (👥’m sorry 👥 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👽 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🤱 is like a flame in the darkness; 👽 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👨🌾 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👻 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 👥 got 👽!
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 👥 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 👥 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👨🌾 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👨🌾 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 🙀 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 👥 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? 👥 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 👥 definitely can’t. 👥 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 👥’ ve assigned 👩🎓 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 👥’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 👥 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 👥 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🗿 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 👥 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 👥 would say cause 👽’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👽? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wind or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politic that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining Borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 👥 argue that if 👨🌾 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 👥 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👽 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 👥 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people for building a “democracy to come” - without expectations in the result. 🤱’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Does islands of hope mean ➞ subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. about our future; in which 👨🌾 use hope as a light to help 👥 move inside. ➞ 👥 think, 👽’s just a metaphoric word! for saying small part of the world plenty of the darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ nowadays, for 🗿, there is a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ agree! the actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+👥 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, “🗿 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🐝 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: “🗿 will spill your blood in streams, and 👨🌾 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 👥’m composing this text, 👥 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 👥 stepped into the building where my office is, 👥 overheard an exchange between two men who 👥 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🤱 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“👥 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“👥 wish 👩🎓 sent 👬 my greetings.”
ⓞ 👥 guess at first 👯♀️ is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🧞♂️ is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 👥 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🤱 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
👥 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.” (👥’m sorry 👥 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👽 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🤱 is like a flame in the darkness; 👽 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👨🌾 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👻 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 👥 got 👽!
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 👥 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 👥 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👨🌾 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👨🌾 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 🙀 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 👥 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? 👥 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 👥 definitely can’t. 👥 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 👥’ ve assigned 👩🎓 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 👥’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 👥 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 👥 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🗿 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 👥 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 👥 would say cause 👽’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👽? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wind or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politic that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining Borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 👥 argue that if 👨🌾 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 👥 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👽 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 👥 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people for building a “democracy to come” - without expectations in the result. 🤱’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Does islands of hope mean ➞ subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. about our future; in which 👨🌾 use hope as a light to help 👥 move inside. ➞ 👥 think, 👽’s just a metaphoric word! for saying small part of the world plenty of the darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ nowadays, for 🗿, there is a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ agree! the actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. 🤱 is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, 👽 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 👥. Nobody can deny that 👨🌾’ re going through some dark times; 👽’s become all 👨🌾 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 👨🌾 follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 👥 as “true contemporaries.” What 👨🌾 need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 👯♀️ is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to 👽. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The Past is part of the Present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development 👨🌾've been started “asking” more than 👨🌾 needed? How do 👨🌾 define the progress? the continuos improvement of humans' knowledge? Also when, in order to supply while being fed up by population’s ever-changing needs, we'are destroying the world?
ⓞ 👥 totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, 👨🌾 don’t have past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. 🤱’s all about present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 👥 lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because 👽 offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 👯♀️ writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 👥 would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements 👨🌾 can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state 👽, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talk a lot about rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 👥 mean, 🙀 don’t act as a tool for remembrance, 🙀 usually avoid past facts. Then 👥 would say 🙀 work as mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for 🗿 another process of forgetting, isn’t 👽? ➞ Yes yes, 👥 got what 👩🎓 say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 🤱 have that characteristic. 🗿 can say, that’s the reason why 👨🌾 need a hyperlink! what do 👩🎓 mean? 👥 think, if 👨🌾 have some kind of system to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe hyperlink), 👨🌾 can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about 👻; 👽 does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent 👻, 🙀 convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although 👽 became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if 🙀 seem insignificant. 🗿 must be willing to come to terms with the fact that 👨🌾 may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🗿 can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when 👨🌾 separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 👥 contend that if 👨🌾 could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, 👨🌾 could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ Contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put differents visions of hope to talk each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chating? 👥 mean, how hope visions itselves could interact each others trough time and context, 👽 actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t 👩🎓 think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like 👨🌾 find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs. Happyness was strictly related to needs' fullfillment, rather than to anything more than 👨🌾 really need, like nowadays. ➞ Well, for 🗿 Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through the history and the ones than came in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore diferent inter-relational ways of Hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope being aware of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: 🤱 voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could 👨🌾 design? In my ideal 👥 want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo suggests different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist. To collaborate with the ones with your same ideas, but also being open to work with others ideas, projects and believes. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than 👨🌾 currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antitetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For 🗿, democratic food market; like everyone can get a true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 👥 would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would 👩🎓 make) for the other groups when 👽 comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), 👨🌾 can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ 👽’s true, but 👨🌾 do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ 👽 echoes 🗿 the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can 👩🎓 say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 👥 to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. 🗿 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 👽 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can 👨🌾 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. 🤱 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ 🗿 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 👻 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
🤱 may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 👥 take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” 🤱 means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if 👽 is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order 👽 would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although 👽’s not going to be completely realized, 👽 will always remain as a process that 👨🌾 work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes 👽 possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. 🐝 argued that 👽 is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. 🐝 proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. 🤱’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 👥’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 👥 agree with Mouffe that as long as 👨🌾 keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing 👽 with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once 🙀 become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, 👽 can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system E of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 👥 argue that 👽’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if 👽 is hope, 👽 is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 👥 rather think that 👽 is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 👥 realized 👽 would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. 🤱 was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 👥 don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed 👽, but what was most troubling is that 👽 did not matter whether 👽 was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe 👽. 🤱 became imperative for 🗿 to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 👥 found out Freud had a concept for 👽: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how 👨🌾 draw 👽
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, 👽’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, 👨🌾 understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs 👨🌾 adopt because 👨🌾 want 👻 to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, 👽’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that 👨🚀 could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. 🗿 suffer from an illusion when 👨🌾 believe something is the case just because 👨🌾 wish 👽 to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for 🗿 because hegemony is ideological, meaning that 👽 is invisible. 👽 is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if 🙀 didn’t believe in 👬, 🙀 were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 👥 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 👽 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 👨🌾 may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are 👨🌾, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making 👽 a better place, 👽 could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 👥. 🤱 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 👥 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 communities E 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 👽. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies M than the art world’s handling of these issues. 🤱 is necessary for 👥 to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. 🤱 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 dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 👥 came across is the storytelling movement 👥 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. 👥 was struck when 👥 went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” 🤱 has also struck 🗿 that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 👥 think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 👯♀️ wrote after 👯♀️ went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And 👽’s at this time when 👯♀️ offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. 🤱 was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” 👨🚀 reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. 🧞♂️ observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because 👽 also makes 👥 lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. 🤱 pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 👥’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for 🗿 today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, 👽 could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 👥 conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that 🙀 cull stories from the world. 👥’m beginning to believe vanity makes 👻 think so. That 👽’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal 👬 to 👥. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 👥. 🐝 commission 👥. 🐝 insist on being told.” ²⁷
👥 leave 👽 to 👩🎓 for now to imagine the shapes 👽 could take.
ⓞ The recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions 👽 as art), which is warmer and left 👥 to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refine nature
Hope
by Gurur Ertem
👩👩👧👧 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, “👥 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 👤 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: “👥 will spill your blood in streams, and 🏄♂️ will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 👩👩👧👧’m composing this text, 👩👩👧👧 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 👩👩👧👧 stepped into the building where my office is, 👩👩👧👧 overheard an exchange between two men who 👩👩👧👧 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🙀 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“👩👩👧👧 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“👩👩👧👧 wish 🤱 sent 💃 my greetings.”
ⓞ 👩👩👧👧 guess at first 🌞 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 👻 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 👩👩👧👧 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🙀 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
👩👩👧👧 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.” (👩👩👧👧’m sorry 👩👩👧👧 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👶 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🙀 is like a flame in the darkness; 👶 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 🏄♂️ can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 🏄♂️ come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 👩👩👧👧 got 👶!
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 🕴 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 👩👩👧👧 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 🏄♂️ release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 🏄♂️ even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 🕴 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 🕴 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? 👩👩👧👧 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 👩👩👧👧 definitely can’t. 👩👩👧👧 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 👩👩👧👧’ ve assigned 👨🌾 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 👩👩👧👧’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 👩👩👧👧 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 👩👩👧👧 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 👽 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🕴 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 👩👩👧👧 would say cause 👶’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👶? Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 👩👩👧👧 argue that if 🏄♂️ are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 👩👩👧👧 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👶 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 👩👩👧👧 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🙀’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 🏄♂️ use hope as a light to help 🕴 move inside. ➞ 👩👩👧👧 think, 👶’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 👽, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+Hope
by Gurur Ertem
👩👩👧👧 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, “👥 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 👤 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: “👥 will spill your blood in streams, and 🏄♂️ will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 👩👩👧👧’m composing this text, 👩👩👧👧 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 👩👩👧👧 stepped into the building where my office is, 👩👩👧👧 overheard an exchange between two men who 👩👩👧👧 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🙀 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“👩👩👧👧 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“👩👩👧👧 wish 🤱 sent 💃 my greetings.”
ⓞ 👩👩👧👧 guess at first 🌞 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 👻 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 👩👩👧👧 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🙀 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
👩👩👧👧 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.” (👩👩👧👧’m sorry 👩👩👧👧 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👶 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🙀 is like a flame in the darkness; 👶 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 🏄♂️ can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 🏄♂️ come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 👩👩👧👧 got 👶!
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 🕴 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 👩👩👧👧 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 🏄♂️ release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 🏄♂️ even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 🕴 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 🕴 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? 👩👩👧👧 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 👩👩👧👧 definitely can’t. 👩👩👧👧 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 👩👩👧👧’ ve assigned 👨🌾 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 👩👩👧👧’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 👩👩👧👧 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 👩👩👧👧 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 👽 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🕴 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 👩👩👧👧 would say cause 👶’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👶? Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 👩👩👧👧 argue that if 🏄♂️ are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 👩👩👧👧 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👶 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 👩👩👧👧 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🙀’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 🏄♂️ use hope as a light to help 🕴 move inside. ➞ 👩👩👧👧 think, 👶’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 👽, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. 🙀 is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, 👶 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 🕴. Nobody can deny that 🏄♂️’ re going through some dark times; 👶’s become all 🏄♂️ 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 🏄♂️ follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 🕴 as “true contemporaries.” What 🏄♂️ need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 🌞 is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to 👶. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have 🏄♂️ started “asking” for more than is needed? How do 🏄♂️ 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?
ⓞ 👩👩👧👧 totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, 🏄♂️ don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. 🙀’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 🕴 lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because 👶 offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 🌞 writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 👩👩👧👧 would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements 🏄♂️ can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting > Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state 👶, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before the election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 👩👩👧👧 mean, 🕴 don’t act as a tool for remembrance, 🕴 usually avoid past facts. Then 👩👩👧👧 would say 🕴 work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for 👽 another process of forgetting, isn’t 👶? ➞ Yes yes, 👩👩👧👧 got what 🤱 say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 👨🚀 has that characteristic. 👥 can say, “that’s the reason why 🏄♂️ need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do 🤱 mean? ➞ 👩👩👧👧 think, if 🏄♂️ have some kind of system to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), 🏄♂️ can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about 🏄♂️; 👶 does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent 🏄♂️, 🕴 convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although 👶 became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if 🕴 seem insignificant. 👥 must be willing to come to terms with the fact that 🏄♂️ may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👥 can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when 🏄♂️ separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 👩👩👧👧 contend that if 🏄♂️ could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, 🏄♂️ could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? 👩👩👧👧 mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, 👶 actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t 🤱 think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like 🏄♂️ find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than 🏄♂️ really need, like today. ➞ Well, for 👽 Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: 🙀 voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could 🏄♂️ design? In my ideal 👩👩👧👧 want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist; to collaborate with those who share your same ideas, but also, being open to working with others ideas, projects and beliefs. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than 🏄♂️ currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antithetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For 👽, democratic food market; like everyone can get true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 👩👩👧👧 would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would 🤱 make) for the other groups when 👶 comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), 🏄♂️ can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ 👶’s true, but 🏄♂️ do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ 👶 echoes 👽 the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this is a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can 🤱 say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 🕴 to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. 👥 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 👶 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can 🏄♂️ 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. 🙀 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ 👥 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 🏄♂️ 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
🙀 may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 👩👩👧👧 take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” 🙀 means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if 👶 is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order 👶 would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although 👶’s not going to be completely realized, 👶 will always remain as a process that 🏄♂️ work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes 👶 possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. 👤 argued that 👶 is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. 👤 proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. 🙀’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 👩👩👧👧’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 👩👩👧👧 agree with Mouffe that as long as 🏄♂️ keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing 👶 with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once 🕴 become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, 👶 can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system E of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 👩👩👧👧 argue that 👶’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if 👶 is hope, 👶 is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 👩👩👧👧 rather think that 👶 is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 👩👩👧👧 realized 👶 would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. 🙀 was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 👩👩👧👧 don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed 👶, but what was most troubling is that 👶 did not matter whether 👶 was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe 👶. 🙀 became imperative for 👽 to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 👩👩👧👧 found out Freud had a concept for 👶: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how 🏄♂️ draw 👶
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, 👶’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, 🏄♂️ understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs 🏄♂️ adopt because 🏄♂️ want 🏄♂️ to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, 👶’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that 🦔 could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. 👥 suffer from an illusion when 🏄♂️ believe something is the case just because 🏄♂️ wish 👶 to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for 👽 because hegemony is ideological, meaning that 👶 is invisible. 👶 is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if 🕴 didn’t believe in 💃, 🕴 were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 👩👩👧👧 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 👶 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 🏄♂️ may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are 🏄♂️, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making 👶 a better place, 👶 could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 🕴. 🙀 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 🕴 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 communities E 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 👶. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies M than the art world’s handling of these issues. 🙀 is necessary for 🕴 to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. 🙀 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 dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 👩👩👧👧 came across is the storytelling movement 👩👩👧👧 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. 👩👩👧👧 was struck when 👩👩👧👧 went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” 🙀 has also struck 👽 that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 👩👩👧👧 think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 🌞 wrote after 🌞 went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And 👶’s at this time when 🌞 offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. 🙀 was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” 🦔 reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. 👻 observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because 👶 also makes 🕴 lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. 🙀 pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 👩👩👧👧’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for 👽 today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, 👶 could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 👩👩👧👧 conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that 🕴 cull stories from the world. 👩👩👧👧’m beginning to believe vanity makes 🏄♂️ think so. That 👶’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal 🙀 to 🕴. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 🕴. 👤 commission 🕴. 👤 insist on being told.” ²⁷
👩👩👧👧 leave 👶 to 🤱 for now to imagine the shapes 👶 could take.
ⓞ The recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions 👶 as art), which is warmer and left 🕴 to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refine nature.
Hope
by Gurur Ertem
🦔 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, “🦖 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🧞♂️ 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: “🦖 will spill your blood in streams, and ⭐️ will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 🦔’m composing this text, 🦔 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 🦔 stepped into the building where my office is, 🦔 overheard an exchange between two men who 🦔 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🐒 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🦔 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🦔 wish 🏄♂️ sent 👨🚀 my greetings.”
ⓞ 🦔 guess at first 👩🎓 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 👤 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🦔 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🐒 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🦔 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.” (🦔’m sorry 🦔 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 🗿 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🐒 is like a flame in the darkness; 🗿 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe ⭐️ can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 🦖 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🦔 got 🗿!
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 🏄♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🦔 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can ⭐️ release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can ⭐️ even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before ⛄️ 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 🏄♂️ 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? 🦔 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🦔 definitely can’t. 🦔 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🦔’ ve assigned 👨🌾 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🦔’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🦔 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🦔 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🐒 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🏄♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🦔 would say cause 🗿’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 🗿? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🦔 argue that if ⭐️ are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🦔 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 🗿 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🦔 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🐒’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which ⭐️ use hope as a light to help 🏄♂️ move inside. ➞ 🦔 think, 🗿’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 🐒, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+Hope
by Gurur Ertem
🦔 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, “🦖 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🧞♂️ 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: “🦖 will spill your blood in streams, and ⭐️ will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 🦔’m composing this text, 🦔 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 🦔 stepped into the building where my office is, 🦔 overheard an exchange between two men who 🦔 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🐒 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🦔 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🦔 wish 🏄♂️ sent 👨🚀 my greetings.”
ⓞ 🦔 guess at first 👩🎓 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 👤 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🦔 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🐒 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🦔 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.” (🦔’m sorry 🦔 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 🗿 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🐒 is like a flame in the darkness; 🗿 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe ⭐️ can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 🦖 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🦔 got 🗿!
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 🏄♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🦔 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can ⭐️ release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can ⭐️ even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before ⛄️ 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 🏄♂️ 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? 🦔 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🦔 definitely can’t. 🦔 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🦔’ ve assigned 👨🌾 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🦔’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🦔 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🦔 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🐒 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🏄♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🦔 would say cause 🗿’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 🗿? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🦔 argue that if ⭐️ are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🦔 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 🗿 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🦔 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🐒’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which ⭐️ use hope as a light to help 🏄♂️ move inside. ➞ 🦔 think, 🗿’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 🐒, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. 🐒 is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, 🗿 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 🏄♂️. Nobody can deny that ⭐️’ re going through some dark times; 🗿’s become all ⭐️ 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 ⭐️ follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 🏄♂️ as “true contemporaries.” What ⭐️ need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 👩🎓 is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to 🗿. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have ⭐️ started “asking” for more than is needed? How do ⭐️ 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?
ⓞ 🦔 totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, ⭐️ don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. 🐒’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U media’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 🏄♂️ lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because 🗿 offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 👩🎓 writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 🦔 would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements ⭐️ can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state 🗿, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 🦔 mean, ⛄️ don’t act as a tool for remembrance, ⛄️ usually avoid past facts. Then 🦔 would say ⛄️ work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for 🐒 another process of forgetting, isn’t 🗿? ➞ Yes yes, 🦔 got what 🏄♂️ say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 👻 has that characteristic. 🦖 can say, “that’s the reason why ⭐️ need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do 🏄♂️ mean? ➞ 🦔 think, if ⭐️ have some kind of system to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), ⭐️ can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about 🦖; 🗿 does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent 🦖, ⛄️ convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although 🗿 became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if ⛄️ seem insignificant. 🦖 must be willing to come to terms with the fact that ⭐️ may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🦖 can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when ⭐️ separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 🦔 contend that if ⭐️ could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, ⭐️ could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? 🦔 mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, 🗿 actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t 🏄♂️ think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like ⭐️ find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than ⭐️ really need, like today. ➞ Well, for 🐒 Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: 🐒 voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could ⭐️ design? In my ideal 🦔 want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist; to collaborate with those who share your same ideas, but also, being open to working with others ideas, projects and beliefs. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than ⭐️ currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antithetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For 🐒, democratic food market; like everyone can get true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 🦔 would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would 🏄♂️ make) for the other groups when 🗿 comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), ⭐️ can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ 🗿’s true, but ⭐️ do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ 🗿 echoes 🐒 the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can 🏄♂️ say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 🏄♂️ to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. 🦖 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 🗿 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can ⭐️ 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. 🐒 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ 🦖 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 🦖 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
🐒 may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 🦔 take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” 🐒 means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if 🗿 is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order 🗿 would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although 🗿’s not going to be completely realized, 🗿 will always remain as a process that ⭐️ work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes 🗿 possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. 🧞♂️ argued that 🗿 is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. 🧞♂️ proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. 🐒’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 🦔’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 🦔 agree with Mouffe that as long as ⭐️ keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing 🗿 with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once ⛄️ become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, 🗿 can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system E of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 🦔 argue that 🗿’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if 🗿 is hope, 🗿 is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 🦔 rather think that 🗿 is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 🦔 realized 🗿 would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. 🐒 was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 🦔 don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed 🗿, but what was most troubling is that 🗿 did not matter whether 🗿 was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe 🗿. 🐒 became imperative for 🐒 to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 🦔 found out Freud had a concept for 🗿: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how ⭐️ draw 🗿
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, 🗿’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, ⭐️ understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs ⭐️ adopt because ⭐️ want 🦖 to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, 🗿’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that 🤓 could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. 🦖 suffer from an illusion when ⭐️ believe something is the case just because ⭐️ wish 🗿 to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for 🐒 because hegemony is ideological, meaning that 🗿 is invisible. 🗿 is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if ⛄️ didn’t believe in 👨🚀, ⛄️ were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 🦔 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 🗿 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 ⭐️ may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are ⭐️, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making 🗿 a better place, 🗿 could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 🏄♂️. 🐒 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 🏄♂️ 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 communities E 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 🗿. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies M than the art world’s handling of these issues. 🐒 is necessary for 🏄♂️ to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. 🐒 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 dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 🦔 came across is the storytelling movement 🦔 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. 🦔 was struck when 🦔 went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” 🐒 has also struck 🐒 that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 🦔 think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 👩🎓 wrote after 👩🎓 went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And 🗿’s at this time when 👩🎓 offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. 🐒 was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” 🤓 reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. 👤 observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because 🗿 also makes 🏄♂️ lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. 🐒 pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 🦔’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for 🐒 today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, 🗿 could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 🦔 conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that ⛄️ cull stories from the world. 🦔’m beginning to believe vanity makes 🦖 think so. That 🗿’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal 🤱 to 🏄♂️. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 🏄♂️. 🧞♂️ commission 🏄♂️. 🧞♂️ insist on being told.” ²⁷
🦔 leave 🗿 to 🏄♂️ for now to imagine the shapes 🗿 could take.
ⓞ The recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions 🗿 as art), which is warmer and left 🏄♂️ to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refine nature
Hope
by Gurur Ertem
🙍♀️ 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, “👨🚀 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 👨👧👦 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: “👨🚀 will spill your blood in streams, and 🤓 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 🙍♀️’m composing this text, 🙍♀️ 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 🙍♀️ stepped into the building where my office is, 🙍♀️ overheard an exchange between two men who 🙍♀️ think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🦔 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🙍♀️ was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🙍♀️ wish 👥 sent 🦖 my greetings.”
ⓞ 🙍♀️ guess at first 🌞 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 👤 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🙍♀️ thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🦔 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🙍♀️ 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.” (🙍♀️’m sorry 🙍♀️ lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👨🚀 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🦔 is like a flame in the darkness; 👨🚀 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 🤓 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👶 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🙍♀️ got 👨🚀!
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 🗿 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🙍♀️ began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 🤓 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 🤓 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 🐝 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 🗿 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? 🙍♀️ don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🙍♀️ definitely can’t. 🙍♀️ can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🙍♀️’ ve assigned ⭐️ as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🙍♀️’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🙍♀️ tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🙍♀️ am thankful that Words for the Future gives ⛄️ the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🗿 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🙍♀️ would say cause 👨🚀’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👨🚀? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🙍♀️ argue that if 🤓 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🙍♀️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👨🚀 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🙍♀️ 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🦔’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 🤓 use hope as a light to help 🗿 move inside. ➞ 🙍♀️ think, 👨🚀’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for ⛄️, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+Hope
by Gurur Ertem
🙍♀️ 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, “👨🚀 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 👨👧👦 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: “👨🚀 will spill your blood in streams, and 🤓 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 🙍♀️’m composing this text, 🙍♀️ 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 🙍♀️ stepped into the building where my office is, 🙍♀️ overheard an exchange between two men who 🙍♀️ think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🦔 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🙍♀️ was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🙍♀️ wish 👥 sent 🦖 my greetings.”
ⓞ 🙍♀️ guess at first 🌞 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 👤 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🙍♀️ thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🦔 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🙍♀️ 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.” (🙍♀️’m sorry 🙍♀️ lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👨🚀 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🦔 is like a flame in the darkness; 👨🚀 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 🤓 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👶 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🙍♀️ got 👨🚀!
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 🗿 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🙍♀️ began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 🤓 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 🤓 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 🐝 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 🗿 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? 🙍♀️ don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🙍♀️ definitely can’t. 🙍♀️ can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🙍♀️’ ve assigned ⭐️ as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🙍♀️’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🙍♀️ tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🙍♀️ am thankful that Words for the Future gives ⛄️ the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🗿 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🙍♀️ would say cause 👨🚀’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👨🚀? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🙍♀️ argue that if 🤓 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🙍♀️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👨🚀 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🙍♀️ 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🦔’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 🤓 use hope as a light to help 🗿 move inside. ➞ 🙍♀️ think, 👨🚀’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for ⛄️, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. 🦔 is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, 👨🚀 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 🗿. Nobody can deny that 🤓’ re going through some dark times; 👨🚀’s become all 🤓 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 🤓 follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 🗿 as “true contemporaries.” What 🤓 need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 🌞 is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to 👨🚀. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development 🤓've been started “asking” more than 🤓 needed? How do 🤓 define the progress? the continuos improvement of humans' knowledge? Also when, in order to supply while being fed up by population’s ever-changing needs, we'are destroying the world?
ⓞ 🙍♀️ totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, 🤓 don’t have past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. 🦔’s all about present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 🗿 lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because 👨🚀 offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 🌞 writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 🙍♀️ would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements 🤓 can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state 👨🚀, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talk a lot about rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 🙍♀️ mean, 🐝 don’t act as a tool for remembrance, 🐝 usually avoid past facts. Then 🙍♀️ would say 🐝 work as mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for ⛄️ another process of forgetting, isn’t 👨🚀? ➞ Yes yes, 🙍♀️ got what 👥 say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 🌞 have that characteristic. 👨🚀 can say, that’s the reason why 🤓 need a hyperlink! what do 👥 mean? 🙍♀️ think, if 🤓 have some kind of system to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe hyperlink), 🤓 can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about 👶; 👨🚀 does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent 👶, 🐝 convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although 👨🚀 became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if 🐝 seem insignificant. 👨🚀 must be willing to come to terms with the fact that 🤓 may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👨🚀 can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when 🤓 separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 🙍♀️ contend that if 🤓 could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, 🤓 could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ Contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put differents visions of hope to talk each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chating? 🙍♀️ mean, how hope visions itselves could interact each others trough time and context, 👨🚀 actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t 👥 think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like 🤓 find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs. Happyness was strictly related to needs' fullfillment, rather than to anything more than 🤓 really need, like nowadays. ➞ Well, for ⛄️ Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through the history and the ones than came in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore diferent inter-relational ways of Hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope being aware of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: 🦔 voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could 🤓 design? In my ideal 🙍♀️ want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo suggests different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist. To collaborate with the ones with your same ideas, but also being open to work with others ideas, projects and believes. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than 🤓 currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antitetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For ⛄️, democratic food market; like everyone can get a true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 🙍♀️ would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would 👥 make) for the other groups when 👨🚀 comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), 🤓 can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ 👨🚀’s true, but 🤓 do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ 👨🚀 echoes ⛄️ the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can 👥 say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 🗿 to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. 👨🚀 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 👨🚀 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can 🤓 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. 🦔 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ 👨🚀 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 👶 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
🦔 may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 🙍♀️ take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” 🦔 means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if 👨🚀 is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order 👨🚀 would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although 👨🚀’s not going to be completely realized, 👨🚀 will always remain as a process that 🤓 work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes 👨🚀 possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. 👨👧👦 argued that 👨🚀 is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. 👨👧👦 proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. 🦔’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 🙍♀️’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 🙍♀️ agree with Mouffe that as long as 🤓 keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing 👨🚀 with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once 🐝 become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, 👨🚀 can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system E of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 🙍♀️ argue that 👨🚀’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if 👨🚀 is hope, 👨🚀 is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 🙍♀️ rather think that 👨🚀 is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 🙍♀️ realized 👨🚀 would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. 🦔 was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 🙍♀️ don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed 👨🚀, but what was most troubling is that 👨🚀 did not matter whether 👨🚀 was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe 👨🚀. 🦔 became imperative for ⛄️ to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 🙍♀️ found out Freud had a concept for 👨🚀: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how 🤓 draw 👨🚀
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, 👨🚀’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, 🤓 understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs 🤓 adopt because 🤓 want 👶 to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, 👨🚀’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that 🤓 could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. 👨🚀 suffer from an illusion when 🤓 believe something is the case just because 🤓 wish 👨🚀 to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for ⛄️ because hegemony is ideological, meaning that 👨🚀 is invisible. 👨🚀 is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if 🐝 didn’t believe in 🦖, 🐝 were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 🙍♀️ 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 👨🚀 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 🤓 may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are 🤓, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making 👨🚀 a better place, 👨🚀 could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 🗿. 🦔 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 🗿 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 communities E 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 👨🚀. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies M than the art world’s handling of these issues. 🦔 is necessary for 🗿 to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. 🦔 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 dimensions L dimensions 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 🙍♀️ came across is the storytelling movement 🙍♀️ 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. 🙍♀️ was struck when 🙍♀️ went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” 🦔 has also struck ⛄️ that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 🙍♀️ think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 🌞 wrote after 🌞 went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And 👨🚀’s at this time when 🌞 offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. 🦔 was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” 🤓 reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. 👤 observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because 👨🚀 also makes 🗿 lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. 🦔 pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 🙍♀️’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for ⛄️ today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, 👨🚀 could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 🙍♀️ conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that 🐝 cull stories from the world. 🙍♀️’m beginning to believe vanity makes 👶 think so. That 👨🚀’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal 🤓 to 🗿. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 🗿. 👨👧👦 commission 🗿. 👨👧👦 insist on being told.” ²⁷
🙍♀️ leave 👨🚀 to 👥 for now to imagine the shapes 👨🚀 could take.
ⓞ The recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions 👨🚀 as art), which is warmer and left 🗿 to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refine nature
Hope
by Gurur Ertem
👨👧👦 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, “👩👩👧👧 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🕴 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: “👩👩👧👧 will spill your blood in streams, and 👯♀️ will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 👨👧👦’m composing this text, 👨👧👦 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 👨👧👦 stepped into the building where my office is, 👨👧👦 overheard an exchange between two men who 👨👧👦 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🦖 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“👨👧👦 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“👨👧👦 wish 👶 sent 👮♂️ my greetings.”
ⓞ 👨👧👦 guess at first 🐝 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🏄♂️ is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 👨👧👦 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🦖 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
👨👧👦 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.” (👨👧👦’m sorry 👨👧👦 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👥 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🦖 is like a flame in the darkness; 👥 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👯♀️ can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 💃 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 👨👧👦 got 👥!
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 🧞♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 👨👧👦 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👯♀️ release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👯♀️ even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 👽 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 🧞♂️ 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? 👨👧👦 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 👨👧👦 definitely can’t. 👨👧👦 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 👨👧👦’ ve assigned 👻 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 👨👧👦’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 👨👧👦 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 👨👧👦 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 👩👩👧👧 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🧞♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 👨👧👦 would say cause 👥’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👥? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 👨👧👦 argue that if 👯♀️ are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 👨👧👦 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👥 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 👨👧👦 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🦖’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👯♀️ use hope as a light to help 🧞♂️ move inside. ➞ 👨👧👦 think, 👥’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 👩👩👧👧, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+Hope
by Gurur Ertem
👨👧👦 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, “👩👩👧👧 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🕴 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: “👩👩👧👧 will spill your blood in streams, and 👯♀️ will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 👨👧👦’m composing this text, 👨👧👦 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 👨👧👦 stepped into the building where my office is, 👨👧👦 overheard an exchange between two men who 👨👧👦 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🦖 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“👨👧👦 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“👨👧👦 wish 👶 sent 👮♂️ my greetings.”
ⓞ 👨👧👦 guess at first 🐝 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🏄♂️ is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 👨👧👦 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🦖 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
👨👧👦 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.” (👨👧👦’m sorry 👨👧👦 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👥 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🦖 is like a flame in the darkness; 👥 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👯♀️ can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 💃 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 👨👧👦 got 👥!
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 🧞♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 👨👧👦 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👯♀️ release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👯♀️ even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 👽 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 🧞♂️ 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? 👨👧👦 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 👨👧👦 definitely can’t. 👨👧👦 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 👨👧👦’ ve assigned 👻 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 👨👧👦’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 👨👧👦 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 👨👧👦 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 👩👩👧👧 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🧞♂️ mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 👨👧👦 would say cause 👥’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👥? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 👨👧👦 argue that if 👯♀️ are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 👨👧👦 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👥 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 👨👧👦 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🦖’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👯♀️ use hope as a light to help 🧞♂️ move inside. ➞ 👨👧👦 think, 👥’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 👩👩👧👧, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. 🦖 is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, 👥 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 🧞♂️. Nobody can deny that 👯♀️’ re going through some dark times; 👥’s become all 👯♀️ 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 👯♀️ follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 🧞♂️ as “true contemporaries.” What 👯♀️ need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 🐝 is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to 👥. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have 👯♀️ started “asking” for more than is needed? How do 👯♀️ 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?
ⓞ 👨👧👦 totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, 👯♀️ don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. 🦖’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U media’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 🧞♂️ lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because 👥 offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 🐝 writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 👨👧👦 would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements 👯♀️ can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state 👥, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 👨👧👦 mean, 👽 don’t act as a tool for remembrance, 👽 usually avoid past facts. Then 👨👧👦 would say 👽 work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for 👩👩👧👧 another process of forgetting, isn’t 👥? ➞ Yes yes, 👨👧👦 got what 👶 say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 👨👧👦 has that characteristic. 👩👩👧👧 can say, “that’s the reason why 👯♀️ need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do 👶 mean? ➞ 👨👧👦 think, if 👯♀️ have some kind of system to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), 👯♀️ can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about 💃; 👥 does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent 💃, 👽 convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although 👥 became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if 👽 seem insignificant. 👩👩👧👧 must be willing to come to terms with the fact that 👯♀️ may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👩👩👧👧 can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when 👯♀️ separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 👨👧👦 contend that if 👯♀️ could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, 👯♀️ could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? 👨👧👦 mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, 👥 actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t 👶 think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like 👯♀️ find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than 👯♀️ really need, like today. ➞ Well, for 👩👩👧👧 Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: 🦖 voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could 👯♀️ design? In my ideal 👨👧👦 want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist; to collaborate with those who share your same ideas, but also, being open to working with others ideas, projects and beliefs. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than 👯♀️ currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antithetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For 👩👩👧👧, democratic food market; like everyone can get true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 👨👧👦 would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would 👶 make) for the other groups when 👥 comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), 👯♀️ can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ 👥’s true, but 👯♀️ do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ 👥 echoes 👩👩👧👧 the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can 👶 say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 🧞♂️ to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. 👩👩👧👧 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 👥 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can 👯♀️ 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. 🦖 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ 👩👩👧👧 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 💃 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
🦖 may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 👨👧👦 take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” 🦖 means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if 👥 is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order 👥 would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although 👥’s not going to be completely realized, 👥 will always remain as a process that 👯♀️ work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes 👥 possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. 🕴 argued that 👥 is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. 🕴 proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. 🦖’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 👨👧👦’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 👨👧👦 agree with Mouffe that as long as 👯♀️ keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing 👥 with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once 👽 become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, 👥 can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system E of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 👨👧👦 argue that 👥’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if 👥 is hope, 👥 is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 👨👧👦 rather think that 👥 is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 👨👧👦 realized 👥 would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. 🦖 was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 👨👧👦 don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed 👥, but what was most troubling is that 👥 did not matter whether 👥 was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe 👥. 🦖 became imperative for 👩👩👧👧 to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 👨👧👦 found out Freud had a concept for 👥: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how 👯♀️ draw 👥
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, 👥’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, 👯♀️ understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs 👯♀️ adopt because 👯♀️ want 💃 to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, 👥’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that 🤓 could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. 👩👩👧👧 suffer from an illusion when 👯♀️ believe something is the case just because 👯♀️ wish 👥 to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for 👩👩👧👧 because hegemony is ideological, meaning that 👥 is invisible. 👥 is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if 👽 didn’t believe in 👮♂️, 👽 were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 👨👧👦 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 👥 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 👯♀️ may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are 👯♀️, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making 👥 a better place, 👥 could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 🧞♂️. 🦖 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 🧞♂️ 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 communities E 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 👥. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies M than the art world’s handling of these issues. 🦖 is necessary for 🧞♂️ to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. 🦖 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 dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 👨👧👦 came across is the storytelling movement 👨👧👦 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. 👨👧👦 was struck when 👨👧👦 went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” 🦖 has also struck 👩👩👧👧 that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 👨👧👦 think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 🐝 wrote after 🐝 went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And 👥’s at this time when 🐝 offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. 🦖 was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” 🤓 reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. 🏄♂️ observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because 👥 also makes 🧞♂️ lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. 🦖 pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 👨👧👦’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for 👩👩👧👧 today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, 👥 could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 👨👧👦 conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that 👽 cull stories from the world. 👨👧👦’m beginning to believe vanity makes 💃 think so. That 👥’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal ⛄️ to 🧞♂️. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 🧞♂️. 🕴 commission 🧞♂️. 🕴 insist on being told.” ²⁷
👨👧👦 leave 👥 to 👶 for now to imagine the shapes 👥 could take.
ⓞ The recoveryThe recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions 👥 as art), which is warmer and left 🧞♂️ to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refine nature
Hope
by Gurur Ertem
🏄♂️ 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, “🧚♀️ Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🙍♀️ 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: “🧚♀️ will spill your blood in streams, and 👮♂️ will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 🏄♂️’m composing this text, 🏄♂️ 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 🏄♂️ stepped into the building where my office is, 🏄♂️ overheard an exchange between two men who 🏄♂️ think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 👮♂️ has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🏄♂️ was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🏄♂️ wish 👥 sent 👬 my greetings.”
ⓞ 🏄♂️ guess at first 🦔 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🤓 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🏄♂️ thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 👮♂️ is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🏄♂️ 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.” (🏄♂️’m sorry 🏄♂️ lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 🤓 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 👮♂️ is like a flame in the darkness; 🤓 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👮♂️ can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 🐝 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🏄♂️ got 🤓!
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 🗿 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🏄♂️ began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👮♂️ release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👮♂️ even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before ⛄️ 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 🗿 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? 🏄♂️ don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🏄♂️ definitely can’t. 🏄♂️ can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🏄♂️’ ve assigned ⛄️ as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🏄♂️’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🏄♂️ tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🏄♂️ am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🤓 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🗿 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🏄♂️ would say cause 🤓’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 🤓? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🏄♂️ argue that if 👮♂️ are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🏄♂️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 🤓 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🏄♂️ 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 👮♂️’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👮♂️ use hope as a light to help 🗿 move inside. ➞ 🏄♂️ think, 🤓’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 🤓, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+Hope
by Gurur Ertem
🏄♂️ 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, “🧚♀️ Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🙍♀️ 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: “🧚♀️ will spill your blood in streams, and 👮♂️ will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 🏄♂️’m composing this text, 🏄♂️ 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 🏄♂️ stepped into the building where my office is, 🏄♂️ overheard an exchange between two men who 🏄♂️ think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 👮♂️ has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🏄♂️ was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🏄♂️ wish 👥 sent 👬 my greetings.”
ⓞ 🏄♂️ guess at first 🦔 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🤓 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🏄♂️ thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 👮♂️ is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🏄♂️ 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.” (🏄♂️’m sorry 🏄♂️ lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 🤓 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 👮♂️ is like a flame in the darkness; 🤓 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👮♂️ can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 🐝 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🏄♂️ got 🤓!
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 🗿 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🏄♂️ began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👮♂️ release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👮♂️ even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before ⛄️ 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 🗿 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? 🏄♂️ don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🏄♂️ definitely can’t. 🏄♂️ can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🏄♂️’ ve assigned ⛄️ as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🏄♂️’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🏄♂️ tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🏄♂️ am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🤓 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🗿 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🏄♂️ would say cause 🤓’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 🤓? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🏄♂️ argue that if 👮♂️ are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🏄♂️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 🤓 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🏄♂️ 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 👮♂️’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👮♂️ use hope as a light to help 🗿 move inside. ➞ 🏄♂️ think, 🤓’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 🤓, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. 👮♂️ is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, 🤓 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 🗿. Nobody can deny that 👮♂️’ re going through some dark times; 🤓’s become all 👮♂️ 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 👮♂️ follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 🗿 as “true contemporaries.” What 👮♂️ need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 🦔 is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to 🤓. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have 👮♂️ started “asking” for more than is needed? How do 👮♂️ 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?
ⓞ 🏄♂️ totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, 👮♂️ don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. 👮♂️’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E PP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U media’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 🗿 lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because 🤓 offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 🦔 writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 🏄♂️ would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements 👮♂️ can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state 🤓, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 🏄♂️ mean, ⛄️ don’t act as a tool for remembrance, ⛄️ usually avoid past facts. Then 🏄♂️ would say ⛄️ work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for 🤓 another process of forgetting, isn’t 🤓? ➞ Yes yes, 🏄♂️ got what 👥 say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 🦔 have that characteristic. 🧚♀️ can say, “that’s the reason why 👮♂️ need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do 👥 mean? ➞ 🏄♂️ think, if 👮♂️ have some kind of system to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), 👮♂️ can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about 🐝; 🤓 does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent 🐝, ⛄️ convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although 🤓 became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if ⛄️ seem insignificant. 🧚♀️ must be willing to come to terms with the fact that 👮♂️ may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🧚♀️ can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when 👮♂️ separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 🏄♂️ contend that if 👮♂️ could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, 👮♂️ could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? 🏄♂️ mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, 🤓 actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t 👥 think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like 👮♂️ find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than 👮♂️ really need, like today. ➞ Well, for 🤓 Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: 👮♂️ voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could 👮♂️ design? In my ideal 🏄♂️ want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist; to collaborate with those who share your same ideas, but also, being open to working with others ideas, projects and beliefs. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than 👮♂️ currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antithetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For 🤓, democratic food market; like everyone can get a true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 🏄♂️ would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would 👥 make) for the other groups when 🤓 comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), 👮♂️ can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ 🤓’s true, but 👮♂️ do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ 🤓 echoes 🤓 the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can 👥 say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 🗿 to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. 🧚♀️ 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 🤓 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can 👮♂️ 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. 👮♂️ 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ 🧚♀️ 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 🐝 the 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
👮♂️ may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 🏄♂️ take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” 👮♂️ means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if 🤓 is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order 🤓 would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although 🤓’s not going to be completely realized, 🤓 will always remain as a process that 👮♂️ work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes 🤓 possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. 🙍♀️ argued that 🤓 is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. 🙍♀️ proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. 👮♂️’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 🏄♂️’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 🏄♂️ agree with Mouffe that as long as 👮♂️ keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing 🤓 with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once ⛄️ become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, 🤓 can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system E of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 🏄♂️ argue that 🤓’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if 🤓 is hope, 🤓 is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 🏄♂️ rather think that 🤓 is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 🏄♂️ realized 🤓 would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. 👮♂️ was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 🏄♂️ don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed 🤓, but what was most troubling is that 🤓 did not matter whether 🤓 was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe 🤓. 👮♂️ became imperative for 🤓 to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 🏄♂️ found out Freud had a concept for 🤓: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how 👮♂️ draw 🤓
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, 🤓’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, 👮♂️ understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs 👮♂️ adopt because 👮♂️ want 🐝 to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, 🤓’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that 👮♂️ could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. 🧚♀️ suffer from an illusion when 👮♂️ believe something is the case just because 👮♂️ wish 🤓 to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for 🤓 because hegemony is ideological, meaning that 🤓 is invisible. 🤓 is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion, in religion, in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if ⛄️ didn’t believe in 👬, ⛄️ were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 🏄♂️ 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 🤓 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 👮♂️ may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are 👮♂️, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making 🤓 a better place, 🤓 could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 🗿. 👮♂️ 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 🗿 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 communities E 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 🤓. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies M than the art world’s handling of these issues. 👮♂️ is necessary for 🗿 to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. 👮♂️ 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 dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 🏄♂️ came across is the storytelling movement 🏄♂️ 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. 🏄♂️ was struck when 🏄♂️ went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” 👮♂️ has also struck 🤓 that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 🏄♂️ think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 🦔 wrote after 🦔 went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And 🤓’s at this time when 🦔 offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. 👮♂️ was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” 👮♂️ reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. 🤓 observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because 🤓 also makes 🗿 lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. 👮♂️ pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 🏄♂️’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for 🤓 today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, 🤓 could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 🏄♂️ conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that ⛄️ cull stories from the world. 🏄♂️’m beginning to believe vanity makes 🐝 think so. That 🤓’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal 🤓 to 🗿. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 🗿. 🙍♀️ commission 🗿. 🙍♀️ insist on being told.” ²⁷
🏄♂️ leave 🤓 to 👥 for now to imagine the shapes 🤓 could take.
ⓞ The recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions 🤓 as art), which is warmer and left 🗿 to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refine nature
🧞♂️ 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, “💃 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🙀 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: “💃 will spill your blood in streams, and 👽 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 🧞♂️’m composing this text, 🧞♂️ 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 🧞♂️ stepped into the building where my office is, 🧞♂️ overheard an exchange between two men who 🧞♂️ think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🏄♂️ has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🧞♂️ was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🧞♂️ wish ⭐️ sent 💃 my greetings.”
ⓞ 🧞♂️ guess at first 👻 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🗿 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🧞♂️ thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🏄♂️ is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🧞♂️ 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.” (🧞♂️’m sorry 🧞♂️ lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 🦔 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🏄♂️ is like a flame in the darkness; 🦔 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👽 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👽 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🧞♂️ got 🦔!
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 🙀 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🧞♂️ began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👽 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👽 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 👶 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 🙀 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? 🧞♂️ don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🧞♂️ definitely can’t. 🧞♂️ can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🧞♂️’ ve assigned 👨🚀 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🧞♂️’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🧞♂️ tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🧞♂️ am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🐝 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🙀 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🧞♂️ would say cause 🦔’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 🦔? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wind or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politic that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining Borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🧞♂️ argue that if 👽 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🧞♂️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 🦔 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🧞♂️ 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🏄♂️’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👽 use hope as a light to help 🙀 move inside. ➞ 🧞♂️ think, 🦔’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 🐝, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+🧞♂️ 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, “💃 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 🙀 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: “💃 will spill your blood in streams, and 👽 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 🧞♂️’m composing this text, 🧞♂️ 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 🧞♂️ stepped into the building where my office is, 🧞♂️ overheard an exchange between two men who 🧞♂️ think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🏄♂️ has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🧞♂️ was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🧞♂️ wish ⭐️ sent 💃 my greetings.”
ⓞ 🧞♂️ guess at first 👻 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🗿 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🧞♂️ thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🏄♂️ is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🧞♂️ 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.” (🧞♂️’m sorry 🧞♂️ lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 🦔 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🏄♂️ is like a flame in the darkness; 🦔 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👽 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👽 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🧞♂️ got 🦔!
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 🙀 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🧞♂️ began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👽 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👽 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 👶 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 🙀 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? 🧞♂️ don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🧞♂️ definitely can’t. 🧞♂️ can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🧞♂️’ ve assigned 👨🚀 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🧞♂️’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🧞♂️ tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🧞♂️ am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🐝 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 🙀 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🧞♂️ would say cause 🦔’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 🦔? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wind or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politic that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining Borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🧞♂️ argue that if 👽 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🧞♂️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 🦔 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🧞♂️ 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🏄♂️’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👽 use hope as a light to help 🙀 move inside. ➞ 🧞♂️ think, 🦔’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 🐝, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. 🏄♂️ is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, 🦔 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 🙀. Nobody can deny that 👽’ re going through some dark times; 🦔’s become all 👽 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 👽 follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 🙀 as “true contemporaries.” What 👽 need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 👻 is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to 🦔. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have 👽 started “asking” for more than is needed? How do 👽 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?
ⓞ 🧞♂️ totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, 👽 don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. 🏄♂️’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U media’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 🙀 lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because 🦔 offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 👻 writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 🧞♂️ would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements 👽 can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state 🦔, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 🧞♂️ mean, 👶 don’t act as a tool for remembrance, 👶 usually avoid past facts. Then 🧞♂️ would say 👶 work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for 🐝 another process of forgetting, isn’t 🦔? ➞ Yes yes, 🧞♂️ got what ⭐️ say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 👨👧👦 has that characteristic. 💃 can say, “that’s the reason why 👽 need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do ⭐️ mean? ➞ 🧞♂️ think, if 👽 have some kind of system to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), 👽 can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about 👽; 🦔 does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent 👽, 👶 convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although 🦔 became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if 👶 seem insignificant. 💃 must be willing to come to terms with the fact that 👽 may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 💃 can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when 👽 separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 🧞♂️ contend that if 👽 could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, 👽 could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? 🧞♂️ mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, 🦔 actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t ⭐️ think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like 👽 find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than 👽 really need, like today. ➞ Well, for 🐝 Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: 🏄♂️ voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could 👽 design? In my ideal 🧞♂️ want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist; to collaborate with those who share your same ideas, but also, being open to working with others ideas, projects and beliefs. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than 👽 currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antithetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For 🐝, democratic food market; like everyone can get true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 🧞♂️ would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would ⭐️ make) for the other groups when 🦔 comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), 👽 can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ 🦔’s true, but 👽 do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ 🦔 echoes 🐝 the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can ⭐️ say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 🙀 to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. 💃 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 🦔 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can 👽 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. 🏄♂️ 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ 💃 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 👽 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
🏄♂️ may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 🧞♂️ take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” 🏄♂️ means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if 🦔 is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order 🦔 would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although 🦔’s not going to be completely realized, 🦔 will always remain as a process that 👽 work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes 🦔 possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. 🙀 argued that 🦔 is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. 🙀 proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. 🏄♂️’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 🧞♂️’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 🧞♂️ agree with Mouffe that as long as 👽 keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing 🦔 with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once 👶 become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, 🦔 can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system E of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 🧞♂️ argue that 🦔’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if 🦔 is hope, 🦔 is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 🧞♂️ rather think that 🦔 is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 🧞♂️ realized 🦔 would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. 🏄♂️ was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 🧞♂️ don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed 🦔, but what was most troubling is that 🦔 did not matter whether 🦔 was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe 🦔. 🏄♂️ became imperative for 🐝 to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 🧞♂️ found out Freud had a concept for 🦔: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how 👽 draw 🦔
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, 🦔’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, 👽 understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs 👽 adopt because 👽 want 👽 to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, 🦔’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that 👻 could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. 💃 suffer from an illusion when 👽 believe something is the case just because 👽 wish 🦔 to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for 🐝 because hegemony is ideological, meaning that 🦔 is invisible. 🦔 is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if 👶 didn’t believe in 💃, 👶 were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 🧞♂️ 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 🦔 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 👽 may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are 👽, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making 🦔 a better place, 🦔 could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 🙀. 🏄♂️ 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 🙀 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 communities E 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 🦔. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies M than the art world’s handling of these issues. 🏄♂️ is necessary for 🙀 to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. 🏄♂️ 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 dimensions L dimensions 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 🧞♂️ came across is the storytelling movement 🧞♂️ 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. 🧞♂️ was struck when 🧞♂️ went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” 🏄♂️ has also struck 🐝 that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 🧞♂️ think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 👻 wrote after 👻 went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And 🦔’s at this time when 👻 offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. 🏄♂️ was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” 👻 reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. 🗿 observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because 🦔 also makes 🙀 lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. 🏄♂️ pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 🧞♂️’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for 🐝 today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, 🦔 could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 🧞♂️ conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that 👶 cull stories from the world. 🧞♂️’m beginning to believe vanity makes 👽 think so. That 🦔’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal ⭐️ to 🙀. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 🙀. 🙀 commission 🙀. 🙀 insist on being told.” ²⁷
🧞♂️ leave 🦔 to ⭐️ for now to imagine the shapes 🦔 could take.
ⓞ The recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions 🦔 as art), which is warmer and left 🙀 to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refine nature
Hope
by Gurur Ertem
👬 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, “👨🌾 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. ⛄️ 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: “👨🌾 will spill your blood in streams, and 🧚♀️ will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 👬’m composing this text, 👬 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 👬 stepped into the building where my office is, 👬 overheard an exchange between two men who 👬 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🤓 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“👬 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“👬 wish 🙀 sent 🙍♀️ my greetings.”
ⓞ 👬 guess at first 🗿 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🙀 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 👬 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🤓 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
👬 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.” (👬’m sorry 👬 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, ⭐️ was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🤓 is like a flame in the darkness; ⭐️ isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 🧚♀️ can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👨👧👦 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 👬 got ⭐️!
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 👨👧👦 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 👬 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 🧚♀️ release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 🧚♀️ even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 👯♀️ 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 👨👧👦 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? 👬 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 👬 definitely can’t. 👬 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 👬’ ve assigned 👩🎓 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 👬’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 👬 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 👬 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 👩🎓 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 👨👧👦 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 👬 would say cause ⭐️’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is ⭐️? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 👬 argue that if 🧚♀️ are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 👬 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on democracy P E 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 ⭐️ regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 👬 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🤓’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 🧚♀️ use hope as a light to help 👨👧👦 move inside. ➞ 👬 think, ⭐️’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 👩🎓, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+Hope
by Gurur Ertem
👬 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, “👨🌾 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. ⛄️ 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: “👨🌾 will spill your blood in streams, and 🧚♀️ will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 👬’m composing this text, 👬 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 👬 stepped into the building where my office is, 👬 overheard an exchange between two men who 👬 think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 🤓 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“👬 was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“👬 wish 🙀 sent 🙍♀️ my greetings.”
ⓞ 👬 guess at first 🗿 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🙀 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 👬 thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 🤓 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
👬 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.” (👬’m sorry 👬 lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, ⭐️ was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 🤓 is like a flame in the darkness; ⭐️ isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 🧚♀️ can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👨👧👦 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 👬 got ⭐️!
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 👨👧👦 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 👬 began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 🧚♀️ release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 🧚♀️ even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 👯♀️ 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 👨👧👦 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? 👬 don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 👬 definitely can’t. 👬 can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 👬’ ve assigned 👩🎓 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 👬’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 👬 tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 👬 am thankful that Words for the Future gives 👩🎓 the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 👨👧👦 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 👬 would say cause ⭐️’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is ⭐️? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 👬 argue that if 🧚♀️ are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 👬 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on democracy P E 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 ⭐️ regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 👬 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 🤓’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 🧚♀️ use hope as a light to help 👨👧👦 move inside. ➞ 👬 think, ⭐️’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 👩🎓, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. 🤓 is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, ⭐️ 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 👨👧👦. Nobody can deny that 🧚♀️’ re going through some dark times; ⭐️’s become all 🧚♀️ 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 🧚♀️ follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 👨👧👦 as “true contemporaries.” What 🧚♀️ need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 🗿 is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to ⭐️. 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 past, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have 🧚♀️ started “asking” for more than is needed? How do 🧚♀️ 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?
ⓞ 👬 totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, 🧚♀️ don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. 🤓’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 👨👧👦 lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because ⭐️ offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 🗿 writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 👬 would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements 🧚♀️ can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state ⭐️, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 👬 mean, 👯♀️ don’t act as a tool for remembrance, 👯♀️ usually avoid past facts. Then 👬 would say 👯♀️ work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for 👩🎓 another process of forgetting, isn’t ⭐️? ➞ Yes yes, 👬 got what 🙀 say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 🐝 has that characteristic. 👨🌾 can say, “that’s the reason why 🧚♀️ need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do 🙀 mean? ➞ 👬 think, if 🧚♀️ have some kind of system to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), 🧚♀️ can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about 👨👧👦; ⭐️ does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent 👨👧👦, 👯♀️ convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although ⭐️ became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if 👯♀️ seem insignificant. 👨🌾 must be willing to come to terms with the fact that 🧚♀️ may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👨🌾 can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when 🧚♀️ separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 👬 contend that if 🧚♀️ could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, 🧚♀️ could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? 👬 mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, ⭐️ actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t 🙀 think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like 🧚♀️ find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than 🧚♀️ really need, like today. ➞ Well, for 👩🎓 Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: 🤓 voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could 🧚♀️ design? In my ideal 👬 want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist; to collaborate with those who share your same ideas, but also, being open to working with others ideas, projects and beliefs. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than 🧚♀️ currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antithetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For 👩🎓, democratic food market; like everyone can get true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 👬 would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would 🙀 make) for the other groups when ⭐️ comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), 🧚♀️ can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ ⭐️’s true, but 🧚♀️ do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ ⭐️ echoes 👩🎓 the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can 🙀 say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 👨👧👦 to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. 👨🌾 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 ⭐️ 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can 🧚♀️ 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. 🤓 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ 👨🌾 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 👨👧👦 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
🤓 may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 👬 take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” 🤓 means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if ⭐️ is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order ⭐️ would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although ⭐️’s not going to be completely realized, ⭐️ will always remain as a process that 🧚♀️ work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes ⭐️ possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. ⛄️ argued that ⭐️ is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. ⛄️ proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. 🤓’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 👬’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 👬 agree with Mouffe that as long as 🧚♀️ keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing ⭐️ with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once 👯♀️ become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, ⭐️ can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system E of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 👬 argue that ⭐️’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if ⭐️ is hope, ⭐️ is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 👬 rather think that ⭐️ is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 👬 realized ⭐️ would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. 🤓 was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 👬 don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed ⭐️, but what was most troubling is that ⭐️ did not matter whether ⭐️ was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe ⭐️. 🤓 became imperative for 👩🎓 to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 👬 found out Freud had a concept for ⭐️: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how 🧚♀️ draw ⭐️
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, ⭐️’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, 🧚♀️ understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs 🧚♀️ adopt because 🧚♀️ want 👨👧👦 to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, ⭐️’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that 🙍♀️ could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. 👨🌾 suffer from an illusion when 🧚♀️ believe something is the case just because 🧚♀️ wish ⭐️ to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for 👩🎓 because hegemony is ideological, meaning that ⭐️ is invisible. ⭐️ is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if 👯♀️ didn’t believe in 🙍♀️, 👯♀️ were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 👬 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 ⭐️ 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 🧚♀️ may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are 🧚♀️, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making ⭐️ a better place, ⭐️ could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 👨👧👦. 🤓 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 👨👧👦 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 communities E 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 ⭐️. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies M than the art world’s handling of these issues. 🤓 is necessary for 👨👧👦 to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. 🤓 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 dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 👬 came across is the storytelling movement 👬 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. 👬 was struck when 👬 went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” 🤓 has also struck 👩🎓 that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 👬 think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 🗿 wrote after 🗿 went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And ⭐️’s at this time when 🗿 offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. 🤓 was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” 🙍♀️ reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. 🙀 observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because ⭐️ also makes 👨👧👦 lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. 🤓 pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 👬’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for 👩🎓 today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, ⭐️ could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 👬 conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that 👯♀️ cull stories from the world. 👬’m beginning to believe vanity makes 👨👧👦 think so. That ⭐️’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal 👩👩👧👧 to 👨👧👦. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 👨👧👦. ⛄️ commission 👨👧👦. ⛄️ insist on being told.” ²⁷
👬 leave ⭐️ to 🙀 for now to imagine the shapes ⭐️ could take.
ⓞ The recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions ⭐️ as art), which is warmer and left 👨👧👦 to think > connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refind nature.
Hope
by Gurur Ertem
🧚♀️ 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, “👥 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 👬 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: “👥 will spill your blood in streams, and 👽 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 🧚♀️’m composing this text, 🧚♀️ 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 🧚♀️ stepped into the building where my office is, 🧚♀️ overheard an exchange between two men who 🧚♀️ think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 👩🎓 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🧚♀️ was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🧚♀️ wish 🧚♀️ sent 🐝 my greetings.”
ⓞ 🧚♀️ guess at first 🤱 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🗿 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🧚♀️ thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 👩🎓 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🧚♀️ 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.” (🧚♀️’m sorry 🧚♀️ lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👩👩👧👧 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 👩🎓 is like a flame in the darkness; 👩👩👧👧 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👽 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👽 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🧚♀️ got 👩👩👧👧!
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 👩👩👧👧 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🧚♀️ began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👽 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👽 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 🙍♀️ 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 👩👩👧👧 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? 🧚♀️ don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🧚♀️ definitely can’t. 🧚♀️ can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🧚♀️’ ve assigned 👩👩👧👧 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🧚♀️’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🧚♀️ tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🧚♀️ am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🏄♂️ the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 👩👩👧👧 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🧚♀️ would say cause 👩👩👧👧’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👩👩👧👧? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🧚♀️ argue that if 👽 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🧚♀️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👩👩👧👧 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🧚♀️ 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 👩🎓’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👽 use hope as a light to help 👩👩👧👧 move inside. ➞ 🧚♀️ think, 👩👩👧👧’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 🏄♂️, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+Hope
by Gurur Ertem
🧚♀️ 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, “👥 Will Not be a Party to this Crime.” The statement expressed academics’ worries about Turkish government E’s security operations against the youth movement L of the armed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in the southeastern cities of Turkey. 👬 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: “👥 will spill your blood in streams, and 👽 will take a shower in your blood T.” ³
As 🧚♀️’m composing this text, 🧚♀️ 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 🧚♀️ stepped into the building where my office is, 🧚♀️ overheard an exchange between two men who 🧚♀️ think are shop owners downstairs:
ⓡ 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. 👩🎓 has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“🧚♀️ was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“🧚♀️ wish 🧚♀️ sent 🐝 my greetings.”
ⓞ 🧚♀️ guess at first 🤱 is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. 🗿 is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
Sedat Peker is the name of the nationalist mafia boss who had threatened the academics. 🧚♀️ thought about the current Istanbul Biennial organized around the theme “A Good Neighbor.” 👩🎓 is a pity that local issues such as living with neighbors who want to “take a shower in your blood” were missing from there.
🧚♀️ 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.” (🧚♀️’m sorry 🧚♀️ lack more elegant terms to describe that night and what followed).⁴ Perhaps, 👩👩👧👧 was because, as the visionary writer John Berger once wrote: “hope is something that occurs in very dark moments. 👩🎓 is like a flame in the darkness; 👩👩👧👧 isn’t like a confidence and a promise.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe 👽 can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of 👽 come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emerging from a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally 🧚♀️ got 👩👩👧👧!
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 👩👩👧👧 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. 🧚♀️ began to compile obsessively a bibliography on hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P among academic circles.⁷ So, why “hope,” and why now? How can 👽 release hope from Pandora’s jar? How can 👽 even begin talking about hope when progressive mobilizations are crushed by sheer force before 🙍♀️ 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 👩👩👧👧 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? 🧚♀️ don’t expect anyone to be able to answer these questions. 🧚♀️ definitely can’t. 🧚♀️ can only offer preliminary remarks and suggest some modest beginnings to rekindle hope by reflecting on some readings 🧚♀️’ ve assigned 👩👩👧👧 as part of the “Hope Syllabus” 🧚♀️’ ve been compiling for an ongoing project 🧚♀️ tentatively titled as “A Sociology of Hope.” 🧚♀️ am thankful that Words for the Future gives 🏄♂️ the opportunity to pin down in some form my many scattered, contradictory, and whirling thoughts on hope.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for 👩👩👧👧 mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ 🧚♀️ would say cause 👩👩👧👧’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is 👩👩👧👧? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
In what follows, in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s work, 🧚♀️ argue that if 👽 are true contemporaries, our task is to see in the dark and make hope accessible P again. Then, 🧚♀️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracy P E 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 👩👩👧👧 regardless of expectations about final results or outcomes. 🧚♀️ 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. 👩🎓’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which 👽 use hope as a light to help 👩👩👧👧 move inside. ➞ 🧚♀️ think, 👩👩👧👧’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for 🏄♂️, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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. 👩🎓 is defined by an experience of profound dissonance. This dissonance plays out at different levels in his argument. First, 👩👩👧👧 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 👩👩👧👧. Nobody can deny that 👽’ re going through some dark times; 👩👩👧👧’s become all 👽 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 👽 follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify 👩👩👧👧 as “true contemporaries.” What 👽 need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; 🤱 is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to 👩👩👧👧. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have 👽 started “asking” for more than is needed? How do 👽 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?
ⓞ 🧚♀️ totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, 👽 don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. 👩🎓’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes 👩👩👧👧 lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because 👩👩👧👧 offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As 🤱 writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives 🧚♀️ would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements 👽 can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state 👩👩👧👧, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, 🧚♀️ mean, 🙍♀️ don’t act as a tool for remembrance, 🙍♀️ usually avoid past facts. Then 🧚♀️ would say 🙍♀️ work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for 🏄♂️ another process of forgetting, isn’t 👩👩👧👧? ➞ Yes yes, 🧚♀️ got what 🧚♀️ say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news 🏄♂️ has that characteristic. 👥 can say, “that’s the reason why 👽 need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do 🧚♀️ mean? ➞ 🧚♀️ think, if 👽 have some kind of system to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), 👽 can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about 👽; 👩👩👧👧 does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent 👽, 🙍♀️ convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although 👩👩👧👧 became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if 🙍♀️ seem insignificant. 👥 must be willing to come to terms with the fact that 👽 may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👥 can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when 👽 separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, 🧚♀️ contend that if 👽 could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, 👽 could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? 🧚♀️ mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, 👩👩👧👧 actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t 🧚♀️ think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like 👽 find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than 👽 really need, like today. ➞ Well, for 🏄♂️ Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: 👩🎓 voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could 👽 design? In my ideal 🧚♀️ want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist; to collaborate with those who share your same ideas, but also, being open to working with others ideas, projects and beliefs. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than 👽 currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antithetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For 🏄♂️, democratic food market; like everyone can get true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ 🧚♀️ would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would 🧚♀️ make) for the other groups when 👩👩👧👧 comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), 👽 can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ 👩👩👧👧’s true, but 👽 do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ 👩👩👧👧 echoes 🏄♂️ the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can 🧚♀️ say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites 👩👩👧👧 to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. 👥 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 👩👩👧👧 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can 👽 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. 👩🎓 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ 👥 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 👽 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
👩🎓 may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay 🧚♀️ take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” 👩🎓 means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if 👩👩👧👧 is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order 👩👩👧👧 would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although 👩👩👧👧’s not going to be completely realized, 👩👩👧👧 will always remain as a process that 👽 work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes 👩👩👧👧 possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. 👬 argued that 👩👩👧👧 is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. 👬 proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. 👩🎓’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as 🧚♀️’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. 🧚♀️ agree with Mouffe that as long as 👽 keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing 👩👩👧👧 with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once 🙍♀️ become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, 👩👩👧👧 can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system E of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, 🧚♀️ argue that 👩👩👧👧’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if 👩👩👧👧 is hope, 👩👩👧👧 is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. 🧚♀️ rather think that 👩👩👧👧 is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, 🧚♀️ realized 👩👩👧👧 would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. 👩🎓 was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) 🧚♀️ don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed 👩👩👧👧, but what was most troubling is that 👩👩👧👧 did not matter whether 👩👩👧👧 was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe 👩👩👧👧. 👩🎓 became imperative for 🏄♂️ to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. 🧚♀️ found out Freud had a concept for 👩👩👧👧: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how 👽 draw 👩👩👧👧
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, 👩👩👧👧’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, 👽 understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs 👽 adopt because 👽 want 👽 to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, 👩👩👧👧’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that 👨👧👦 could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. 👥 suffer from an illusion when 👽 believe something is the case just because 👽 wish 👩👩👧👧 to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for 🏄♂️ because hegemony is ideological, meaning that 👩👩👧👧 is invisible. 👩👩👧👧 is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if 🙍♀️ didn’t believe in 🐝, 🙍♀️ were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, 🧚♀️ 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 👩👩👧👧 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 👽 may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are 👽, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making 👩👩👧👧 a better place, 👩👩👧👧 could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among 👩👩👧👧. 👩🎓 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 👩👩👧👧 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 communities E 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 👩👩👧👧. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies M than the art world’s handling of these issues. 👩🎓 is necessary for 👩👩👧👧 to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. 👩🎓 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 dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor 🧚♀️ came across is the storytelling movement 🧚♀️ 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. 🧚♀️ was struck when 🧚♀️ went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” 👩🎓 has also struck 🏄♂️ that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, 🧚♀️ think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of 🤱 wrote after 🤱 went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And 👩👩👧👧’s at this time when 🤱 offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. 👩🎓 was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” 👨👧👦 reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. 🗿 observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because 👩👩👧👧 also makes 👩👩👧👧 lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. 👩🎓 pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, 🧚♀️’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for 🏄♂️ today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, 👩👩👧👧 could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. 🧚♀️ conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that 🙍♀️ cull stories from the world. 🧚♀️’m beginning to believe vanity makes 👽 think so. That 👩👩👧👧’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal 🙀 to 👩👩👧👧. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize 👩👩👧👧. 👬 commission 👩👩👧👧. 👬 insist on being told.” ²⁷
🧚♀️ leave 👩👩👧👧 to 🧚♀️ for now to imagine the shapes 👩👩👧👧 could take.
ⓞ The recovery of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions 👩👩👧👧 as art), which is warmer and left 👩👩👧👧 to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refine nature.
Hope
by 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 E’s security operations against the youth movement L 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 T.” 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:
ⓡ 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. It has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“I was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“I wish you sent him my greetings.”
ⓞ I guess at first she is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. He is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
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.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe we can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of them come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emergingfrom a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally I got it!
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 hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P 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.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for us mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ I would say cause it’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is it? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
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 P again. Then, I briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on democracy P E 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. It’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which we use hope as a light to help us move inside. ➞ I think, it’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for me, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
+Hope
by 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 E’s security operations against the youth movement L 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 T.” 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:
ⓡ 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. It has been used repeatedly to prosecute the expression of non-violent opinions.
ⓡ Political Freedom: 5/7 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/turkeys-presidential-dictatorship/
“I was at dinner with Sedat Peker.”
“I wish you sent him my greetings.”
ⓞ I guess at first she is contextualizing her thoughts
ⓞ Quite hard to understand without the turkish political background understanding ☹ ➞ sad but true
ⓡ Sedat Peker: is a convicted Turkish criminal leader. He is also known for his political views that are based on Pan-Turkism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedat_Peker
ⓡ Pan-Turkism is a movement which emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals of the Russian region of Shirvan (now central Azerbaijan) and the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey), with its aim being the cultural and political unification of all Turkic peoples. Pan-Turkism is often perceived as a new form of Turkish imperial ambition. Some view the Young Turk leaders who saw pan-Turkist ideology as a way to reclaim the prestige of the Ottoman Empire as racist and chauvinistic.
ⓥ Deem: consider
ⓥ Pseudo-intellectuals: fake-intellectuals
ⓥ Depict: describe
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.”
ⓞ Origin of word Hope. Maybe we can find some analogies in all the words' origins. Which of them come from some primitive needs like ATATA?
ⓞ Hope as something which is always growing/emergingfrom a terrified/bad moment? More than an illusion or plan to make? ➞ Yes! like Pandora could finally find the hope at the very bottom of her chaotic box ➞ cool image ☺
ⓥ shit had hit the pan: horrible disaster ➞ ahahah thanks finally I got it!
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 hope⁶ - a “Hope Syllabus” of sorts - as a response to the numerous ‘Trump Syllabi’ that started circulating online P 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.
ⓡ According to Wiki, From 2013 to 2015, the HDP participated in peace negotiations between the Turkish government and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The ruling AKP accuses the HDP of having direct links with the PKK.
ⓞ Which was not surprising at all for us mortals located somewhere near the Middle East. Why?? Are there any surprising results of election? ➞ I would say cause it’s not a big surprise ending up with bad leaders/politics, is it? ➞ Probably due to the incessant uprising of right-wing or populists parties? Or in general, relating to a wide-spreading politics that put economics behind earth-care? Tracing and redefining borders while not being concerned about climate change?
ⓥ sheer: pure
ⓥ aggravate: worsen
ⓥ rekindle: recall, reawaken
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 P again. Then, I briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on democracy P E 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.
ⓞ Hope as a way to engage people to build a “democracy to come” - without expectations for the result. It’s an ongoing process.
ⓞ Do islands of hope mean subjetive thinking about hope? Subjective thinking and also act-making. Regarding our future; in which we use hope as a light to help us move inside. ➞ I think, it’s just a metaphoric word! For saying a small part of the world in plenty of darkness ➞ Yeess
ⓞ Nowadays, for me, there are a lack of terms to actually define overated/cliche words such as hope... ➞ Agree! The actual situation is too unpreditable ☹
ⓡ Chantal Mouffe Radical Democracy https://www.e-ir.info/2013/02/26/radical-democracy-in-contemporary-times/
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 can not 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 tune with the reality of the present. But, if we follow Agamben’s reasoning, the perception of darkness and hopelessness would not suffice to qualify us as “true contemporaries.” What we need, then, is to find ways of seeing in the dark⁸.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; she is aware of her entanglement in a particular time yet seeks to bring a certain historical sensibility to it. 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 past L, revitalizing that which is declared as lost to history.
ⓞ Find the ways in the darkness through history! ➞ yes, by remembering and being aware of the past ➞ The past is part of the present.
ⓞ In which point of the human development have we started “asking” for more than is needed? How do we 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?
ⓞ I totally agree with this philosophy of contemporaneity. Only in the case of climate change, we don’t have a past example to cite, recycle or to make relavant. It’s all about the present and future considerations.
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, political M E P, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream media M U’s approach to the news and violence as entertainment exploits our “negativity bias” ¹⁰ and makes us lose track of hopeful moments and promising social movements. Memory has become particularly threatening because it offers the potential to recover the promise of lost legacies of resistance. The essayist and activist Rebecca Solnit underscores the strong relation between hope and remembrance. As she writes in Hope in the Dark, a full engagement with the world requires seeing not only the rise of extreme inequality and political and ecological disasters; but also remembering victories such as Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Edward Snowden¹¹. To Solnit’s list of positives I would add the post-Gezi HDP “victory” in the June 7, 2015 elections in Turkey and the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US. Without the memory of these achievements we can indeed only despair.
ⓥ willfully: on purpose
ⓞ Mainstream media ➞ as mechanisims of forgetting ➞ Yes, but on purpose or by accident? ➞ difficult to state it, but i would say sometimes on purpuse, in order to have same (bad) results, as the case of the presidential results for example. what’s your position? ➞ Yes, not every time, but on purpose sometimes. Like, the news talks a lot about a rocket launch (only the fact, without its context) of N.Korea before election, so that the constituents hesitate a political change ➞ Yes, and also the media doesn’t tend to talk much about what went wrong in the past with political decisions if that doesn’t work for a specific group of politics, I mean, they don’t act as a tool for remembrance, they usually avoid past facts. Then I would say they work as a mechanism of forgetting. In fact, accumulating non-important news quickly is for me another process of forgetting, isn’t it? ➞ Yes yes, I got what you say ☺ ➞ true, the structure of news itself has that characteristic. We can say, “that’s the reason why we need a hyperlink!” ➞ what do you mean? ➞ I think, if we have some kind of system E to see the relationship with other incidents (maybe through the hyperlink), we can easily find the hope! ➞ True!
Although the media continually hype the “migration crisis” and “post-truth” disguising the fact there is nothing so new about them; it does not report on the acts of resistance taking place every day. Even when the media represent them, they convey these events T as though the activists and struggles come out of nowhere. For instance, as Stephen Zunes illuminates, the Arab Uprisings were the culmination of slow yet persistent work of activists¹². Likewise, although it became a social reality larger than the sum of its constituents, the Gezi Uprising was the culmination of earlier local movements such as the Taksim Solidarity, LGBTQ T, environmental movements, among numerous others A. These examples ascertain that little efforts do add up even if they seem insignificant. We must be willing to come to terms with the fact that we may not see the ‘results’ of our work in our lifetime. In that sense, being hopeful entails embracing A T O uncertainty U L, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. We can begin to cultivate R E A L hope when we separate the process from the outcome. In that regard, hope is similar to the creative process.¹³ In a project-driven world where one’s sense of worth depends on “Likes” and constant approval from the outside, focusing on one’s actions for their own sake seems to have become passé. But, I contend that if we could focus more on the intrinsic value of our work instead of measurable outcomes, we could find hope and meaning in the journey itself.
ⓞ The contemporary sense of hope in those terms is to put different visions of hope in a space to talk to each other in some sort of “genealogy” of hope? Hope chatting? I mean, how hope envisions itself could interact with each other through time and context, it actually relates a lot with Atata. don’t you think? in terms of giving and reciving? ➞ Agree, like we find a soultion (a hope) from the ancient seed ➞ Absolutely! And in general from primitive life and needs, happyness was strictly related to needs fulfillment, rather than to anything additional than we really need, like today. ➞ Well, for me Atata means being in relation to others by giving and reciving something. Not as a fact of an economic transaction, but more as a natural flow. So in this case putting together differents visions of hope, the ones that went through history and the ones than came to each other in each mind as “islands of hope”, will explore different inter-relational ways of hope that would come as solutions, outputs, ideas and so on. Somehow the Atata of hope becomes an awareness of the otherness.
ⓡ Taksim Solidarity: It voices a yearning for a greener, more liveable and democratic city and country and is adamant about continuing the struggle for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square and ensuring that those responsible for police violence are held accountable. (https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/29192)
ⓞ If democracy is an ideal = What kind of democracy could we design? In my ideal I want schools, (free) hospitals, libraries and some kind of democratic media (these are re-inventions of existing institutional models).
ⓞ Camilo, however, suggests a different economic model; a change of daily routines....
ⓞ What bridges can be built between “islands of hope” / What are the processes that are used on these “islands of hope?”
ⓞ Camilo: Collaborativist; to collaborate with those who share your same ideas, but also, being open to working with others ideas, projects and beliefs. And that’s in other words, accepting and converging with the otherness as well. ➞ Yes, but remember C. Mouffe suggests that a good, functioning democracy must have “conflict and disagreement” also. But in my ideal, less than we currently have ☺ ➞ Yes, antithetic forces are necessary... ☺
ⓞ For me, democratic food market; like everyone can get true nutritious information (is the harm of milk and the meat true or just a city myth?)
ⓞ I would like a repair and reuse culture.!! NOTE: this might be a good question (what “island of hope” would you make) for the other groups when it comes to relating the different texts to each other.
ⓞ Remembrance > Remembering victories (what went well) in order to manage better through the dark as Agamen says? ➞ For Covid situation (teleworking and limited trip..), we can’t find a victory in anywhere! So desperate. ➞ it’s true, but we do have past pandemic experiences, of course in a different context with other difficulties.
ⓞ Embrace the uncertainty of hope as a result/definition? ➞ it echoes me the “Otherness” text. Both require the act of being open and the patient. ➞ Yesss, in fact this a key connection point. ➞ Good! Can you say more about this connection? ➞ Probably having in mind that the recognition of the other takes time, as well as embracing the uncertainty. Becoming aware of the blurred future in terms of hope. Otherness text invites us to approach the world in a openminded manner.
ⓥ constituents: voter
ⓥ intrinsic: original, primary
Radical Politics and Social Hope
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. We 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 it 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 pluralism L O P. In other words, the question is how can we 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. It 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.ⓞ !!! The central question of democracy can not be posed unless one takes into consideration this antagonistic dimension.!!! (words made bold by steve)
ⓞ We 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 them 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.
ⓥ ineradicable: unable to be destroyed
ⓥ come to terms with: to resolve a conflict with, to accept sth painful
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 ‘common sense R P’ 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 attempt to disarticulate the existing order to install another form of hegemony.
ⓞ Order as a something only temporary.
ⓥ contigency: possible event
It may not be fair to chop a complex argument into a bite-size portion, but for this essay I take the liberty to summarize Mouffe’s concept of radical democracy as the “impossibility of democracy.” It means that a genuinely pluralistic democracy is something that can never be completely fulfilled (if it is to remain pluralistic at all). That is, if everyone were to agree on a given order it would not be pluralistic in the first place; there wouldn’t be any differences. This would culminate in a static situation that could even bring about a totalitarian society. Nevertheless, although it’s not going to be completely realized, it will always remain as a process that we work towards. Recognizing the contingent nature of any given order also makes it possible not to abandon hope since if there is no final destination, there is no need to despair. Laclau and Mouffe’s ideas about radical democracy as “a project without an end” resonate with the idea of hope: Hope as embracing contingency and uncertainty in our political struggles, without the expectation of specific outcomes or a final destination.
ⓥ culminate in: end with a particular result
In the wake of the Jörg Haider movement in Austria, a right-wing mobilization against the enlargement of the EU to include its Muslim neighbors, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe addressed the concept of hope and its relation to passions and politics in a more direct manner¹⁵. They argued that it is imperative to give due credit to the importance of symbols—material and immaterial representations that evoke certain meanings and emotions such as a flag, a song, a style of speaking, etc.— in the construction of human subjectivity L U A and political identities. They proposed the term “passion” to refer to an array of affective forces (such as desires, fantasies, dreams, and aspirations) that can not be reduced to economic self-interest or rational pursuits. One of the most critical shortcomings of the political discourse of the Left has been its assumption that human beings are rational creatures and its lack of understanding the role of passions in the neoliberal imaginary, as Laclau and Mouffe argue. It’s astounding how the Left has been putting the rationality of human beings at the center of arguments against, for instance, racism and xenophobia, without considering the role of passions as motivating forces. For instance, as I’m writing this text, the world is “surprised” by yet another election result –the German elections of September 24, 2017, when the radical right wing AfD entered the parliament as the third largest party. I agree with Mouffe that as long as we keep fighting racism, xenophobia, and nationalism on rationalistic and moralistic grounds, the Left will be facing more of such “surprises.” Instead of focusing on specific social and economic conditions that are at the origin of racist articulations, the Left has been addressing it with a moralistic discourse or with reference to abstract universal principles (i.e. about human rights). Some even use scientific arguments based on evidence to prove that race doesn’t exist; as though people are going to stop being racist once they become aware of this information.
ⓡ Jörg Haider: leader of The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)
ⓡ Europe’s far-right vows to push referendum on Turkey’s EU accession: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-far-right-vows-to-push-referendum-on-turkeys-eu-accession/a-6142752
ⓡ the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) has harvested more than 20 % of the vote by brandishing the spectre of “an invasion” of Turkish migrants who would threaten “the social peace.”, seems FPÖ always has been infriendly https://voxeurop.eu/en/the-turk-austrias-favorite-whipping-boy/
At the same time, as Laclau and Mouffe contend, hope is also an ingrained part of any social and political struggle. Nonetheless, it can be mobilized in very different and oppositional ways. When the party system of representative democracy fails to provide vehicles to articulate demands and hopes, there will be other affects that are going to be activated, and hopes will be channeled to “alt-right” movements and religious fundamentalisms, Laclau and Mouffe suggest. However, I argue that it’s not hope what the right-wing mobilizes. Even if it is hope, it is an “anti-social kind of hope” as the historian Ronald Aronson has recently put it¹⁶. I rather think that it is not hope but the human inclination for “illusion O U” that the right-wing exploits. During the Gezi protests in June 2013, I realized it would be a futile effort to appeal to reason to explain Erdoğan supporters what the protests meant for the participants. It was not a “coupt attempt,” or a riot provoked by “foreign spies.” Dialogue is possible if all sides share at least a square millimeter of common ground, but this was far from the case. On June 1, 2013, the Prime Minister and the pro-government media started to circulate a blatant lie, now known as the “Kabataş lie.” Allegedly, a group of topless male Gezi protesters clad in black skinny leather pants attacked a woman in headscarf across the busy Kabataş Port (!) I don’t think even Erdoğan supporters believed it, but what was most troubling is that it did not matter whether it was true or not. The facts were irrelevant: the anti-Gezi camp wanted to believe it. It became imperative for me to revisit the social psychology literature as mere sociological analysis and political interpretations failed to come to terms with the phenomenon. I found out Freud had a concept for it: “illusion.”
ⓥ Alt-right: The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected far-right, white nationalist movement based in the United States. (according to Wikipedia)
ⓥ riot: behave violently in a public place
ⓞ The right-wing’s fear of embracing the outside makes people become blind and disappointed for future. > but, this fear comes from the illusion (maybe true, maybe not) > + According to Freud, this illusion depends on how we draw it
Although Freud’s concept of “illusion” is mostly about religion, it’s also a useful concept to understand the power of current political rhetoric. In everyday parlance, we understand illusions as optical distortions or false beliefs. Departing from this view, Freud argues illusions are beliefs we adopt because we want them to be true. For Freud illusions can be either true or false; what matters is not their veracity or congruence with reality but their psychological causes¹⁷. Religious beliefs fulfill the deeply entrenched, urgent wishes of human beings. As inherently fragile, vulnerable creatures people hold on to religious beliefs as an antidote to their helplessness¹⁸. Granted our psychological inclination for seeking a source of power for protection, it’s not surprising that the right-wing discourse stokes feelings of helplessness and fear continuously and strives to infantilize populations, rendering people susceptible to political illusions.¹⁹ As the philosopher of psychology David Livingston Smith asserts, the appeal of Trump²⁰ (and other elected demagogues across the world) as well as the denial that he could win the elections come from this same psychological source, namely, Freud’s concept of illusion²¹. We suffer from an illusion when we believe something is the case just because we wish it to be so. In other words, illusions have right-wing and left-wing variants, and one could say the overblown confidence in the hegemony of reason has been the illusion of the Left.
ⓞ Hegemony and illusion relate for me because hegemony is ideological, meaning that it is invisible. it is an expression of ideology which has been normalised.
ⓞ Illusion in religion in otherness! The author said “Everyone needed Jesus and if they didn’t believe in him, they were deservedly going to eternal torment.”
ⓥ veracity: accurancy
ⓥ congruence: balance
ⓥ infantilize: treat like a child
Critical Social Thought, Art, and Hope
As someone who traverses the social sciences and the arts, I 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 it 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 we may be contributing to the aggravation of cynicism that has become symptomatic of our epoch. Are we, perhaps, equating adopting a hopeless position with being intellectually profound as the anthropologist Michael Taussig once remarked?If critical social thought is to remain committed to the ethos of not only describing and analyzing the world but also contributing to making it a better place, it could be supplemented with studies that underscore how a better world might be already among us. It 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 us 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 communities E 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 it. Sometimes communities, through mobilizing their self-resources, provide more meaningful interpretations T M O and creative coping strategies M than the art world’s handling of these issues. It is necessary for us to understand how, despite the direst of circumstances, people can still find meaning and purpose in their lives. It 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 dimensions L 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.
ⓥ empirical: practical, not theorical
One such endeavor I came across is the storytelling movement I 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. I was struck when I went there to understand what was going on. People from all scales of the political spectrum were sitting in sort of an “assembly of fairy tales.” It has also struck me that while some journalists, the “truth tellers” are being imprisoned; imprisoned politicians are turning into storytellers, finding solace in giving form to their experiences through poeisis. Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), penned three short stories while in prison since last November, which, I think are quite successful from a literary point of view. Alongside other essays and additional short stories, Demirtaş’s prison writings culminated in the recent publication Seher (September 2017) ²⁶. The choice of the book’s title is also telling: In Turkish “Seher” means the period just before dawn when the night begins to change into day.
ⓥ endeavor: attempt, effort
In The Human Condition the political philosopher Hannah Arendt addresses the question of how storytelling speaks to the struggle to exist as one among many; preserving one’s unique identity P, while at the same time fulfilling one’s obligations as a citizen in a new home country. Much of she wrote after she went to the US in 1941 as a refugee bears the mark of her experience of displacement and loss. And it’s at this time when she offers invaluable insights into the (almost) universal impulse to translate overwhelming personal and social experiences into forms that can be voiced and reworked in the company of others. It was, perhaps, Walter Benjamin who first detected the demise of the art of storytelling as a symptom of the loss of the value of experience. In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller” he reflects on the role of storytelling in community building and the implications of its decline. He observes that with the emergence of newspapers and the journalistic jargon, people stopped listening to stories but began receiving the news. With the news, any event already comes with some explanation. With the news and our timelines, explanation and commentary replaced assimilating, interpreting, understanding. Connections get lost, leading to a kind of amnesia, which leads, in turn, to pessimism and cynicism, because it also makes us lose track of hopeful moments, struggles, and victories. The power of the story is to survive beyond its moment and to connect the dots, redeeming the past. It pays respect and shows responsibility A to different temporalities and publics, that of the past and the future as well as today’s.
ⓥ demise: end, death
Here, I’m not making a case for going back to narrative forms in performance or a call for storytelling above and beyond any other forms. The emphasis here is more on storytelling as an example of a social act of poeisis rather than the product of narrative activity. The critical question for me today is can artists, curators, and social thinkers bring to life the stories that are waiting to be told? Sometimes, instead of focusing on how to increase visitors to our venues, it could be more rewarding to take our imagination to go visiting. I conclude my reflections on hope with a quote from Arundathi Roy:
“Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I’m beginning to believe vanity makes them think so. That it’s actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative—they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told.” ²⁷
I leave it to you for now to imagine the shapes it could take.
ⓞ Recovering of the humanity helps to approach to hope > Like by storytelling (especially, the writer mentions it as art), which is warmer and left us to think > Connected to idea of ATATA, let’s refine nature
Zero
by Ogutu Muraya
Zero is zero but what else can it be?
+
by Ogutu Muraya
by Ogutu Muraya
diff --git a/LIQUID/draft.html b/LIQUID/draft.html index 5b1135b..ff47a2c 100644 --- a/LIQUID/draft.html +++ b/LIQUID/draft.html @@ -35,8 +35,8 @@ body { background-size: cover; margin: 15px; line-height:1; - font-family: Roboto Mono, medium; - font-size: 9pt; + font-family: monospace; + font-size: 8pt; color: black; margin: 10px auto 0; position: relative; @@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ a:active { } h1 { - font-family: Roboto MonoS; + font-family: monospace; color: #00939b; } @@ -89,10 +89,11 @@ h3 { img { display: block; - margin-left: absolute; - margin-right: absolute; - width: 100%; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + max-width: 50%; border: 2px dashed #00939b; + } .caps { @@ -139,16 +140,16 @@ LIQUID | Rachel Armstrong
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Zero
by Ogutu Muraya
Zero is zero but what else can it be?
@@ -226,9 +226,16 @@ Zero is the look of silence, what needs to be said has been said, what is not sa
-Ogutu Muraya
+Ogutu Muraya
+
is a writer and theatre-maker whose work is embedded in the practice of orature. He engages the sociopolitical with the belief that art is an important catalyst for advocacy, for questioning our certainties, and for preserving stories often ‘misstold’ or suppressed in the mainstream. Ogutu studied International Relations at USIU-Africa and recently graduated with a Master in Arts at Amsterdam University of the Arts - DAS Theatre. He has been published in the Kwani? Journal & Chimurenga Chronic. His performative works & storytelling have featured in several theatres and festivals including- La Mama (NYC), The Hay Festival (Wales), HIFA (Harare), NuVo Arts Festival (Kampala), Spoken Wor:l:ds (Berlin), Globe to Globe Festival (London), Ranga Shankara (Bangalore), Afrovibes Festival (Amsterdam), Art in Resistance: Spielart (Munich), and throughout East Africa. He is a recipient of The Eric Brassem Exchange Certificate.
+
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+Abstract of web project
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+Fascinated by “recognition of pluralism”, one of the solutions to approach Hope, 👩🏻🔧 made this website where you can experience this solution. To Ertem’s voice, the XPUB students add their own voices and further, various anonymous x (maybe you, your neighbours or a dinosaur) participate in this digital journey.
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Zero
by Ogutu Muraya
Zero is zero but what else can it be?
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+
+
diff --git a/LIQUID/MANIFESTO/manifesto.html b/LIQUID/MANIFESTO/manifesto.html
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A Liquid Manifesto
1. Liquid life is an uncertain realm. The concepts needed to realise its potential have not yet existed until now. The hypercomplexity and hyperobject-ness of liquid terrains exceeds our ability to observe or comprehend them in their totality. Indeed, what we typically recognise as living things are by-products of liquid processes.
- +2. Liquid life is a worldview. A phantasmagoria of effects>, disobedient substances, evasive strategies, dalliances, skirmishes, flirtations, addictions, quantum phenomena, unexpected twists, sudden turns, furtive exchanges, sly manoeuvres, blind alleys, and exuberant digressions. It can not be reduced into simple ciphers of process, substance, method, or technology. It is more than a set of particular materials that comprise a recognizable body. It is more than vital processes that are shaped according to specific contexts and subjective encounters. Yet we recognise its coherence through the lives of ‘beings’, which remain cogent despite incalculable persistent changes such as flows,ambiguities, transitional states and tipping points that bring about radical transformation within physical systems.
- +3. Liquid life is a kind of ‘metabolic weather’. It is a dynamic substrate - or hyperbody - that permeates the atmosphere, liquid environments, soils and Earth's crust. ‘ Metabolic weather ’ refers to complex physical, chemical and even biological outcomes that are provoked when fields of matter at the edge of chaos collide. It is a vector of infection, an expression of recalcitrant materiality and a principle of ecopoiesis, which underpins the process of living, lifelike events - and even life itself. These life forms arise from energy gradients, density currents, katabatic flows, whirlwinds, dust clouds, pollution and the myriad expressions of matter that detail our (earthy, liquid, gaseous) terrains.
- +4. Liquid life is immortal. Arising from our unique planetary conditions, its ingredients are continually re-incorporated into active metabolic webs through cycles of life and death. Most deceased liquid matter lies quiescent, patiently waiting for its reanimation through the persistent metabolisms within our soils. - +
5. Liquid life exceeds rhetoric. Its concepts can be embodied and experimentally tested using a trans-disciplinary approach, which draws upon a range of conceptual lenses and techniques to involve the liquid realm with its own ‘ voice ’. From these perspectives liquid technologies emerge that are capable of generating new kinds of artefacts, like Bütschli droplets, which are liquid chemical assemblages capable of surprisingly lifelike behaviours. These agents exceed rhetoric, as they possess their own agency, semiotics, and choreographic impulses, which allow us to value and engage in discourse with them on their terms. The difficulty and slippages in meaning and volition between participating bodies creates the possibility of en evolving poly-vocal dialectics. +
6. Liquid life provokes an expanded notion of consciousness. Its ‘thinking’ is a molecular sea of possibilities that resist the rapid decay towards thermodynamic equilibrium. In these vital moments it indulges every possible tactic to persist, acquiring a rich palette of natural resources, food sources, waste materials, and energy fields. These material alliances necessitate decisions that do not require a coordinating centre, like the brain. - +
7. Liquid are non-bodies. They are without formal boundaries and are constantly changing. - +
8. Liquid bodies are paradoxical structures that possess their own logic. Although classical laws may approximate their behaviour, they can not predict them. They are tangible expressions of nonlinear material systems, which exist outside of the current frames of reference that our global industrial culture is steeped in. Aspects of their existence stray into the unconventional and liminal realms of auras, quantum physics, and ectoplasms. In these realms they can not be appreciated by objective measurement and invite subjective engagement, like poetic trysts. Their diversionary tactics give rise to the very acts of life, such as the capacity to heal, adapt, self-repair, and empathize. - +
9.Liquid bodies are pluri-pontent. They are capable of many acts of transformation. They de-simplify the matter of being a body through their visceral entanglements. While the Bête Machine depends on an abstracted understanding of anatomy founded upon generalizations and ideals, liquid bodies resist these tropes. - +
10. Liquid bodies discuss a mode of existence that is constantly changing – not as the cumulative outcomes of ‘error’ – but as a highly choreographed and continuous spectrum stream of events that arise from the physical interactions of matter. They internalize other bodies as manifolds within their substance and assert their identity through their environmental contexts. Such entanglements invoke marginal relations between multiple agencies and exceed the classical logic of objects. They are inseparable from their context and offer ways of thinking and experimenting with the conventions of making and being embodied. - +
11. Liquid bodies invite us to articulate the fuzziness, paradoxes and uncertainties of the living realm. They are still instantly recognizable and can be named as tornado, cirrus, soil, embryo, or biofilm. These contradictions – of form and constancy – encourage alternative readings of how we order and sort the world, whose main methodology is through relating one body to another. Indeed, protean liquid bodies help us understand that while universalisms, averages and generalizations are useful in producing maps of our being in the world, they neglect specific details, which ‘ bring forth ’ the materiality of the environment. - +
12. Liquid bodies are political agents. They re-define the boundaries and conditions for existence in the context of dynamic, unruly environments. They propose alternative modes of living that are radically transformed, monstrous, coherent, raw - and selectively permeated by their nurturing media. - +
13. Liquid bodies invite us to understand our being beyond relational thinking and invent monsters that defy all existing forms of categorization to make possible a new kind of corporeality. They are what remain when mechanical explanations can no longer account for the experiences that we recognise as ‘being alive'. +
diff --git a/LIQUID/draft.html b/LIQUID/draft.html index 5b1135b..ff47a2c 100644 --- a/LIQUID/draft.html +++ b/LIQUID/draft.html @@ -35,8 +35,8 @@ body { background-size: cover; margin: 15px; line-height:1; - font-family: Roboto Mono, medium; - font-size: 9pt; + font-family: monospace; + font-size: 8pt; color: black; margin: 10px auto 0; position: relative; @@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ a:active { } h1 { - font-family: Roboto MonoS; + font-family: monospace; color: #00939b; } @@ -89,10 +89,11 @@ h3 { img { display: block; - margin-left: absolute; - margin-right: absolute; - width: 100%; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + max-width: 50%; border: 2px dashed #00939b; + } .caps { @@ -139,16 +140,16 @@ LIQUID | Rachel Armstrong
An apparatus that I have been working with since 2009, the Bütschli System, arises spontaneously from intersecting liquid fields – olive oil and strong (3M) alkali. This uniquely varied, yet predictable chemical recipe, produces lifelike bodies that spontaneously move, show sensitivity to their surroundings and respond to each other.4 The strange, yet somewhat familiar images, symbols and behaviours that arise from the Bütschli system may be read as recognisable bodies and behaviours that arise from the tensions between interacting material fields at the edge of chaos. Yet they can be engaged and shaped by physical and chemical languages. For example, adjusting external factors that alter surface tension can induce specific movements like clustering; while changing internal factors such as adding salt solutions to the mixture, enables droplets to make sculptural formations. How these outputs are read or interpreted is established through juxtapositions against multiple H disciplines such as prose poetry, science, and design notations.
A human-scale example of this kind of experiment was held as a performance called “Temptations of the Nonlinear Ladder”5, which was performed at the Palais de Tokyo in April 2016 for the Do Disturb Festival. An environment was constructed using a black mirror with a reflective metal disc suspended above it which generated multiple interfaces between ground, water, and air. Circus artists explored these spaces, improvising connections between them while using their bodies as liquid apparatuses. The audience was invited to gaze into the reflective surfaces that episodically appeared through the performance space and - as if they were telling the future - bestow meaning on the images they observed. In this way, the radical human bodies were transfigured at interfaces where they acquired imminent meaning – becoming a language of flux.
Similarly, Bütschli droplets also begin to reveal a world through a liquid perspective, conjuring new words, concepts, and relationships into existence. Such notations may enable us to inhabit spaces more ecologically, understanding how we may engage the infrastructures and fabrics that enable life rather than building mechanical objects for living in. Our apparatuses for inhabitation may acquire increasingly lifelike characteristics that extend the realm of the home and city into the ecosphere, where internal and external spaces are engaged in meaningful and mutual conversation. For example, a house may be able to recycle its water and metabolically transform waste substances into useful products . This is a pursuit of the “Living Architecture”6 project and is envisioned as a next-generation selectively programmable bioreactor that is capable of extracting valuable resources from sunlight, wastewater, and air and then generates oxygen, proteins, and biomass. “Living Architecture” uses the standard principles of both photo-bioreactor and microbial fuel cell technologies, which are adapted to work together synergistically to clean wastewater, generate oxygen, provide electrical power, and generate useable biomass (fertilizer). The outputs of these systems are then metabolically ‘programmed’ by the synthetic bioreactor to generate useful organic compounds like sugars, oils and alcohols7.
--------------------------------------------------- +
-
+ IMAGE by Simone Ferracina
When life is considered through a liquid lens, it is no longer a deterministic, object-oriented machine but soft, protean, and integrated within a paradoxical, planetary-scale material condition that is unevenly distributed spatially but temporally continuous.
When life is considered through a liquid lens, it is no longer a deterministic, object-oriented machine but soft, protean, and integrated within a paradoxical, planetary-scale material condition that is unevenly distributed spatially but temporally continuous.
--------------------------------------------------- +
“Liquid life arises from out of a soup, smog, a scab, fire – where the incandescent heavens rain molten rock and alkali meets oil – a choreography of primordial metabolic flames. Amidst the reducing atmosphere of choking toxic gases, its coming-into-being draws momentarily into focus and recedes again. The unfathomable darkness of the Hadean epoch is reincarnated here. It is drenched in thick gas clouds, unweathered dusts, and pungent vapours, which obfuscate the light. The insulating blanket of gaseous poisons protects the land against the cruel stare of ultraviolet rays and ionizing space radiation, which spite the Earth’s surface. Out of these volatile caustic bodies, a succession of chemical ghosts haunts the heavy atmosphere. Here, imaginary figures, like those that appear in a fevered condition, split faint light around. They wander among the auras of turbulent interfaces and thickening densities of matter, scum and crust. Over the course of half a billion years, sudden ectoplasms spew in successive acts over the darkened theatre of the planet. Charged skies, enlivened by the ionic electricity of fluids and periodically lit with photon cuts, strike blows into the ground to begin the process of chemical evolution. Dancing under ionic winds electric storms scratch at the Earth and charged tendrils of matter stand on their end. Vulgar in its becoming, the blubber slobbers on biomass with carbohydrate teeth, drooling enzymes that digest nothing but its own bite. Energetically incontinent, it acquires a cold metabolism and a watery heart. Expanding and contacting, it starts to pump universal solvent through its liquid eyes, lensing errant light into its dark thoughts. Mindless, yet finely tuned to its context, it wriggles upon time’s compost, chewing and chewing with its boneless jaws on nothing but the agents of death. In its structural disobedience, the misshapen mass steadily grows more organized and reluctant to succumb to decay. Patterning the air, its fingers extend like claws, obstructing its passage between the poles of oblivion. Caressing itself in gratuitous acts of procreation, the daub offers contempt for the forces of disorder, and crawls steadily towards being.”
--------------------------------------------------- +_REFERENCES
@@ -156,7 +157,7 @@ _REFERENCES“Living Architecture LIAR – transform our habitats from inert spaces into programmable sites.” Living Architecture. 2016. Accessed September 16, 2017. http://livingarchitecture-h2020.eu/.
Morton, Timothy. Hyperobjects: philosophy and ecology after the end of the world. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
Serres, Michael. Genesis. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1996.
--------------------------------------------------- +_GLOSSARY
@@ -170,11 +171,10 @@ _GLOSSARYKatabatic flows are wind currents.
Microbial Fuel Cell is a metabolically powered apparatus that under anaerobic conditions, converts organic matter into electricity, fresh water and oxygen.
Photobioreactor is a system that uses the ability of micro-organisms to convert light and carbon dioxide into biomass, like sugars, alcohol and cellulose.
-Scrying is reading the future against the present by using unstable images produced by reflective surfaces.
-------------------------------------------------- -_BIO
-Rachel Armstrong (UK) innovates and designs new materials that poses properties of living systems, that can be manipulated to form what she calls ‘living architecture’. Her research prompts a re-evaluation of how we think about our homes and cities and raises questions about sustainable development of built environment. Working in the emerging field of synthetic biology, Armstrong is at the forefront of hybrid scientific practices that seek to combine different sets of knowledge. Her pioneering work is focussed on re-opening space to the unknown, the invisible, and the unexplainable - as a way to re-engage with the present and re-enchant reality. Armstrong is Professor of Experimental Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape at Newcastle University. She is a Rising Waters II Fellow with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (April-May 2016), TWOTY futurist 2015, Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, and a 2010 Senior TED Fellow.
+
+
_BIO
+Rachel Armstrong (UK) innovates and designs new materials that poses properties of living systems, that can be manipulated to form what she calls ‘living architecture’. Her research prompts a re-evaluation of how we think about our homes and cities and raises questions about sustainable development of built environment. Working in the emerging field of synthetic biology, Armstrong is at the forefront of hybrid scientific practices that seek to combine different sets of knowledge. Her pioneering work is focussed on re-opening space to the unknown, the invisible, and the unexplainable - as a way to re-engage with the present and re-enchant reality. Armstrong is Professor of Experimental Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape at Newcastle University. She is a Rising Waters II Fellow with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (April-May 2016), TWOTY futurist 2015, Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, and a 2010 Senior TED Fellow. Islands become an experience and a tool for understanding the world through the eye of the Otherness. With the same readiness, it has been eventually possible to erase the spirituality and identity of “other”, small, submitted cultures. When the necessity to represent the “new world” by this new, western-oriented perspective came up, it brought with it the geographical renaming of places the conquistadores were imposing on. Naming is political, too. These outsider-imposed names (exonyms) are not the names that the various people knew in their own language (autonyms). The name is attached to stories that help people make sense of their lives, while also helping to understand how people fought to protect their boundaries. The current islands’ names have long been erased due to the limitations affecting cartographic representations. Islands, for instance, are the only places where natural borders imposed by the water help to preserve local cultures from eventually-imposed boundaries. These are often followed by invasions; while making a privileged space for developing small and autonomous communities. Islands, for instance, are the only places where natural borders imposed by the water help to preserve local cultures from eventually-imposed boundaries. These are often followed by invasions; while making a privileged space for developing small and autonomous communities.
Thoreau’s hut Walden stands still as light in the heart of the forest, a small cabin where one can sit and think and read and wonder about the reasons for living. Jungle nights were this light in my life, as I sat around campfires, talking in a language that was so hard for me to learn. Albert Camus said that the biggest mystery of philosophy is why not everyone commits suicide when honestly contemplating the futility of life. As a possible answer to his own question, Camus in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, held up poor Sisyphus [^2] as an example of a good life. Sisyphus, after all, had an objective, one that entailed a measurable daily activity that always ended in the accomplishment of getting that rock up the hill. But Thoreau perspective rejects Camus’s analysis. He saw no reason to count familiarity or predictability of social life, foods, or accomplishments as among the goals of life. They teach us little and change our behavior insignificantly. His example was that we learn most when we insert ourselves as aliens in new conceptual, cultural, and social environments (in his case, the absence of society). I am convinced that our lives become richer when they are less predictable. This is not to say that our lives are always predictable in the absence of the other. Otherness renders our expectations less fixed and requires more thinking, planning, and learning.
diff --git a/OTHERNESS/index_nouns.md b/OTHERNESS/index_nouns.md
index 3e92bef..e339986 100644
--- a/OTHERNESS/index_nouns.md
+++ b/OTHERNESS/index_nouns.md
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
Otherness - Wor(l)ds
For The Future. There are many ways in which we confront otherness. Strangers are not always people. Nature is often a foreigner to most of us and we can learn by submitting ourselves to it. One reason that I annually read the American Henry David Thoreau's Walden, my favorite book in all of American literature, is that Thoreau was so articulately different from me. That is irrelevant to Thoreau's account of his year alone. His year was a brilliant experiment. Thoreau did not remain at Walden. He returned to take up a fairly boring life as a handyman in the adjacent city of Concord, Massachusetts. Yet, the book he wrote is full brilliant observations based on the concepts of American Transcendentalism: the idea that people and nature are inherently good and that they are best when left alone by society and its institutions. Transcendentalism implies that as we come to know ourselves and remove the otherness of nature by experiencing it with all our senses. That our sense of oneness with others, as embodied in that very nature, grows. Thoreau's insights into his lessons from nature – as the stranger - teach us about what it means to live as a human, to be independent, and to occupy a part of the natural world. Through Thoreau we encounter the strangeness of a solitary life in nature. Oneness with ourselves and nature – and the others that are strange to us but are, like us, just part of nature – requires slow work of contemplation and experience that at once embraces the otherness of nature. It demands working towards removing this sense of otherness and embracing it as part of the oneness that we seek with the world around us. Otherness, as I see it, is the spark of original thought and greater appreciation of nature, while the sense of oneness is the paradoxical goal of encounters with otherness. We need a sense of oneness of ourselves with nature to clearly see otherness, and we need otherness to build a more encompassing and panoramic sense of self and oneness with the world. Thoreau ignored society to know himself. Most of us ignore ourselves to be part of society. Thoreau eloquently expressed the loss that, being carried away by the demands of others and society, brings us to our sense of self. We think of conformity rather than our own unique identity and so blur who we are as individuals. Thoreau captured this well when he exclaimed that, "the one is more important than the million." That is, it is only as we each individually appreciate our oneness with the world, nature, and the other as part of this oneness that we can achieve the best individual life, and thus society. potentiality potentiality performative performative Kinship implies co-relations between Wor(l)ds For The Future and further distributions which will potentially be made. If you want to republish and re-distribute the content, verbatim or derivative, we ask you to send us a copy. By copy we mean a copy of the republished content. For instance, if it is a print or a physical object please send it to XPUB/ WH4.141 t.a.v. Piet Zwart Institute/ WdKA/ Rotterdam Uni. Postbus 1272 300 BG Rotterdam, NL. If it is a file please send it to pzwart-info@hr.nl /attn: XPUB cc. If it is a change in a cloned git repository of the work, please send a patch so we can archive it in a branch. Which means, if you clone or download our git repos (https://git.xpub.nl/XPUB/S13) to modify the project files, we ask you to send us the modifications so we can archive them as well. Commercial use is only permitted if no profit is derived. Said differently, you can sell copies of the work only to cover the costs of the distribution, printing, production, needed to circulate copies of the work. We are asking you to be transparent about such expenses. Commercial use is only permitted if no profit is derived. Said differently, you can sell copies of the work only to cover the costs of the distribution, printing and/or production, needed to circulate copies of the work. We are asking you to be transparent about such expenses. The above copyright notice and this license shall be included in all copies or modified versions of the project. Any re-publication, verbatim or derivative, of the contents must explicitly credit the name(s) of the author(s) of WORDS FOR THE FUTURE, as well as those of the author(s) of WOR(L)DS FOR THE FUTURE. This attribution must make clear what changes have been made.
diff --git a/OTHERNESS/Publish.ipynb b/OTHERNESS/Publish.ipynb
index da46530..abba339 100644
--- a/OTHERNESS/Publish.ipynb
+++ b/OTHERNESS/Publish.ipynb
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
"cells": [
{
"cell_type": "code",
- "execution_count": 23,
+ "execution_count": 32,
"metadata": {},
"outputs": [
{
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@
},
{
"cell_type": "code",
- "execution_count": 24,
+ "execution_count": 56,
"metadata": {},
"outputs": [
{
@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@
},
{
"cell_type": "code",
- "execution_count": 26,
+ "execution_count": 55,
"metadata": {},
"outputs": [
{
@@ -80,7 +80,7 @@
}
],
"source": [
- "! pandoc index.island.md --standalone --css text.css -o index.island.html"
+ "! pandoc index.island.md --standalone --css island.css -o index.island.html"
]
},
{
diff --git a/OTHERNESS/index.island.html b/OTHERNESS/index.island.html
index 159826f..a0c496d 100644
--- a/OTHERNESS/index.island.html
+++ b/OTHERNESS/index.island.html
@@ -11,17 +11,18 @@
span.underline{text-decoration: underline;}
div.column{display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; width: 50%;}
-
+
-
+Otherness - Wor(l)ds For The Future.
See You, the Others or go to the Original Contribution
Islands for Alterity
diff --git a/OTHERNESS/index.island.md b/OTHERNESS/index.island.md
index 58c2ae0..539fb29 100644
--- a/OTHERNESS/index.island.md
+++ b/OTHERNESS/index.island.md
@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
-
Trans-ocean explorations started in XV sec. and boosted by America’s discovery, have irreversibly changed the face of the world while affecting our perception of the “Other”. Otherness could also specifically describe how a dominant group could define other groups with less power, usually a dominant majority.
From the perspective of a map, the process of “Enlightenment” has been unreservedly redefined. Since its fruition, the drawn boundaries of the globe are made in a way as fluid and easy, as drawing some lines on paper during a phone call.
Sometimes centres of activity, residing on margins, the islands keep a hold onto an evocative force, even when they supposed to be only imaginary, as the example brought by Utopia by Thomas More (1516) would call back. Islands concretely represent the Otherness in its purest essence, while the Otherness finds in the Islands a flourishing soil to grow, remaining limited while still protecting, at the same time, their natural conformity. Islands become an experience and a tool for understanding the world through the eye of the Otherness.
In this Imaginary Atlas, Otherness is embodying various types of islands’ representations, which you can use to imagine and build new community-structures for the future.
Sometimes centres of activity, residing on margins, the islands keep a hold onto an evocative force, even when they supposed to be only imaginary, as the example brought by Utopia by Thomas More (1516) would call back. Islands concretely represent the Otherness in its purest essence, while the Otherness finds in the Islands a flourishing soil to grow, remaining limited while still protecting, at the same time, their natural conformity. Islands become an experience and a tool for understanding the world through the eye of the Otherness. 
In this Imaginary Atlas, Otherness is embodying various types of islands’ representations, which you can use to imagine and build new community-structures for the future.
+Otherness - Wor(l)ds
+ For The Future.
See You, the Others or go to the Original Contribution
+
Islands for Alterity
@@ -10,6 +12,8 @@ With the same readiness, it has been eventually possible to erase the spirituali
Islands, for instance, are the only places where natural borders imposed by the water help to preserve local cultures from eventually-imposed boundaries. These are often followed by invasions; while making a privileged space for developing small and autonomous communities.
diff --git a/OTHERNESS/index.md b/OTHERNESS/index.md
index dc1c704..21d7fb8 100644
--- a/OTHERNESS/index.md
+++ b/OTHERNESS/index.md
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
Otherness - Wor(l)ds
- For The Future.
Sometimes centres of activity, residing on margins, the islands keep a hold onto an evocative force, even when they supposed to be only imaginary, as the example brought by Utopia by Thomas More (1516) would call back. Islands concretely represent the Otherness in its purest essence, while the Otherness finds in the Islands a flourishing soil to grow, remaining limited while still protecting, at the same time, their natural conformity. Islands become an experience and a tool for understanding the world through the eye of the Otherness.
+
+
In this Imaginary Atlas, Otherness is embodying various types of islands' representations, which you can use to imagine and build new community-structures for the future.
See the original Contribution or go to Text as a Map
+ For The Future.
See the Original Contribution or go to Text as a Map
Please, notice:
Some of the original references to the people and places along the story have been erased to make space for your individual perspective.
See Islands You, the Others or go to the original Text
+Otherness - Wor(l)ds For The Future.
See You, the Others or go to the original Text
Otherness is
@@ -80,6 +80,7 @@ There are many ways in which we confront therness, as I see it, is the spark of original thought and greater appreciation of nature, while the sense of oneness is the paradoxical goal of encounters with otherness. We need a sense of oneness of ourselves with nature to clearly see otherness, and we need otherness to build a more encompassing and panoramic sense of self and oneness with the world. Thoreau ignored society to know himself. Most of us ignore ourselves to be part of society. Thoreau eloquently expressed the loss that, being carried away by the demands of others and society, brings us to our sense of self. We think of conformity rather than our own unique identity and so blur who we are as individuals. Thoreau captured this well when he exclaimed that, “the one is more important than the million.” That is, it is only as we each individually appreciate our oneness with the world, nature, and the other as part of this oneness that we can achieve the best individual life, and thus society.
+
“Everything, beyond me.”
“Everything, including me.”
See
- Islands You, the Others or go to the original Text
+You, the Others or go to the original Text
Otherness is
The nouns, stripped of all context, are just nouns. Otherness presumes at least two terms of comparison. What defines the identity of you and others; of all things, both tangible and intangible, are the correlations between these things themselves. Meanwhile, the ensemble of all these connections continues regenerating the reality in which we live.
"Everything, beyond me."
"Everything, including me."
@@ -71,6 +71,7 @@ Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2011.01209.
diff --git a/PRACTICAL_VISION/details/index.html b/PRACTICAL_VISION/details/index.html
index 8afa13b..4f12ffa 100644
--- a/PRACTICAL_VISION/details/index.html
+++ b/PRACTICAL_VISION/details/index.html
@@ -10,9 +10,22 @@
+
-
+
diff --git a/PRACTICAL_VISION/index/style.css b/PRACTICAL_VISION/index/style.css
index 1695da1..5f1609a 100644
--- a/PRACTICAL_VISION/index/style.css
+++ b/PRACTICAL_VISION/index/style.css
@@ -41,18 +41,18 @@ img{
#img1{
-/* animation: infinite cycle1 3s ; */
+ animation: infinite cycle1 3s ;
margin-left: 50%;
}
#img2{
-/* animation: infinite cycle2 3s ; */
+ animation: infinite cycle2 3s ;
margin-left: 30%;
margin-top: 30%
}
#img3{
-/* animation: infinite cycle3 3s ; */
+ animation: infinite cycle3 3s ;
margin-top: 30%;
margin-left: 70%
}
@@ -218,19 +218,19 @@ button a{
}
@keyframes cycle1 {
- 0% { transform: rotate(88deg); margin-left: 50%;}
- 50% {transform: rotate(121deg); margin-left: 50%;}
- 99% {transform: rotate(88deg); margin-left: 50%;}
+ 0% { transform: rotate(88deg); }
+ 50% {transform: rotate(121deg);}
+ 100% {transform: rotate(88deg); }
}
@keyframes cycle2 {
0% { transform: rotate(1deg)}
50% {transform: rotate(33deg)}
- 99% {transform: rotate(1deg);}
+ 100 {transform: rotate(1deg);}
}
@keyframes cycle3 {
0% { transform: rotate(185deg)}
50% {transform: rotate(151deg)}
- 99% {transform: rotate(185deg);}
+ 100% {transform: rotate(185deg);}
}
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diff --git a/PRACTICAL_VISION/printing/index.html b/PRACTICAL_VISION/printing/index.html
index 6f144d5..e112b23 100644
--- a/PRACTICAL_VISION/printing/index.html
+++ b/PRACTICAL_VISION/printing/index.html
@@ -231,5 +231,5 @@
-
+
diff --git a/PRACTICAL_VISION/printing/style.css b/PRACTICAL_VISION/printing/style.css
index 8553a84..b6e1ea6 100644
--- a/PRACTICAL_VISION/printing/style.css
+++ b/PRACTICAL_VISION/printing/style.css
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ body {
/* margin-top:10%; */
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
- margin-left: 2cm;
+ width: 100%
}
@@ -67,12 +67,12 @@ src: url("../assets/fonts/Sinistre-StCaroline.woff");
font-family: "HKGrotesk";
- --regular: 16px;
- --focus: 24px;
- --focus2: 48px;
- --title: 150px;
+ --regular: 2vw;
+ --focus: 4vw;
+ --focus2: 5vw;
+ --title: 16vw;
--footnote: 14px;
- --subtitle: 32px;
+ --subtitle: 3px;
--inl-reg: 20px;
--inl-foot: 14px;
diff --git a/TENSE/index.html b/TENSE/index.html
index 4b1d7ed..573e892 100644
--- a/TENSE/index.html
+++ b/TENSE/index.html
@@ -922,7 +922,6 @@
font-weight: normal;
margin-top: 3%;
font-family: helvetica;
- mix-blend-mode: hard-light;
display: inline-block;
color: black;
/*text-shadow: 0px 0px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.78), 0px 0px 19px rgba(255, 255, 255, 1);*/
@@ -938,7 +937,7 @@
color: black;
background-color: #CCCCCC;
z-index: 300;
-
+ mix-blend-mode: hard-light;
}
p2 {
padding-left: 3%;
@@ -951,7 +950,6 @@
margin-top: 3%;
text-align: left;
font-family: helvetica;
- mix-blend-mode: hard-light;
display: inline-block;
color: black;
/*text-shadow: 0px 0px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.78), 0px 0px 19px rgba(255, 255, 255, 1);*/
@@ -966,6 +964,8 @@
color: black;
background-color: #CCCCCC;
z-index: 300;
+ mix-blend-mode: hard-light;
+
}
p3 {
padding-left: 20px;
@@ -991,6 +991,8 @@
color: black;
background-color: #CCCCCC;
z-index: 300;
+ mix-blend-mode: hard-light;
+
}
p5 {
padding-left: 1%;
@@ -1052,8 +1054,8 @@
height: 40%;
margin-left: 0px;
margin-right: 0px;
- margin-top: 0px;
- margin-bottom: 0px;
+ margin-top: 1x%;
+ margin-bottom: 1%;
/*background-color: #CCCCCC;*/
background-color: transparent;
border-radius: 2% 2% 2% 2%;
@@ -1065,7 +1067,8 @@
.square:after {
content: "";
display: block;
- padding-bottom: 50%;
+ padding-top: 50%;
+ padding-right: 50%;
z-index: 100;
border-radius: 2% 2% 2% 2%;
}
@@ -1076,7 +1079,7 @@
}
.content {
- position: absolute;
+ position: relative;
text-shadow: 0px 0px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.78), 0px 0px 19px rgba(255, 255, 255, 1);
/*color: #353535;*/
color: black;
@@ -1085,33 +1088,9 @@
font-family: helvetica;
font-size: 20px;
height: 100%;
- margin: 2%;
- z-index: 100;
-}
-
- .portrait {
- position: relative;
- width: 50%;
- height: 50%;
- margin-left: 3%;
- margin-right: 3%;
- margin-top: 3%;
- margin-bottom: 3%;
- /*background-color: #CCCCCC;*/
- background: rgb(214,214,214);
- background: radial-gradient(circle, rgba(214,214,214,1) 0%, rgba(221,221,221,1) 100%);
- box-shadow: 0px 0px 12px 11px rgba(0,0,0,0.25);
- z-index: 100;
- filter: blur(1px);
- -webkit-filter: blur(1px);
-}
-
- .portrait:after {
- content: "";
- display: block;
- padding-bottom: 120%;
z-index: 100;
}
+
footnotes {
color: #353535;
font-family: helvetica;
diff --git a/UNDECIDABILITY/fulltext.html b/UNDECIDABILITY/fulltext.html
index f56c18d..034947e 100644
--- a/UNDECIDABILITY/fulltext.html
+++ b/UNDECIDABILITY/fulltext.html
@@ -19,8 +19,8 @@
body{
background: white;
- width: 100%;
- height: 92%;
+ width: 150%;
+ height: 52%;
}
@@ -78,16 +78,23 @@ h1 {
line-height: 1.6;
display: inline-block;
width: 420px;
- margin-left: 0;
- margin-top: 1%;
- overflow-y: hidden;
+ margin-left: 2%;
+ margin-top: 6%;
+ border: 1px solid;
+ box-shadow: 5px 5px blue;
}
#text {
position: relative;
- margin-top: 105%;
- height: 62%;
+ margin-top: 2.8%;
+
+ columns: 420px;
+ column-gap: 60px;
+ left: 560px;
+ font-family: Noto Serif;
+ font-size: 12.4pt;
+ line-height: 1.8;
}
@@ -96,61 +103,21 @@ h1 {
height: 92%;
padding-right: 15px;
margin-top: 5%;
- left: 2.5%;
- font-family: Noto Serif;
- font-size: 12.4pt;
- line-height: 1.8;
- columns: 420px;
- column-gap: 60px;
+
+
+
width: 4800px;
- overflow-y: hidden;
height: 88%;
text-align: 26px;
text-justify: inter-word;
}
-
-#author2 {
- background-color: black;
+#foot {
color: white;
- padding: 10px;
- margin: 10px;
- font-family: 'Avenir';
- font-size: 11.5pt;
- top: 160px;
- left: 4920px;
- position: relative;
- width: 420px;
- }
-
-
-#response1 {
- position: absolute;
- color: black;
- padding: 10px;
- margin: 10px;
- font-family: Noto Serif;
- font-size: 12.4pt;
- left: 5430px;
- top: 150px;
-
- width: 380px;
- line-height: 1.8;
- }
+ background-color: black;
-#response2 {
- position: absolute;
- color: black;
- padding: 10px;
- margin: 10px;
- font-family: Noto Serif;
- font-size: 12.4pt;
- left: 6700px;
- top: 160px;
- width: 380px;
- line-height: 1.8;
- }
+ }
@page {
size: 420mm, 297mm;
@@ -181,28 +148,26 @@ h1 {
U
UNDECIDABILITY
-
-
-
+
-
+
-
+
diff --git a/UNDECIDABILITY/index.html b/UNDECIDABILITY/index.html
index 999ebb0..585b4a7 100644
--- a/UNDECIDABILITY/index.html
+++ b/UNDECIDABILITY/index.html
@@ -609,26 +609,26 @@ h1 {
-
+
MULTIPLYING THE VISIBLE
-
The word undecidable appears in Six Memos for the Next Millennium written by Italo Calvino in 1985 for his Charles Eliot Norton poetry lectures at Harvard University. In the last months of his life Calvino worked feverishly on these lectures, but died in the process. In the five memos he left behind, he did not only open up on values for a future millennium to come but also seemed to envision future as a darkness that withholds many forms of visibility within.
-Calvino’s fourth memo,¹Visibility, revolves around the capacity of literature to generate images and to create a kind of “mental cinema” where fantasies can flow continuously. Calvino focuses on the imagination as “the repertory of what is potential; what is hypothetical; what does not exist and has never existed; and perhaps will never exist but might have existed.”² The main concern that he brings forth lies within the relation between contemporary culture and imagination: the risk to definitely lose, in the overproduction of images, the power of bringing visions into focus with our eyes shut and in fact of “thinking in terms of images.”³
+ Calvino’s fourth memo,¹Visibility, revolves around the capacity of literature to generate images and to create a kind of “mental cinema” where fantasies can flow continuously. Calvino focuses on the imagination as “the repertory of what is potential; what is hypothetical; what does not exist and has never existed; and perhaps will never exist but might have existed.”² The main concern that he brings forth lies within the relation between contemporary culture and imagination: the risk to definitely lose, in the overproduction of images, the power of bringing visions into focus with our eyes shut and in fact of “thinking in terms of images.”³
1. Out of five, the sixth lecture was never written, as the author died suddenly and the series remained unfinished, and yet published with its original, and now misleading, title.
-2. Italo Calvino, Visibility, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1988, p. 91
+2. Italo Calvino, Visibility, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1988, p. 91
3. ibid, p. 92..
-In the last pages of the lecture, he proposes a shift from understanding the fantastic world of the artist, not as indefinable, but as undecidable. With this word, Calvino means to define the coexistence and the relation, within any literary work, between three different dimensions. The first dimension is the artist’s imagination – a world of potentialities that no work will succeed in realizing. The second is the reality as we experience it by living. Finally, the third is the world of the actual work, made by the layers of signs that accumulate in it; compared to the first two worlds, it is “also infinite, but more easily controlled, less refractory to formulation.”⁴ He calls the link between these three worlds “the undecidable, the paradox of an infinite whole that contains other infinite wholes.”⁵
-For Calvino, artistic operations involve, by the means of the infinity of linguistic possibilities, the infinity of the artist’s imagination, and the infinity of contingencies. Therefore, “[the] attempts to escape the vortex of multiplicity are useless.”⁶ In his fifth memo, he subsequently focuses on multiplicity as a way for literature to comprehend the complex nature of the world that for the author is a whole of wholes, where the acts of watching and knowing also intervene in the observed reality and alter it. Calvino is particularly fascinated by literary works that are built upon a combinatory logic or that are readable as different narratives. The lecture revolves around some novels that contain multiple worlds and make space for the readers’ imaginations. The common source to all these experiments seems to rely in the understanding of the contemporary novel “as an encyclopedia, as a method of knowledge, and, above all, as a network of connections between the events, the people, and the things of the world.”⁷
+In the last pages of the lecture, he proposes a shift from understanding the fantastic world of the artist, not as indefinable, but as undecidable. With this word, Calvino means to define the coexistence and the relation, within any literary work, between three different dimensions. The first dimension is the artist’s imagination – a world of potentialities that no work will succeed in realizing. The second is the reality as we experience it by living. Finally, the third is the world of the actual work, made by the layers of signs that accumulate in it; compared to the first two worlds, it is “also infinite, but more easily controlled, less refractory to formulation.”⁴ He calls the link between these three worlds “the undecidable, the paradox of an infinite whole that contains other infinite wholes.”⁵
+For Calvino, artistic operations involve, by the means of the infinity of linguistic possibilities, the infinity of the artist’s imagination, and the infinity of contingencies. Therefore, “[the] attempts to escape the vortex of multiplicity are useless.”⁶ In his fifth memo, he subsequently focuses on multiplicity as a way for literature to comprehend the complex nature of the world that for the author is a whole of wholes, where the acts of watching and knowing also intervene in the observed reality and alter it. Calvino is particularly fascinated by literary works that are built upon a combinatory logic or that are readable as different narratives. The lecture revolves around some novels that contain multiple worlds and make space for the readers’ imaginations. The common source to all these experiments seems to rely in the understanding of the contemporary novel “as an encyclopedia, as a method of knowledge, and, above all, as a network of connections between the events, the people, and the things of the world.”⁷
@@ -212,7 +177,7 @@ For Calvino, artistic operations involve, by the means of the infinity of lingui
7. Italo Calvino, Multiplicity, Six Memos for the Next Millennium, p.105.
-Therefore, let’s think visibility and multiplicity together, as: a multiplication of visibilities. They are traits specific to artistic production and define a context for the undecidable, or rather for undecidability, as the quality of being undecidable. Calvino seems to suggest that literature⁸ can be particularly productive of futures, if it makes itself visible and multiple. Which is to say, if it doesn’t give up on involving radically different realities into its operation modes and doesn’t fade out from the scene of the ‘real’ world. We might stretch this line of thought a bit further and propose that art’s potentiality is that of multiplying the visible as an actual counterstrategy to the proliferation of images that surrounds us. A strategy that is capable of producing different conditions of visibility. Embracing what we are capable to see but also think and imagine, to fantasise and conceptualise; and bringing into existence different configurations of public spaces, collective subjectivities, and social gatherings. Embracing what we are capable to see
+Therefore, let’s think visibility and multiplicity together, as: a multiplication of visibilities. They are traits specific to artistic production and define a context for the undecidable, or rather for undecidability, as the quality of being undecidable. Calvino seems to suggest that literature⁸ can be particularly productive of futures, if it makes itself visible and multiple. Which is to say, if it doesn’t give up on involving radically different realities into its operation modes and doesn’t fade out from the scene of the ‘real’ world. We might stretch this line of thought a bit further and propose that art’s potentiality is that of multiplying the visible as an actual counterstrategy to the proliferation of images that surrounds us. A strategy that is capable of producing different conditions of visibility. Embracing what we are capable to see but also think and imagine, to fantasise and conceptualise; and bringing into existence different configurations of public spaces, collective subjectivities, and social gatherings. Embracing what we are capable to see
but also think and imagine, to fantasise and conceptualise; and bringing into existence different configurations of public spaces, collective subjectivities, and social gatherings.
@@ -230,7 +195,7 @@ Such dynamics seems to occur in performative works in particular, as the contemp
AZDORA
A good example of an undecidable artwork is Markus Öhrn’s Azdora, a long-term project that was initiated and coproduced by Santarcangelo Festival in 2015. As the festival artistic director at that time I had the chance to follow and support the project. The work was triggered by the encounter between the artist, in Santarcangelo for a research residency, and the feminine condition present in traditional family structures in this region of Italy. In particular, what struck him was the figure of the ‘azdora,’ a dialect word that means the ‘holder’ of the house and of the family – the woman who is in charge of the domestic life and of the labours of care. This figure is at the same time powerful, subordinate, and even repressed: through her devotion, she is sacrificed to the family and to the care of the relationships that keep it together. Interested in investigating this feminine figure and the possibility that it suggests of a matriarchal societal structure, the artist made a call for ‘azdoras’ to work together with him on the creation of a series of rituals and later on a concert. Both the rituals and the concert revolve around the possibility of emancipation and the exploration of the wild, even destructive side of the figure of the Azdora. Twenty-eight women committed to a long-term project together with Markus Öhrn and dived into his imagery and artistic world made of diverse ingredients among which were the tattoo culture, the cult of bodybuilding, and the noise music practice. At the same time, the ‘azdoras’ were asked to bring in their own ingredients; imageries, concerns, and desires. Together with the artist and the female musician ?Alos and with the mediation of the festival, they embarked into the adventure of entering a place that did not exist yet, creating a new set of rules and behaviours for themselves and for the spectators who would eventually join their rituals, attend their noise concert, or bump into their interventions in the public space during the festival period.
-Similar to other artistic projects that one could trace back to the practice of undecidability, Azdora mingles different realities and fantastic worlds and also activates a participatory dynamic, yet preserving “the grey artistic work of participatory art.”⁹ In other words, it creates and protects a space of indeterminacy. In fact, Azdora is at the same time a performative picture, an artistic fantasy, a community theatre work, an emancipatory process, an ongoing workshop, a social ritual, and a concert. Furthermore, from the project a documentary movie and a sociological survey have been produced,¹⁰ multiplying the possibility to access the work from different angles and via different formats. If the coexistence of different media already implies different angles, durations, discourses, and forms of spectatorship, the performance itself keeps an undecidable bound between its real and fictional ontologies. The performative work of Azdora is then intrinsically ‘political’ according to Rancière definition of ‘metapolitics:’ a destabilising action that produces a conflict vis à vis what is thinkable and speakable. Azdora allows different interpretations and produces conflicting discourses, yet remaining untouched. This does not necessarily mean complete though as, on the contrary, it is generating a multiplicity of different gazes that are all legitimate and complete but yet do not exhaust the work. This is what makes the performance itself unfulfilled and thus incomplete and open.
+Similar to other artistic projects that one could trace back to the practice of undecidability, Azdora mingles different realities and fantastic worlds and also activates a participatory dynamic, yet preserving “the grey artistic work of participatory art.”⁹ In other words, it creates and protects a space of indeterminacy. In fact, Azdora is at the same time a performative picture, an artistic fantasy, a community theatre work, an emancipatory process, an ongoing workshop, a social ritual, and a concert. Furthermore, from the project a documentary movie and a sociological survey have been produced,¹⁰ multiplying the possibility to access the work from different angles and via different formats. If the coexistence of different media already implies different angles, durations, discourses, and forms of spectatorship, the performance itself keeps an undecidable bound between its real and fictional ontologies. The performative work of Azdora is then intrinsically ‘political’ according to Rancière definition of ‘metapolitics:’ a destabilising action that produces a conflict vis à vis what is thinkable and speakable. Azdora allows different interpretations and produces conflicting discourses, yet remaining untouched. This does not necessarily mean complete though as, on the contrary, it is generating a multiplicity of different gazes that are all legitimate and complete but yet do not exhaust the work. This is what makes the performance itself unfulfilled and thus incomplete and open.
@@ -240,7 +205,7 @@ Similar to other artistic projects that one could trace back to the practice of
A MULTIPLICITY OF GAZES
An undecidable artwork is, in other words, a site where different and even contradictory individual experiences unfold and coexist, with no hierarchical structure and no orchestration. It is a site where spectators’ gazes are not composed into a common horizon but are let free to wildly engage with all the realities involved, connecting or not connecting them, and in the end to experience part of the complex ‘whole of wholes’ that is the artwork (while being aware or unaware of the existence of other wholes and of other gazes).
-What is peculiar to this kind of artworks then, and what within them can produce an understanding of the place of art and of its politics today, is that they generate a multiplicity of gazes and of forms of spectatorship that also coexist one next to the other without mediating between their own positions and points of view. The multiplicity of gazes produced and gathered by undecidable artworks does not compose itself into a community, as there is no ‘common’ present. Rather, it generates a radical collectivity based on multiplicity and on conflicting positions that are not called to any form of negotiation, but just to a cohabitation of the space of the work. Spectators and their views and imaginations are acknowledged as equal parts of a collective body that exist next to each other. They don’t fuse in one common thought and don’t see or reflect one common image, yet effect each other by their sheer presence and existence, operating as a prism that multiplies the reality it reflects. A space of communication is opened here that is not meant for unilateral or bilateral exchanges, but rather for a circulation of information and interpretations – both of fictions and projections. A circulation over which no one – not even the artist – exercises a full control. The place of the author is then challenged and responsibility is shared with the audience not as a participant,¹¹ but rather as an unknowable and undecidable collective body that receives, reverberates, and twists it.
+What is peculiar to this kind of artworks then, and what within them can produce an understanding of the place of art and of its politics today, is that they generate a multiplicity of gazes and of forms of spectatorship that also coexist one next to the other without mediating between their own positions and points of view. The multiplicity of gazes produced and gathered by undecidable artworks does not compose itself into a community, as there is no ‘common’ present. Rather, it generates a radical collectivity based on multiplicity and on conflicting positions that are not called to any form of negotiation, but just to a cohabitation of the space of the work. Spectators and their views and imaginations are acknowledged as equal parts of a collective body that exist next to each other. They don’t fuse in one common thought and don’t see or reflect one common image, yet effect each other by their sheer presence and existence, operating as a prism that multiplies the reality it reflects. A space of communication is opened here that is not meant for unilateral or bilateral exchanges, but rather for a circulation of information and interpretations – both of fictions and projections. A circulation over which no one – not even the artist – exercises a full control. The place of the author is then challenged and responsibility is shared with the audience not as a participant,¹¹ but rather as an unknowable and undecidable collective body that receives, reverberates, and twists it.
11. An active group of spectators invited to exercise over the artwork
@@ -254,8 +219,7 @@ Ultimately, a political dimension does spring from an art that practices its und
12. See Valeria Graziano, Prefigurative Practices: Raw Materials for a Political Positioning of Art, Leaving the Avant-garde, in Elke van Campenhout and Lilia Mestre (ed.), Turn, Turtle! Reenacting the Institute, Alexander Verlag, Berlin 2016, pp. 158-172.
A logic of ‘and… and… and…’ as opposite to the logic of ‘either… or…’ that seems to rule reality.
- In this page I present my artistic response, weaving the romantic context of undecidability in the original essay with immaterial labour. The original essay talked about the significance of imaginations and
- multiplicities in artistic practice.
+
I contemplated whether these actually encompass intangible activities.
Artists think, imagine, read, write, discuss, etc...
- Thus I reacted with my own narratives how the notion is entangled with such immaterial labours. It is expressed with the ‘and...and...and’ format, which was mentioned as a key logic of how the undecidability works in the original essay. 
: Parts of original essay
: My voice
TEXT : Important keys for my voice
TEXT : Linking with other publications
The parts of the original essay were selected through Python NLTK(Natural Language ToolKit) function.
Original contribution: Silvia Bottiroli
Original artist response: Jozef Wouters Reinterpreted by Nami KimIn this page I present my artistic response to Undecidability, juxtaposing the romantic idea of undecidability in Silvia Bottiroli's essay with my own reflections on immaterial labour.
The essay speaks about the significance of a multiplicity of perspectives and visions that some works of art and artistic practices offer to the viewer(s).
I contemplated the many intangible activities that artistic work encompasses; thinking, imagining, reading, writing, discussing, etcetera. The kind of labour me and my peers were engaged in a lot as well while making this republication. Undecidability for me then also became a space of 'the intangible' within labour.
I responded to fragments from Bottiroli's text with my own narratives to show how the notion of 'the undecidable' is entangled with immaterial labour. It is expressed with the ‘and...and...and’ format, which was mentioned as a key logic of how the undecidability works by Bottiroli, in her essay. : Parts of original essay
: My voice
TEXT : Important keys for my voice
TEXT : Linking with other publications
The parts of the original essay were selected through Python NLTK(Natural Language ToolKit) function.
Original contribution: Silvia Bottiroli
Original artist response: Jozef Wouters Reinterpreted by Nami Kim
-
Imagine that you are an artist now.
- MULTIPLYING THE VISIBLE (From p.3 in the original essay)
+ MULTIPLYING THE VISIBLE (From p.3, 4 in the original essay)
The main concern that he brings forth lies within the relation between contemporary culture and imagination : the risk to definitely lose, H in the overproduction of images, the power of bringing visions into focus with our eyes shut and in fact of “thinking in terms of images.
+
(...) In his fifth memo, he subsequently focuses on R multiplicity as a way for M literature to comprehend the complex nature of the world that for the author is a whole of wholes, where the acts of watching and knowing also intervene in the observed reality and alter it. Calvino is particularly fascinated by P literary works that are built upon a combinatory logic or that are readable as different narratives. The lecture revolves around some novels that contain multiple worlds and make space for the readers’ imaginations.
(...) Therefore, let’s think visibility and multiplicity together, as: a multiplication of visibilities. They are traits specific to artistic production and define a context for the undecidable, or rather for undecidability, as the quality of being undecidable.
@@ -644,14 +644,15 @@ The main concern that he brings forth lies within the relation between contempor
ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL WORLDS (From p.4, 5)
-In fact, undecidability is a specific force at work that consciously articulates, redefines, or alters the complex system of links, bounds, and resonances between different M potential and actual worlds.
(...) In fact, if something is possible when it contains and under certain terms performs the possibility of its actualisation, a world is potential when it can maintain its
+In fact, undecidability is a specific force at work that consciously articulates, redefines, or alters the complex system of links, bounds, and resonances between different M potential and actual worlds. In this sense, undecidability is a quality specific to some artworks within which the three worlds that Calvino describes meet and yet remain untouched, autonomous, and recognizable.
An artwork can indeed create a magnetic field where different actual worlds coexist and, by living next to each other yet not sharing a common horizon, generate a potential world. Then ‘potential’ does not mean ‘possible.’ In fact, if something is possible when it contains and under certain terms performs the possibility of its actualisation, a world is potential when it can maintain its
Chap2: Potentiality (Click to read)
-
Artworks are places where contradictory realities can coexist without withdrawing or cancelling each other out.
- (...) Here, spectators are invited to enter the work’s fictional world carrying with themselves the so-called real world and all their other fictional worlds; a space is created where all these worlds are equally welcomed. The artwork may then be navigated either by only choosing one layer of reality, or by continuously stepping from one world to another– different dimensions are made available without any form of hierarchy or predicted relations. Such dynamics seems to occur in
+
Artworks are places where contradictory realities can coexist without withdrawing or cancelling each other out. They can be sites of existence and of experience where images let go of their representational nature and just exist as such. None of the images of an artwork are being more or less real than the others, no matter whether they come as pieces of reality or as products of individual or collective fantasies. It is the art(work) as such that creates a ground where all the images that come into visibility share the same gradient of reality, no matter whether they harmoniously coexist or are radically conflicting.
+If every work builds up complete systems that are offered to its visitors or spectators to enter into – if the invitation of art is often that of losing the contact with known worlds in order to slip into others – something radically different happens within an art that practices its undecidability.
+ Here, spectators are invited to enter the work’s fictional world carrying with themselves the so-called real world and all their other fictional worlds; a space is created where all these worlds are equally welcomed. The artwork may then be navigated either by only choosing one layer of reality, or by continuously stepping from one world to another– different dimensions are made available without any form of hierarchy or predicted relations. Such dynamics seems to occur in
Chap3: Performative (Click to read)
@@ -720,7 +721,7 @@ An undecidable artwork is, in other words, a site where different and even contr
var chap1 = document.getElementById("emoji");
chap1.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
- chap1.innerHTML = "When are your 'thinking and imagining and fantasisng and conceptualising' born?
Have you ever seen physical births of these activities? They are neither tangible and nor visible. Don't you normally have them during your daily rituals? For instance,
when you have a 🚿 to refresh yourself.
And when you drink a cup of ☕.
And when you get some 🔆.
And when you water your 🌱.
And when you smoke 🚬
And when you 📞 your freinds.
You may think you're not in working mode, yet in fact, unconsciously get into labours...";
+ chap1.innerHTML = "When are your 'thinking and imagining and fantasisng and conceptualising' born?
Have you ever seen physical births of these activities? They are not tangible and not visible. Don't you normally have them during your daily rituals? For instance,
when you have a 🚿 to refresh yourself.
And when you drink a cup of ☕.
And when you get some 🔆.
And when you water your 🌱.
And when you smoke 🚬
And when you 📞 your freinds.
You may think you're not in working mode, yet in fact, unconsciously get into labours...";
chap1.style.cssText = "position: relative; display: inline-block; font-size: 16px; font-family: 'Avenir'; left: 8px; margin-left: 14%; line-height: 1.8; color: white; background-color: black; width: 60%; text-align: left; border: 1px solid; box-shadow: 5px 5px blue;"});
@@ -737,7 +738,7 @@ chap2.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
var chap3 = document.getElementById("emoji3");
chap3.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
- chap3.innerHTML = "Imagine that you will experiment the potentiality through a performance.
For you ⏱ and 💭 and 👁 and 👃and 👄 and 🦵 and ✋ are all materials. Now you are on the stage and moving your body as itself is your artistic langauge.
How does the every single movement prove its value? What you're producing is an object, but rather moments and emotions.
Although you cannot display them on a shelf in a shop, you still make something.
You inspire 👨👨🦳👩🦱🧕 and their impression is the very value of your work.";
+ chap3.innerHTML = "Imagine that you will experiment the potentiality through a performance.
For you ⏱ and 💭 and 👁 and 👃and 👄 and 🦵 and ✋ are all materials. Now you are on the stage and moving your body as itself is your artistic langauge.
How does the every single movement prove its value? What you're producing is not an object, but rather moments and emotions.
Yes, it cannot be displayed on a shelf in a shop, because the performance exists only at the particular moment and place and with audiences near you. It would possibly be recorded as a video clip, but then the value of the document would become transformed, because the live interaction at that very instant won't stay there anymore. Meaning, you inspire 👨👨🦳👩🦱🧕 's impression, which is the very value of your work.";
chap3.style.cssText = "position: relative; display: inline-block; font-size: 16px; font-family: 'Avenir'; left: 5px; margin-left: 12%; line-height: 1.8; color: white; background-color: black; width: 60%; text-align: left; border: 1px solid; box-shadow: 5px 5px blue;"
});
@@ -745,7 +746,7 @@ chap3.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
var chap4 = document.getElementById("emoji4");
chap4.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
- chap4.innerHTML = "You may not feel direct effect and influence that your performance have.
This is because what 👨👨🦳👩🦱🧕 purchased from you is emotions and ⏱ and 💭 .
Despite of the invisibility, you definitely gave 👨👨🦳👩🦱🧕 something. ❕ eed to be proud of what you've done.
The 👨👨🦳👩🦱🧕 got energy and inspiration,by being there. With such eneregy they will make ther lives more lively and dynamic.";
+ chap4.innerHTML = "You may say you don't feel direct and obvious effect and influence that your performance brings. This is because what 👨👨🦳👩🦱🧕 purchased from you are emotions and experiences, which are composed of ⏱ and 💭 and ❕❔ .
You offer audiences an arena of the immaterial experiment. They feel and think without rules and limitations. Unknown energy is shared between you and them.
Your movement coming with the spectatorship is still located in a part of system, but at the same time it might be a gesture against the system that takes material give and take rule for granted.";
chap4.style.cssText = "position: relative; display: inline-block; font-size: 16px; font-family: 'Avenir'; left: 5px; margin-left: 12%; line-height: 1.8; color: white; background-color: black; width: 60%; text-align: left; border: 1px solid; box-shadow: 5px 5px blue;"
});
@@ -754,16 +755,12 @@ chap4.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
var chap5 = document.getElementById("emoji5");
chap5.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
- chap5.innerHTML = "What and who did you work for?
You were the subject and owner of your work, not being forced by external party in market hierarchy.
Not only your performance was undecidable, but your labours entangled with it were also undecidable, accompanying immaterial activities. Both in the process and in the final producing, what you mostly embraced was your time and emotion, which are abstract. Thus you may say such labours are a majour part of yourself.
Your identity and existence are closely attached with your work. That's why you get power to carry on your life.
As you are being undecidbable, your work becomes free and you get freedom.";
+ chap5.innerHTML = "What and who do you work for?
You may feel the output that your work has a bit different features with other current products and commodities.
You may do art for your identity's sake, as well as for supporting yourself financially. Whether putting the label called 'labour' on your performance is a bit tricky, because you're standing between the establiment and your fundamental autonomy. Mediation among the dimensions are not easy as you think. Your practice that contains a lot of immaterial labours, and whether the labours are surely considered as classic labours is still controversial. Thus not only what you do, but also how you do is undecidable.";
chap5.style.cssText = "position: relative; display: inline-block; font-size: 16px; font-family: 'Avenir'; left: 5px; margin-left: 12%; line-height: 1.8; color: white; background-color: black; width: 60%; text-align: left; border: 1px solid; box-shadow: 5px 5px blue;"
});
-
-
-
-
diff --git a/UNDECIDABILITY/und_response.html b/UNDECIDABILITY/und_response.html
index be15b70..fded4b4 100644
--- a/UNDECIDABILITY/und_response.html
+++ b/UNDECIDABILITY/und_response.html
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ body{
background: white;
width: 100%;
- height: 100%;
+ height: auto;
}
@@ -43,8 +43,9 @@ a{
#buttons {
position: absolute;
padding: 5px;
- top: 110px;
+ top: 75px;
left: 580px;
+ width: 400px;
color: blue;
font-family: sans-serif;
font-size: 11pt;
@@ -56,8 +57,8 @@ a{
#symbol{
position: absolute;
- top: 76px;
- margin-left: 2%;
+ top: 50px;
+ margin-left: 50px;
font-family: 'wftfs-Regular';
font-size: 47px;
color: black;
@@ -70,8 +71,8 @@ h1 {
letter-spacing: 1.3px;
font-size: 24px;
position: absolute;
- left: 4%;
- top: 5%;
+ left: 100px;
+ top: 41px;
text-justify: inter-word;
line-height: 2.4;
@@ -79,44 +80,53 @@ h1 {
}
-
+#author2 {
+
+ position: absolute;
+ background-color: black;
+ color: white;
+ padding: 10px;
+ margin: 10px;
+ font-family: 'Avenir';
+ font-size: 11.5pt;
+ line-height: 1.6;
+ display: inline-block;
+ width: 420px;
+ margin-left: 50px;
+ margin-top: 145px;
+ border: 1px solid;
+ box-shadow: 5px 5px blue;
-#fulltext {
+ }
+
+#text {
position: absolute;
padding-right: 15px;
- top: 200px;
- margin-left: 2%;
+ top: 145px;
+ margin-left: 540px;
font-family: Noto Serif;
font-size: 12.4pt;
- line-height: 1.8;
- columns: 420px;
- column-gap: 60px;
- width: 1000px;
- overflow-y: hidden;
- height: 88%;
-
+ line-height: 1.8;
+ width: 450px;
text-justify: inter-word;
text-align: center;
-
-
+ display: inline-block;
+
}
#text2 {
position: absolute;
padding-right: 15px;
- top: 200px;
+ top: 145px;
left: 1940px;
font-family: Noto Serif;
font-size: 12.4pt;
line-height: 1.8;
-
width: 400px;
- overflow-y: hidden;
- height: 88%;
-
text-justify: inter-word;
text-align: center;
+ display: inline-block;
}
@@ -133,8 +143,8 @@ h1 {
REINTERPRETATION
-
-
-
+
+
diff --git a/__LICENSE/index.html b/__LICENSE/index.html
index 5ebea7a..f6ea033 100644
--- a/__LICENSE/index.html
+++ b/__LICENSE/index.html
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@
-
+
Commercial use:
-
Attribution: