+——————————————————————————————LLiquid 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.
-
OOtherness 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.
PPractical Vision 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.
EEco-Swaraj 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.
HHope 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.
RResurgence 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.
M!? 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.
- TTense Tense's symbol depicts the encapsulation of a content/subject inside a meta-description
+ TTense Tense's symbol depicts the encapsulation of a subject inside a description.
@@ -642,8 +676,10 @@ Enet enturerum vendam, temolup taecatem cum iumendent, omnitibus et, conse pre d
- WOr(L)DS FoR THE FuTUrE
-
+
+ WOR(L)DS 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.
@@ -44,7 +45,7 @@ console.log("img",imgElement.src,imgElement.getAttribute("src"), img1)
L OR
-M
+M PTU
@@ -89,7 +90,7 @@ Original artistic response from Rodrigo Sobarzo, performance artist
Autonomy and Self-rule
Equally, though, the notion of eco-swaraj emerges from grassroots praxis P3. This is illustrated in the following examples from three communities in different parts of India:
1. “Our government is in Mumbai and Delhi, but we are the government in our village” , Mendha-Lekha village, Maharashtra.4
-
The village of Mendha-Lekha, in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra state, has a population of about five hundred Gond Adivasi people, indigenous people who in India are also called ‘tribals’. About thirty years ago these people were part of a resistance movement against a large dam that would have displaced them and submerged their forests A. This mobilisation also led them to consider forms of organisation that could help deal with other problems and issues. They established their ‘gram sabha’ (village assembly) as the primary organ of decision-making, and after considerable discussion adopted the principle of consensus. They realised that voting and the majoritarianism that comes with it can be detrimental to village unity and the interests of minorities. The villagers do not allow any government agency or politicians M to take decisions on their behalf, nor may a village or tribal chief do so on his/her own. This is part of a ‘tribal self-rule’ campaign underway in some parts of India, though few villages have managed to achieve complete self-rule as it is a process that requires sustained effort, natural leadership, and the ability to resolve disputes – features that are not common. Both in Mendha-Lekha and at several other sites, communities are now also using the recent legislation that recognises their communal rights to govern and use forests, along with constitutional provisions of decentralisation, to assert varying levels of swaraj.
+
The village of Mendha-Lekha, in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra state, has a population of about five hundred Gond Adivasi people, indigenous people who in India are also called ‘tribals’. About thirty years ago these people were part of a resistance movement against a large dam that would have displaced them and submerged their forests A. This mobilisation also led them to consider forms of organisation that could help deal with other problems and issues. They established their ‘gram sabha’ (village assembly) as the primary organ of decision-making, and after considerable discussion adopted the principle of consensus. They realised that voting and the majoritarianism that comes with it can be detrimental to village unity and the interests of minorities. The villagers do not allow any government agency or politicians M to take decisions on their behalf, nor may a village or tribal chief do so on his/her own. This is part of a ‘tribal self-rule’ campaign underway in some parts of India, though few villages have managed to achieve complete self-rule as it is a process that requires sustained effort, natural leadership, and the ability to resolve disputes – features that are not common. Both in Mendha-Lekha and at several other sites, communities are now also using the recent legislation that recognises their communal rights to govern and use forests, along with constitutional provisions of decentralisation, to assert varying levels of swaraj.
2. “These hills and forests belong to Niyamraja, they are the basis of our survival and livelihoods, we will not allow any company to take them away from us”, Dongria Kondh adivasis (indigenous people), Odisha.
The ancient indigenous adivasi group of Dongria Kondh, was catapulted into national and global limelight when the UK-based transnational corporation (TNC) Vedanta proposed to mine bauxite in the hills where they live. The Dongria Kondh pointed out that these hills were their sacred territory A, and also crucial for their livelihoods and cultural existence. When the state gave its permission for the corporation to begin mining, the Dongria Kondh, supported by civil society groups, took the matter to various levels of government, the courts, and even the shareholders of Vedanta Corporation in London. The Indian Supreme Court ruled that as a culturally important site for the Dongria Kondh, the government required the peoples’ approval. This is a crucial order that established the right of consent (or rejection) to affected communities, somewhat akin to the global indigenous peoples’ demand for ‘free and prior informed consent’ (FPIC) now enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. At village assemblies that were subsequently held, the Dongria Kondh unanimously rejected the mining proposal and have since then stood firm against renewed efforts to convince them otherwise, despite increased armed police presence and intimidation tactics by the state.
3. “Seeds are the core of our identity, our culture, our livelihoods, they are our heritage and no government agency or corporation can control them”, Dalit women of Deccan Development Society, Telangana.
@@ -99,8 +100,8 @@ Original artistic response from Rodrigo Sobarzo, performance artist
Based on such grassroots experience P and interactions with activist-thinkers and practitioners across India, a conceptual framework called Radical Ecological Democracy H (RED) has emerged in the last few years as a somewhat more systematic or structured reworking of eco-swaraj. While it arose in India, it quickly found resonance in many other parts of the world as part of a process of generating Peoples’ Sustainability Treaties for the Rio+20 Conference.7
Eco-swaraj or RED encompasses the following five interlocking spheres (thematic composites of key elements), which have evolved through a process of bringing together alternative initiatives across India called Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence), begun in 20148:
Ecological wisdom and resilience: Reviving or strengthening the foundational belief in humanity being part of nature, and the intrinsic right of the rest of nature to thrive in all its diversity and complexity, promoting the conservation and resilience of nature (ecosystems, species, functions, and cycles).
-
Social well-being and justice: Moving towards lives that are fulfilling and satisfactory physically, socially, culturally, and spiritually; with equity T in socio-economic and political entitlements M, benefits, rights and responsibilities across gender, class, caste, age, ethnicities, ‘able’ities, sexualities, and other current divisions; and an ongoing attempt to balance collective interests and individual freedoms; so that peace and harmony are ensured.
-
Direct or radical political democracy: Establishing processes of decision-making power at the smallest unit of human settlement (rural or urban), in which every human has the right, capacity and opportunity to take part T. From these basic units outwards growth is envisioned to larger levels of governance that are accountable and answerable to these basic units. Political decision-making M at larger levels is taken by ecoregional or biocultural regional institutions, which respect ecological and cultural linkages and boundaries (and therefore challenge current political boundaries, including those of nation-states). The role of the state eventually becomes minimal and is limited to facilitating the connection of peoples and initiatives across larger landscapes. It carryies out welfare measures only till the time the basic units of direct and ecoregional democracy H are not able to do so.
+
Social well-being and justice: Moving towards lives that are fulfilling and satisfactory physically, socially, culturally, and spiritually; with equity T in socio-economic and political entitlements M, benefits, rights and responsibilities across gender, class, caste, age, ethnicities, ‘able’ities, sexualities, and other current divisions; and an ongoing attempt to balance collective interests and individual freedoms; so that peace and harmony are ensured.
+
Direct or radical political democracy: Establishing processes of decision-making power at the smallest unit of human settlement (rural or urban), in which every human has the right, capacity and opportunity to take part T. From these basic units outwards growth is envisioned to larger levels of governance that are accountable and answerable to these basic units. Political decision-making M at larger levels is taken by ecoregional or biocultural regional institutions, which respect ecological and cultural linkages and boundaries (and therefore challenge current political boundaries, including those of nation-states). The role of the state eventually becomes minimal and is limited to facilitating the connection of peoples and initiatives across larger landscapes. It carryies out welfare measures only till the time the basic units of direct and ecoregional democracy H are not able to do so.
Economic democracy: Establishing or strenthening processes in which local communities A including producers and consumers – often combined in one word as prosumers – have control over the means of production, distribution, exchange, and markets. Open localization is a key principle, in which the local regional economy provides for all basic needs. Dependence on global trade is minimised, without falling into the trap of xenophobic closure of boundaries to ‘outsiders’ (such as what we see in some parts of Europe that are anti-immigrants). Larger trade and exchange, if and where necessary, is built on – and safeguards – this local self-reliance A. Nature, natural resources and other important elements that feed into the economy, are governed as the commons. Private property is minimized or disappears, non-monetized relations of caring and sharing regain their central importance and indicators are predominantly qualitative, focusing on basic needs and well-being.
Cultural and knowledge plurality: Promoting processes in which diversity is a key principle; knowledge and its generation, use and transmission is part of the public domain or commons; innovation is democratically generated H and there are no ivory towers of ‘expertise’; learning takes place as part of life rather than in specialized institutions; and individual or collective pathways of ethical and spiritual well being and of happiness are available to all.
Seen as a set of petals in a flower (see Figure below), the core or bud where they all intersect forms a set of values or principles, which too emerges as a crucial part of alternative initiatives of the kind mentioned above. These values, such as equality and equity T, respect for all life, diversity and pluralism, balancing the collective and the individual, can also be seen as the possible/ideal ethical or spiritual foundation of RED societies, or the worldview(s) that its members hold.
@@ -114,7 +115,7 @@ Original artistic response from Rodrigo Sobarzo, performance artist
The broad components and values of eco-swaraj have been under discussion across India through the Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence) process. This process brings together a diverse set of actors from communities, civil society, and various professions who are involved in alternative initiatives across all sectors. A series of regional and thematic confluences that began in 2015, enable participants to share experiences, learn from each other, build alliances and collaboration, and jointly envision a better future. Documenting eco-swaraj practices in the form of stories, videos, case studies, and other forms provides a further means of disseminating knowledge, and spreading inspiration for further transformation, through a dedicated website9, a mobile exhibition, and other means.
In 2012, about 20 civil society organizations and movements worldwide LA signed onto a Peoples’ Sustainability Treaty on Radical Ecological Democracy H as part of the parallel people’s process at the Rio+20 Conference in Rio de Janeiro10. Since then, a discussion list has kept alive the dialogue, and opportunities have been found for mutual learning with approaches like de-growth, ecofeminism11, cooperative societies, and social and solidarity economies, buen vivir12 and its other equivalents in Latin America, and others O. A website launched in September 2017 will also showcase stories and perspectives from around the world13.
RED or eco-swaraj is not a blueprint but an evolving worldview, finding resonance in different forms and different names in different parts of the world. It is also the basis of multiple visions of the future14. In its very process of democratic grassroots PH evolution, it forms an alternative to top-down ideologies and formulations, even as it takes on board the relevant elements of such ideologies. This is the foundation of its transformative potential.
-
While still struggling in the face of the powerful forces of capitalism, stateism15, patriarchy, and other structures of inequity T and exploitation, alternative approaches like eco-swaraj and RED appear to be gaining ground as more and more people are confronted by multiple crises and searching for ways out. They face multiple challenges from politically M and economically powerful forces whose power they confront; they also find it difficult to mobilise a public that has been seduced by the promise of affluence and the glitter of consumerism, or reduced to seemingnly helpless submission by repressive states and corporations. Nonetheless, they are spreading and finding resonance. Multiple uprisings in various countries and regions on issues such as state repression, corporate impunity, climate crisis, inequality, racial and ethnic conflicts, landgrabbing, dispossession and displacement of communities in the name of ‘development’, are only the more visible signs of this. Quieter, but equally important, are the myriad attempts at finding equitable, sustainable solutions to problems, some examples of which are given above.
+
While still struggling in the face of the powerful forces of capitalism, stateism15, patriarchy, and other structures of inequity T and exploitation, alternative approaches like eco-swaraj and RED appear to be gaining ground as more and more people are confronted by multiple crises and searching for ways out. They face multiple challenges from politically M and economically powerful forces whose power they confront; they also find it difficult to mobilise a public that has been seduced by the promise of affluence and the glitter of consumerism, or reduced to seemingnly helpless submission by repressive states and corporations. Nonetheless, they are spreading and finding resonance. Multiple uprisings in various countries and regions on issues such as state repression, corporate impunity, climate crisis, inequality, racial and ethnic conflicts, landgrabbing, dispossession and displacement of communities in the name of ‘development’, are only the more visible signs of this. Quieter, but equally important, are the myriad attempts at finding equitable, sustainable solutions to problems, some examples of which are given above.
@@ -44,7 +45,7 @@ console.log("img",imgElement.src,imgElement.getAttribute("src"), img1)
L OR
-M
+M PTU
@@ -89,7 +90,7 @@ Original artistic response from Rodrigo Sobarzo, performance artist
Autonomy and Self-rule
Equally, though, the notion of eco-swaraj emerges from grassroots praxis P3. This is illustrated in the following examples from three communities in different parts of India:
1. “Our government is in Mumbai and Delhi, but we are the government in our village” , Mendha-Lekha village, Maharashtra.4
-
The village of Mendha-Lekha, in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra state, has a population of about five hundred Gond Adivasi people, indigenous people who in India are also called ‘tribals’. About thirty years ago these people were part of a resistance movement against a large dam that would have displaced them and submerged their forests A. This mobilisation also led them to consider forms of organisation that could help deal with other problems and issues. They established their ‘gram sabha’ (village assembly) as the primary organ of decision-making, and after considerable discussion adopted the principle of consensus. They realised that voting and the majoritarianism that comes with it can be detrimental to village unity and the interests of minorities. The villagers do not allow any government agency or politicians M to take decisions on their behalf, nor may a village or tribal chief do so on his/her own. This is part of a ‘tribal self-rule’ campaign underway in some parts of India, though few villages have managed to achieve complete self-rule as it is a process that requires sustained effort, natural leadership, and the ability to resolve disputes – features that are not common. Both in Mendha-Lekha and at several other sites, communities are now also using the recent legislation that recognises their communal rights to govern and use forests, along with constitutional provisions of decentralisation, to assert varying levels of swaraj.
+
The village of Mendha-Lekha, in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra state, has a population of about five hundred Gond Adivasi people, indigenous people who in India are also called ‘tribals’. About thirty years ago these people were part of a resistance movement against a large dam that would have displaced them and submerged their forests A. This mobilisation also led them to consider forms of organisation that could help deal with other problems and issues. They established their ‘gram sabha’ (village assembly) as the primary organ of decision-making, and after considerable discussion adopted the principle of consensus. They realised that voting and the majoritarianism that comes with it can be detrimental to village unity and the interests of minorities. The villagers do not allow any government agency or politicians M to take decisions on their behalf, nor may a village or tribal chief do so on his/her own. This is part of a ‘tribal self-rule’ campaign underway in some parts of India, though few villages have managed to achieve complete self-rule as it is a process that requires sustained effort, natural leadership, and the ability to resolve disputes – features that are not common. Both in Mendha-Lekha and at several other sites, communities are now also using the recent legislation that recognises their communal rights to govern and use forests, along with constitutional provisions of decentralisation, to assert varying levels of swaraj.
2. “These hills and forests belong to Niyamraja, they are the basis of our survival and livelihoods, we will not allow any company to take them away from us”, Dongria Kondh adivasis (indigenous people), Odisha.
The ancient indigenous adivasi group of Dongria Kondh, was catapulted into national and global limelight when the UK-based transnational corporation (TNC) Vedanta proposed to mine bauxite in the hills where they live. The Dongria Kondh pointed out that these hills were their sacred territory A, and also crucial for their livelihoods and cultural existence. When the state gave its permission for the corporation to begin mining, the Dongria Kondh, supported by civil society groups, took the matter to various levels of government, the courts, and even the shareholders of Vedanta Corporation in London. The Indian Supreme Court ruled that as a culturally important site for the Dongria Kondh, the government required the peoples’ approval. This is a crucial order that established the right of consent (or rejection) to affected communities, somewhat akin to the global indigenous peoples’ demand for ‘free and prior informed consent’ (FPIC) now enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. At village assemblies that were subsequently held, the Dongria Kondh unanimously rejected the mining proposal and have since then stood firm against renewed efforts to convince them otherwise, despite increased armed police presence and intimidation tactics by the state.
3. “Seeds are the core of our identity, our culture, our livelihoods, they are our heritage and no government agency or corporation can control them”, Dalit women of Deccan Development Society, Telangana.
@@ -99,8 +100,8 @@ Original artistic response from Rodrigo Sobarzo, performance artist
Based on such grassroots experience P and interactions with activist-thinkers and practitioners across India, a conceptual framework called Radical Ecological Democracy H (RED) has emerged in the last few years as a somewhat more systematic or structured reworking of eco-swaraj. While it arose in India, it quickly found resonance in many other parts of the world as part of a process of generating Peoples’ Sustainability Treaties for the Rio+20 Conference.7
Eco-swaraj or RED encompasses the following five interlocking spheres (thematic composites of key elements), which have evolved through a process of bringing together alternative initiatives across India called Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence), begun in 20148:
Ecological wisdom and resilience: Reviving or strengthening the foundational belief in humanity being part of nature, and the intrinsic right of the rest of nature to thrive in all its diversity and complexity, promoting the conservation and resilience of nature (ecosystems, species, functions, and cycles).
-
Social well-being and justice: Moving towards lives that are fulfilling and satisfactory physically, socially, culturally, and spiritually; with equity T in socio-economic and political entitlements M, benefits, rights and responsibilities across gender, class, caste, age, ethnicities, ‘able’ities, sexualities, and other current divisions; and an ongoing attempt to balance collective interests and individual freedoms; so that peace and harmony are ensured.
-
Direct or radical political democracy: Establishing processes of decision-making power at the smallest unit of human settlement (rural or urban), in which every human has the right, capacity and opportunity to take part T. From these basic units outwards growth is envisioned to larger levels of governance that are accountable and answerable to these basic units. Political decision-making M at larger levels is taken by ecoregional or biocultural regional institutions, which respect ecological and cultural linkages and boundaries (and therefore challenge current political boundaries, including those of nation-states). The role of the state eventually becomes minimal and is limited to facilitating the connection of peoples and initiatives across larger landscapes. It carryies out welfare measures only till the time the basic units of direct and ecoregional democracy H are not able to do so.
+
Social well-being and justice: Moving towards lives that are fulfilling and satisfactory physically, socially, culturally, and spiritually; with equity T in socio-economic and political entitlements M, benefits, rights and responsibilities across gender, class, caste, age, ethnicities, ‘able’ities, sexualities, and other current divisions; and an ongoing attempt to balance collective interests and individual freedoms; so that peace and harmony are ensured.
+
Direct or radical political democracy: Establishing processes of decision-making power at the smallest unit of human settlement (rural or urban), in which every human has the right, capacity and opportunity to take part T. From these basic units outwards growth is envisioned to larger levels of governance that are accountable and answerable to these basic units. Political decision-making M at larger levels is taken by ecoregional or biocultural regional institutions, which respect ecological and cultural linkages and boundaries (and therefore challenge current political boundaries, including those of nation-states). The role of the state eventually becomes minimal and is limited to facilitating the connection of peoples and initiatives across larger landscapes. It carryies out welfare measures only till the time the basic units of direct and ecoregional democracy H are not able to do so.
Economic democracy: Establishing or strenthening processes in which local communities A including producers and consumers – often combined in one word as prosumers – have control over the means of production, distribution, exchange, and markets. Open localization is a key principle, in which the local regional economy provides for all basic needs. Dependence on global trade is minimised, without falling into the trap of xenophobic closure of boundaries to ‘outsiders’ (such as what we see in some parts of Europe that are anti-immigrants). Larger trade and exchange, if and where necessary, is built on – and safeguards – this local self-reliance A. Nature, natural resources and other important elements that feed into the economy, are governed as the commons. Private property is minimized or disappears, non-monetized relations of caring and sharing regain their central importance and indicators are predominantly qualitative, focusing on basic needs and well-being.
Cultural and knowledge plurality: Promoting processes in which diversity is a key principle; knowledge and its generation, use and transmission is part of the public domain or commons; innovation is democratically generated H and there are no ivory towers of ‘expertise’; learning takes place as part of life rather than in specialized institutions; and individual or collective pathways of ethical and spiritual well being and of happiness are available to all.
Seen as a set of petals in a flower (see Figure below), the core or bud where they all intersect forms a set of values or principles, which too emerges as a crucial part of alternative initiatives of the kind mentioned above. These values, such as equality and equity T, respect for all life, diversity and pluralism, balancing the collective and the individual, can also be seen as the possible/ideal ethical or spiritual foundation of RED societies, or the worldview(s) that its members hold.
@@ -114,7 +115,7 @@ Original artistic response from Rodrigo Sobarzo, performance artist
The broad components and values of eco-swaraj have been under discussion across India through the Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence) process. This process brings together a diverse set of actors from communities, civil society, and various professions who are involved in alternative initiatives across all sectors. A series of regional and thematic confluences that began in 2015, enable participants to share experiences, learn from each other, build alliances and collaboration, and jointly envision a better future. Documenting eco-swaraj practices in the form of stories, videos, case studies, and other forms provides a further means of disseminating knowledge, and spreading inspiration for further transformation, through a dedicated website9, a mobile exhibition, and other means.
In 2012, about 20 civil society organizations and movements worldwide LA signed onto a Peoples’ Sustainability Treaty on Radical Ecological Democracy H as part of the parallel people’s process at the Rio+20 Conference in Rio de Janeiro10. Since then, a discussion list has kept alive the dialogue, and opportunities have been found for mutual learning with approaches like de-growth, ecofeminism11, cooperative societies, and social and solidarity economies, buen vivir12 and its other equivalents in Latin America, and others O. A website launched in September 2017 will also showcase stories and perspectives from around the world13.
RED or eco-swaraj is not a blueprint but an evolving worldview, finding resonance in different forms and different names in different parts of the world. It is also the basis of multiple visions of the future14. In its very process of democratic grassroots PH evolution, it forms an alternative to top-down ideologies and formulations, even as it takes on board the relevant elements of such ideologies. This is the foundation of its transformative potential.
-
While still struggling in the face of the powerful forces of capitalism, stateism15, patriarchy, and other structures of inequity T and exploitation, alternative approaches like eco-swaraj and RED appear to be gaining ground as more and more people are confronted by multiple crises and searching for ways out. They face multiple challenges from politically M and economically powerful forces whose power they confront; they also find it difficult to mobilise a public that has been seduced by the promise of affluence and the glitter of consumerism, or reduced to seemingnly helpless submission by repressive states and corporations. Nonetheless, they are spreading and finding resonance. Multiple uprisings in various countries and regions on issues such as state repression, corporate impunity, climate crisis, inequality, racial and ethnic conflicts, landgrabbing, dispossession and displacement of communities in the name of ‘development’, are only the more visible signs of this. Quieter, but equally important, are the myriad attempts at finding equitable, sustainable solutions to problems, some examples of which are given above.
+
While still struggling in the face of the powerful forces of capitalism, stateism15, patriarchy, and other structures of inequity T and exploitation, alternative approaches like eco-swaraj and RED appear to be gaining ground as more and more people are confronted by multiple crises and searching for ways out. They face multiple challenges from politically M and economically powerful forces whose power they confront; they also find it difficult to mobilise a public that has been seduced by the promise of affluence and the glitter of consumerism, or reduced to seemingnly helpless submission by repressive states and corporations. Nonetheless, they are spreading and finding resonance. Multiple uprisings in various countries and regions on issues such as state repression, corporate impunity, climate crisis, inequality, racial and ethnic conflicts, landgrabbing, dispossession and displacement of communities in the name of ‘development’, are only the more visible signs of this. Quieter, but equally important, are the myriad attempts at finding equitable, sustainable solutions to problems, some examples of which are given above.
@@ -44,7 +46,7 @@ console.log("img",imgElement.src,imgElement.getAttribute("src"), img1)
L OR
-M
+M PTU
@@ -88,7 +90,7 @@ Original artistic response from Rodrigo Sobarzo, performance artist
Autonomy and Self-rule
Equally, though, the notion of eco-swaraj emerges from grassroots praxis P3. This is illustrated in the following examples from three communities in different parts of India:
1. “Our government is in Mumbai and Delhi, but we are the government in our village” , Mendha-Lekha village, Maharashtra.4
-
The village of Mendha-Lekha, in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra state, has a population of about five hundred Gond Adivasi people, indigenous people who in India are also called ‘tribals’. About thirty years ago these people were part of a resistance movement against a large dam that would have displaced them and submerged their forests A. This mobilisation also led them to consider forms of organisation that could help deal with other problems and issues. They established their ‘gram sabha’ (village assembly) as the primary organ of decision-making, and after considerable discussion adopted the principle of consensus. They realised that voting and the majoritarianism that comes with it can be detrimental to village unity and the interests of minorities. The villagers do not allow any government agency or politicians M to take decisions on their behalf, nor may a village or tribal chief do so on his/her own. This is part of a ‘tribal self-rule’ campaign underway in some parts of India, though few villages have managed to achieve complete self-rule as it is a process that requires sustained effort, natural leadership, and the ability to resolve disputes – features that are not common. Both in Mendha-Lekha and at several other sites, communities are now also using the recent legislation that recognises their communal rights to govern and use forests, along with constitutional provisions of decentralisation, to assert varying levels of swaraj.
+
The village of Mendha-Lekha, in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra state, has a population of about five hundred Gond Adivasi people, indigenous people who in India are also called ‘tribals’. About thirty years ago these people were part of a resistance movement against a large dam that would have displaced them and submerged their forests A. This mobilisation also led them to consider forms of organisation that could help deal with other problems and issues. They established their ‘gram sabha’ (village assembly) as the primary organ of decision-making, and after considerable discussion adopted the principle of consensus. They realised that voting and the majoritarianism that comes with it can be detrimental to village unity and the interests of minorities. The villagers do not allow any government agency or politicians M to take decisions on their behalf, nor may a village or tribal chief do so on his/her own. This is part of a ‘tribal self-rule’ campaign underway in some parts of India, though few villages have managed to achieve complete self-rule as it is a process that requires sustained effort, natural leadership, and the ability to resolve disputes – features that are not common. Both in Mendha-Lekha and at several other sites, communities are now also using the recent legislation that recognises their communal rights to govern and use forests, along with constitutional provisions of decentralisation, to assert varying levels of swaraj.
2. “These hills and forests belong to Niyamraja, they are the basis of our survival and livelihoods, we will not allow any company to take them away from us”, Dongria Kondh adivasis (indigenous people), Odisha.
The ancient indigenous adivasi group of Dongria Kondh, was catapulted into national and global limelight when the UK-based transnational corporation (TNC) Vedanta proposed to mine bauxite in the hills where they live. The Dongria Kondh pointed out that these hills were their sacred territory A, and also crucial for their livelihoods and cultural existence. When the state gave its permission for the corporation to begin mining, the Dongria Kondh, supported by civil society groups, took the matter to various levels of government, the courts, and even the shareholders of Vedanta Corporation in London. The Indian Supreme Court ruled that as a culturally important site for the Dongria Kondh, the government required the peoples’ approval. This is a crucial order that established the right of consent (or rejection) to affected communities, somewhat akin to the global indigenous peoples’ demand for ‘free and prior informed consent’ (FPIC) now enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. At village assemblies that were subsequently held, the Dongria Kondh unanimously rejected the mining proposal and have since then stood firm against renewed efforts to convince them otherwise, despite increased armed police presence and intimidation tactics by the state.
3. “Seeds are the core of our identity, our culture, our livelihoods, they are our heritage and no government agency or corporation can control them”, Dalit women of Deccan Development Society, Telangana.
@@ -98,8 +100,8 @@ Original artistic response from Rodrigo Sobarzo, performance artist
Based on such grassroots experience P and interactions with activist-thinkers and practitioners across India, a conceptual framework called Radical Ecological Democracy H (RED) has emerged in the last few years as a somewhat more systematic or structured reworking of eco-swaraj. While it arose in India, it quickly found resonance in many other parts of the world as part of a process of generating Peoples’ Sustainability Treaties for the Rio+20 Conference.7
Eco-swaraj or RED encompasses the following five interlocking spheres (thematic composites of key elements), which have evolved through a process of bringing together alternative initiatives across India called Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence), begun in 20148:
Ecological wisdom and resilience: Reviving or strengthening the foundational belief in humanity being part of nature, and the intrinsic right of the rest of nature to thrive in all its diversity and complexity, promoting the conservation and resilience of nature (ecosystems, species, functions, and cycles).
-
Social well-being and justice: Moving towards lives that are fulfilling and satisfactory physically, socially, culturally, and spiritually; with equity T in socio-economic and political entitlements M, benefits, rights and responsibilities across gender, class, caste, age, ethnicities, ‘able’ities, sexualities, and other current divisions; and an ongoing attempt to balance collective interests and individual freedoms; so that peace and harmony are ensured.
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Direct or radical political democracy: Establishing processes of decision-making power at the smallest unit of human settlement (rural or urban), in which every human has the right, capacity and opportunity to take part T. From these basic units outwards growth is envisioned to larger levels of governance that are accountable and answerable to these basic units. Political decision-making M at larger levels is taken by ecoregional or biocultural regional institutions, which respect ecological and cultural linkages and boundaries (and therefore challenge current political boundaries, including those of nation-states). The role of the state eventually becomes minimal and is limited to facilitating the connection of peoples and initiatives across larger landscapes. It carryies out welfare measures only till the time the basic units of direct and ecoregional democracy H are not able to do so.
+
Social well-being and justice: Moving towards lives that are fulfilling and satisfactory physically, socially, culturally, and spiritually; with equity T in socio-economic and political entitlements M, benefits, rights and responsibilities across gender, class, caste, age, ethnicities, ‘able’ities, sexualities, and other current divisions; and an ongoing attempt to balance collective interests and individual freedoms; so that peace and harmony are ensured.
+
Direct or radical political democracy: Establishing processes of decision-making power at the smallest unit of human settlement (rural or urban), in which every human has the right, capacity and opportunity to take part T. From these basic units outwards growth is envisioned to larger levels of governance that are accountable and answerable to these basic units. Political decision-making M at larger levels is taken by ecoregional or biocultural regional institutions, which respect ecological and cultural linkages and boundaries (and therefore challenge current political boundaries, including those of nation-states). The role of the state eventually becomes minimal and is limited to facilitating the connection of peoples and initiatives across larger landscapes. It carryies out welfare measures only till the time the basic units of direct and ecoregional democracy H are not able to do so.
Economic democracy: Establishing or strenthening processes in which local communities A including producers and consumers – often combined in one word as prosumers – have control over the means of production, distribution, exchange, and markets. Open localization is a key principle, in which the local regional economy provides for all basic needs. Dependence on global trade is minimised, without falling into the trap of xenophobic closure of boundaries to ‘outsiders’ (such as what we see in some parts of Europe that are anti-immigrants). Larger trade and exchange, if and where necessary, is built on – and safeguards – this local self-reliance A. Nature, natural resources and other important elements that feed into the economy, are governed as the commons. Private property is minimized or disappears, non-monetized relations of caring and sharing regain their central importance and indicators are predominantly qualitative, focusing on basic needs and well-being.
Cultural and knowledge plurality: Promoting processes in which diversity is a key principle; knowledge and its generation, use and transmission is part of the public domain or commons; innovation is democratically generated H and there are no ivory towers of ‘expertise’; learning takes place as part of life rather than in specialized institutions; and individual or collective pathways of ethical and spiritual well being and of happiness are available to all.
Seen as a set of petals in a flower (see Figure below), the core or bud where they all intersect forms a set of values or principles, which too emerges as a crucial part of alternative initiatives of the kind mentioned above. These values, such as equality and equity T, respect for all life, diversity and pluralism, balancing the collective and the individual, can also be seen as the possible/ideal ethical or spiritual foundation of RED societies, or the worldview(s) that its members hold.
@@ -113,7 +115,7 @@ Original artistic response from Rodrigo Sobarzo, performance artist
The broad components and values of eco-swaraj have been under discussion across India through the Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence) process. This process brings together a diverse set of actors from communities, civil society, and various professions who are involved in alternative initiatives across all sectors. A series of regional and thematic confluences that began in 2015, enable participants to share experiences, learn from each other, build alliances and collaboration, and jointly envision a better future. Documenting eco-swaraj practices in the form of stories, videos, case studies, and other forms provides a further means of disseminating knowledge, and spreading inspiration for further transformation, through a dedicated website9, a mobile exhibition, and other means.
In 2012, about 20 civil society organizations and movements worldwide LA signed onto a Peoples’ Sustainability Treaty on Radical Ecological Democracy H as part of the parallel people’s process at the Rio+20 Conference in Rio de Janeiro10. Since then, a discussion list has kept alive the dialogue, and opportunities have been found for mutual learning with approaches like de-growth, ecofeminism11, cooperative societies, and social and solidarity economies, buen vivir12 and its other equivalents in Latin America, and others O. A website launched in September 2017 will also showcase stories and perspectives from around the world13.
RED or eco-swaraj is not a blueprint but an evolving worldview, finding resonance in different forms and different names in different parts of the world. It is also the basis of multiple visions of the future14. In its very process of democratic grassroots PH evolution, it forms an alternative to top-down ideologies and formulations, even as it takes on board the relevant elements of such ideologies. This is the foundation of its transformative potential.
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While still struggling in the face of the powerful forces of capitalism, stateism15, patriarchy, and other structures of inequity T and exploitation, alternative approaches like eco-swaraj and RED appear to be gaining ground as more and more people are confronted by multiple crises and searching for ways out. They face multiple challenges from politically M and economically powerful forces whose power they confront; they also find it difficult to mobilise a public that has been seduced by the promise of affluence and the glitter of consumerism, or reduced to seemingnly helpless submission by repressive states and corporations. Nonetheless, they are spreading and finding resonance. Multiple uprisings in various countries and regions on issues such as state repression, corporate impunity, climate crisis, inequality, racial and ethnic conflicts, landgrabbing, dispossession and displacement of communities in the name of ‘development’, are only the more visible signs of this. Quieter, but equally important, are the myriad attempts at finding equitable, sustainable solutions to problems, some examples of which are given above.
+
While still struggling in the face of the powerful forces of capitalism, stateism15, patriarchy, and other structures of inequity T and exploitation, alternative approaches like eco-swaraj and RED appear to be gaining ground as more and more people are confronted by multiple crises and searching for ways out. They face multiple challenges from politically M and economically powerful forces whose power they confront; they also find it difficult to mobilise a public that has been seduced by the promise of affluence and the glitter of consumerism, or reduced to seemingnly helpless submission by repressive states and corporations. Nonetheless, they are spreading and finding resonance. Multiple uprisings in various countries and regions on issues such as state repression, corporate impunity, climate crisis, inequality, racial and ethnic conflicts, landgrabbing, dispossession and displacement of communities in the name of ‘development’, are only the more visible signs of this. Quieter, but equally important, are the myriad attempts at finding equitable, sustainable solutions to problems, some examples of which are given above.
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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 bloodT.” 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“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!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, I briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. We can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
ⓞ 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
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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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. We can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
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 systemE 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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -198,7 +198,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_gene0.html b/HOPE/index_gene0.html
index 940d089..3dd078f 100644
--- a/HOPE/index_gene0.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_gene0.html
@@ -158,15 +158,20 @@
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“👽 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 👩🎓!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 👽 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 systemE 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👮♂️ can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 systemE 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👮♂️ can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
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 “illusionOU” 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
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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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO 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 strategiesM to make lives livable. Correspondingly, one could focus on the therapeutic and redeeming dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
-
-
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO 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 strategiesM to make lives livable. Correspondingly, one could focus on the therapeutic and redeeming dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
Gurur Ertem
is a social scientist and performance studies scholar specializing in the sociology of culture and the arts; and the body and social theory. she is the founding co-director of iDANS (Istanbul) where she has been responsible for curatorial research and publications. Being immersed in the contemporary dance culture for (almost) two decades as dancer, dramaturge, programmer, and scholar, she edited several books on the topic such as Dance on Time (2010); Solo? in Contemporary Dance (2008), and Yirminci Yüzyılda Dans Sanatı (2007). Ertem specialized in the sociology of culture and arts; the body and social theory; and critical theory. She obtained her Ph.D. in Sociology from The New School for Social Research (New York) in 2016. Her current research focuses on cultures of protest and the body and political psychology. Ertem is selected as an Akademie Schloss Solitude Fellow in the Humanities for the period 2017-2019.
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+Abstract of web project
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+Fascinated by “recognition of pluralism”, one of the solutions to approach Hope, (Euna Lee) 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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References
Adorno, Theodor W. 1991 [1951]. “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda.” In The Culture Industry, edited by J. M. Bernstein. London: Routledge.
@@ -189,6 +194,7 @@ Smith, David Livingstone. 2017. “Confessions of a Cassandra.” Philosophy
Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times, edited by Paul Rogat Loeb. New York: Basic Books. iBook.
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Footnotes
[1]: 1,128 academics from 89 universities in Turkey, and over 355 academics and researchers from abroad including some well-known figures such as Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Etienne Balibar, and David Harvey signed the petition. For the full text of the declaration and more information about Academics for Peace see the website: (https://barisicinakademisyenler.net/node/63)
@@ -197,7 +203,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_gene1.html b/HOPE/index_gene1.html
index 5eecbac..cbba5ee 100644
--- a/HOPE/index_gene1.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_gene1.html
@@ -157,9 +157,9 @@
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“👬 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 🕴!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 👬 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 systemE 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🤱 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 systemE 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🤱 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO 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 strategiesM to make lives livable. Correspondingly, one could focus on the therapeutic and redeeming dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO 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 strategiesM to make lives livable. Correspondingly, one could focus on the therapeutic and redeeming dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -196,7 +196,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_gene10.html b/HOPE/index_gene10.html
index 6e9d87d..e5b196c 100644
--- a/HOPE/index_gene10.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_gene10.html
@@ -162,9 +162,9 @@
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“🕴 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 👮♂️!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 🕴 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
-
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 systemE 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🐒 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 systemE 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🐒 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO 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 strategiesM to make lives livable. Correspondingly, one could focus on the therapeutic and redeeming dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO 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 strategiesM to make lives livable. Correspondingly, one could focus on the therapeutic and redeeming dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_gene11.html b/HOPE/index_gene11.html
index cfa4469..d191a3e 100644
--- a/HOPE/index_gene11.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_gene11.html
@@ -162,9 +162,9 @@
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“🤱 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 🙍♀️!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 🤱 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. ⭐️ can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. ⭐️ can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
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 systemE 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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_gene12.html b/HOPE/index_gene12.html
index 51a9fbb..9b41833 100644
--- a/HOPE/index_gene12.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_gene12.html
@@ -162,9 +162,9 @@
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
🦔 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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“🦔 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 👬!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 🦔 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👶 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👶 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
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 systemE 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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_gene13.html b/HOPE/index_gene13.html
index f504079..1501ebd 100644
--- a/HOPE/index_gene13.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_gene13.html
@@ -162,9 +162,9 @@
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementLmovement 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“👯♀️ 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 👮♂️!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 👯♀️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🧚♀️ can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🧚♀️ can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
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 systemE 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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_gene14.html b/HOPE/index_gene14.html
index fd02a73..0083383 100644
--- a/HOPE/index_gene14.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_gene14.html
@@ -162,9 +162,9 @@
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
👥 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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“👥 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 👽!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 👥 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🗿 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🗿 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
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 systemE 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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_gene2.html b/HOPE/index_gene2.html
index 819bf7f..557b84a 100644
--- a/HOPE/index_gene2.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_gene2.html
@@ -162,9 +162,9 @@
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“👩👩👧👧 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 👶!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 👩👩👧👧 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👥 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👥 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
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 systemE 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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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.
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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.
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_gene3.html b/HOPE/index_gene3.html
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--- a/HOPE/index_gene3.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_gene3.html
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Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“🦔 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 🗿!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 🦔 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🦖 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🦖 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
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 systemE 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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_gene4.html b/HOPE/index_gene4.html
index d96ff29..0ebd5f6 100644
--- a/HOPE/index_gene4.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_gene4.html
@@ -162,9 +162,9 @@
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“🙍♀️ 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 👨🚀!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 🙍♀️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👨🚀 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👨🚀 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
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 systemE 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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_gene5.html b/HOPE/index_gene5.html
index 45b1afe..2225401 100644
--- a/HOPE/index_gene5.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_gene5.html
@@ -162,9 +162,9 @@
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“👨👧👦 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 👥!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 👨👧👦 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👩👩👧👧 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👩👩👧👧 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
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 systemE 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 “illusionOU” 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
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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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
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index c6f5309..e014fa3 100644
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+++ b/HOPE/index_gene6.html
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Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“🏄♂️ 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 🤓!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 🏄♂️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEPP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🧚♀️ can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEPP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 🧚♀️ can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
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 systemE 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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_gene7.html b/HOPE/index_gene7.html
index 591a8d1..f92025b 100644
--- a/HOPE/index_gene7.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_gene7.html
@@ -162,9 +162,9 @@
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
🧞♂️ 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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“🧞♂️ 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 🦔!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 🧞♂️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 💃 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 💃 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
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 systemE 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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_gene8.html b/HOPE/index_gene8.html
index db0c92e..775cdf1 100644
--- a/HOPE/index_gene8.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_gene8.html
@@ -162,9 +162,9 @@
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“👬 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 ⭐️!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 👬 briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on democracyPE 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 ☹
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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👨🌾 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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
+
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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👨🌾 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
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 systemE 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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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.
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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.
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_gene9.html b/HOPE/index_gene9.html
index c028826..e696a1a 100644
--- a/HOPE/index_gene9.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_gene9.html
@@ -162,9 +162,9 @@
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“🧚♀️ 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 👩👩👧👧!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, 🧚♀️ briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on radical democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👥 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. 👥 can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
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 systemE 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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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.
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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.
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -201,7 +201,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/HOPE/index_ori.html b/HOPE/index_ori.html
index 1aaae27..a24fa5b 100644
--- a/HOPE/index_ori.html
+++ b/HOPE/index_ori.html
@@ -160,9 +160,9 @@
Original Contribution by Gurur ERTEM Reinpreted by Euna LEE
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 governmentE’s security operations against the youth movementL 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 bloodT.” 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/
fig.1 Muslims celebrating Hagia Sofia’s re-conversion into a mosque, Diego Cupolo/PA, OpenDemocracy
“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!
fig.2 shit had hit the fan
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 onlineP 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 accessibleP again. Then, I briefly review Chantal Mouffe’s ideas on democracyPE 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 ☹
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 systemE 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. We can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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
+
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 pastL, 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, politicalMEP, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but also celebrated⁹. Mainstream mediaMU’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 systemE 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 eventsT 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, LGBTQT, environmental movements, among numerous othersA. 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 embracingATOuncertaintyUL, contingency, and a non-linear understanding of history. We can begin to cultivateREAL 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)
fig.4 Heinz-Christian Strache (2nd from left) of the far-right FPÖ leads an anti-Muslim rally in Belgium, Voxeurop
ⓞ 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 pluralismLOP. 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 senseRP’ 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 subjectivityLUA 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/
fig.3 Taksim Solidarity: We are going to challenge all of our colors for our future, our children
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 “illusionOU” 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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
+
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 communitiesEA 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 interpretationsTMO and creative coping strategiesM 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 dimensionsL 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 identityP, 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 responsibilityA 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
fig.5 Pandora, Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Gurur Ertem
@@ -199,7 +199,7 @@ Zinn, Howard. 2014. “Optimism of Uncertainty.” In The Impossible Will Ta
[3]: ”Notorious criminal threatens academics calling for peace in Turkey's southeast." Hürriyet Daily News. January 13, 2016. Accessed November 2017. (http://bit.ly/2yww6gX)
-[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
+[4]: The military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 allowed the government to declare the state of emergency and rule the country by executive degrees, further crushing the oppositionM, outlawing associational activities, and the rights of assembly. Hundreds of thousands of academics, public sectors workers, journalists, and teachers were purged. For more information see the website “Turkey Purge,” which is currently inaccessible from Turkey: (https://turkeypurge.com/)
[5]: HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament representing some 13% of the electorate.
diff --git a/TENSE/index.html b/TENSE/index.html
index 8142830..4b1d7ed 100644
--- a/TENSE/index.html
+++ b/TENSE/index.html
@@ -977,7 +977,7 @@
color: black;
text-align: center;
font-family: 'EBGaramondmediumitalic';
- font-size: 17px;
+ font-size: 20px;
line-height: 120%;
/*text-shadow: 0px 0px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.78), 0px 0px 19px rgba(255, 255, 255, 1);*/
border-radius: 15px 15px 15px 15px;
@@ -1328,7 +1328,7 @@
text-align: center;
text-decoration:none;
display: inline-block;
- left: 37%;
+ left: 45%;
top: 1%;
text-shadow: 0px 0px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.78), 0px 0px 19px rgba(255, 255, 255, 1);
border-radius: 12px 12px 12px 12px;
@@ -1550,7 +1550,6 @@
‹title›Tense‹/title›
-
‹bio›‹author›Simon(e) van Saarloos‹/author› is a writer and philosopher, living
@@ -1566,7 +1565,7 @@ on stage as a lecturer, activist and interviewer. In the last Dutch
general elections Simon(e) was a candidate for the political party
led by Sylvana Simons. She is currently writing a book on the trial
against Geert Wilders.‹/bio›
-
+
‹song›‹line›You want me to give you a testimony about my life ‹/line›
@@ -1611,7 +1610,6 @@ led by Sylvana Simons. She is currently writing a book on the trial
‹footnote›3‹/footnote› And suddenly I understood that it was her strong language that displayed, inhabited, shaped, constructed, and created her love and trust for him. Her language wasn’t just a true account of her worship, the language generated and endorsed the love. The love existed because of her saying it out loud.‹/paragraph›‹/section›
-
‹section›
‹subtitle›Surrender‹/subtitle›
@@ -1627,18 +1625,15 @@ led by Sylvana Simons. She is currently writing a book on the trial
‹paragraph›This, however, does not mean that I feel defined. I can confidently say that her ‹anchor›descriptions‹/anchor› are relative as no genitals are average and all adjectives that she finds truth in are a matter of perception. It is not like her description became ‘facts about my cunt.’ It is not the exact truth of her words, but our joint submission to her expression that shaped the totality of my experience. If her description had any other goal than lovingly celebrating my body and its sounds, her words would have had a different effect. If she had meant to scale my genitals and sounds, comparing them, rating them, her metaphor would have felt reducing. The metaphor wouldn’t allow me to experience full oneness, the metaphor would reduce me to being my inner lips, just because her description was meant value determining. In that case we’d encounter the moment when words and metaphors turn into definitions, locking a reality down in order either to compare, classify, appraise.‹/paragraph›‹/section›
-
‹section›
‹subtitle›Tense ‹/subtitle›
‹paragraph›Why am I describing this intimate body/language experience? Because I was surprised by the thorough, alive, and bodily experience of words. I’m a lover of words, but I’m very much aimed at language’s shortcomings. One of the difficulties of language I have recently been involved with, is the gap between an ‹link›Hevent‹/link› and the moment this event is described. Anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli calls this gap ‘tense.’ Even now, just by recalling her theory on tense in her book Economies of Abandonment, I’m sort of finalizing her theory, presenting it as something done and seizable, instead of as the continuous thinking she is trying to surface. Language ‹link›Hkills‹/link› continuation. When we describe something, we deny the continuity of that which we describe. When we describe something or someone, that something or someone still exists beyond and without our description. The description itself however is seen as the carrier of some kind of truth. The description is taken serious. The description allows us to look at something, rather than living with it.‹/paragraph›
-
‹image›This image may contain: an event ‹/image›
-
‹paragraph›The dilemma that tense puts forward has been bugging me: how can I use words without killing what I’d like to draw attention to? How can we display continuous time while using language? Language itself is constantly drawing from the past. You do not have to be a scholar in linguistics to understand that every single word needs a memory – not a sentimental or deeply felt one per se – but in order to use a word we need to at least remember its meaning, remember that it has a meaning, remember that a word has a certain length and shape – that certain letters are part of the word while others are not. I felt I was experiencing continuousness of language when I was having sex and feeling my cunt and hearing my screams as my lover had described it. The descriptions became ‹link›Oexperience‹/link›.‹/paragraph›‹paragraph›The in-between time defined as tense, creates a certain superiority of the person speaking, especially as the person speaking starts to claim a moment in time and space. While language kills what is being described, it enlivens the speaker. Questioning tense is a ‹link›Rfeminist practise‹/link›, as feminism is concerned with power relations and the inequalities and precarities it produces. Feminism maps and redistributes who holds space, time, and liveability. Questioning tense means one is focused on the livingness, the aliveness of what is described. It means that the continuous (well-)being of what is described, has priority. This demands the courage to let difficulty appear and remain, instead of crediting oneself (or the speaker) with making the described understandable, captured, or seizable.‹/paragraph›
@@ -1649,7 +1644,6 @@ led by Sylvana Simons. She is currently writing a book on the trial
‹section›
‹subtitle›Superiority of Arrival‹/subtitle›
-
‹paragraph› Traditionally, there is the assumption that any act that appears queer and rebellious will disappear when a person matures. Age gives transitional possibilities. Ageing is a hopeful thing for those unwilling to accept present conditions. Underlining age, gaining years as the passing of time, and expecting evolution when ageing, reveals a linear conception of growth: when you get older, you will ‘move past’ things. It is very difficult to do without this notion of progress, to imagine a life without progress seems almost impossible, let alone: “to imagine justice without progress,” as anthropologist Anna Tsing so beautifully questions in her book The Mushroom at the End of the World: On The Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins.‹footnote›5‹/footnote› Often, when we speak about progress, progress is not only seen as a way to ‘improve’ life; celebrating progress is often used to debunk what was before. We see this with children displaying ‘queer behaviour,’ that parents think they will get over it and say, ‘It is just a phase’ (this too is often said of bisexuality, also among adults). Here I want to include the notion of ‘arriving.’ The expectations that we will later ‘arrive’ at a certain insight, we arrive at a better place in our lives, closer to something real, an arrival at ‘home.’ We tend to forget that what we understand as real is and only is the present. When we feel ‘unheimisch’ or ‘unreal,’ this is the real unreal feeling of the present.‹/paragraph›
@@ -1662,16 +1656,13 @@ This image may contain: one person, arriving ‹/image›‹paragraph›I have experienced a short lifetime in a wheelchair. On a cold day in March, I woke up, then ten years old, and my hip was hurting so much that I couldn’t walk. Before that, I did sports everyday. Since that morning, I could only move in a wheelchair or walk short spans using crutches. I’m grateful that this sudden injury slowly disappeared after two years. Doctors used prednisone medications on me, the physical therapist tried different exercises, and my parents were wealthy enough to rent a better wheelchair than the free chair you are given by Thuiszorg.‹footnote›6‹/footnote› All of these factors helped me get better. But I was only helped to get through this. Why did I not learn to live with this injury? Even signs of progress, such as managing the wheelchair better, were seen as a sign of decline at the same time, as it meant I was getting better at something which was not considered ‘good’ or healthy. Living in a world made to be unsuitable for wheelchair users or other non-conformative bodies, I’m utterly happy that the pain in my hip went away. The point is, I have lived two years in my life in which I was getting through a situation. I was living through life, while not actually living life, living with. Is this why I remember nearly nothing of that time? Because I arrived at the other side – being able to walk again, lucky and ‘healthy’ – and upon my arrival I could forget that all worlds and all sides that are always already out there, even if you are not experiencing and enduring them.‹/paragraph›‹/section›
-
‹section›
-
‹subtitle›Being With Instead of Getting Through‹/subtitle›
-
+
‹subtitle›Being With Instead of Getting Through ‹/subtitle›
‹paragraph› In retrospect, this way of living may have mirrored they way I was living life before landing in a wheelchair. As a child, I was rather unhappy. I listened to Marilyn Manson to express this unhappiness, not to fuel it. I dressed in black and painted my room black, I collected fake skulls and bracelets with studs to feel surrounded. People wanted to make me feel better, but they especially told me that I would feel better. It would get better, I was told, because I would grow older and find my way. People trusted I would find my way maybe especially because I was a white kid from a reasonable wealthy and educated family. All would be fine as the society I grew up in, had space for people like me (white, wealthy, educated). I am fine. But maybe it would have been good if someone told me I was already fine. Not to build my self-confidence (though no harm in that), but to acknowledge the world as a continuous place, instead of believing that one will ‘arrive’ in the world. We cannot arrive in the world, as worlds are constantly arriving. We need continuous ‹link›MOPlanguage‹/link›. There is no platform waiting for you to get on board, there is no ‘way of being’ or mode awaiting your growth.‹/paragraph›
‹paragraph›What can we give to a future that is not awaiting our arrival? The ‹link›Hfuture‹/link› needs a language that does not identify the future as a separate era. It needs a language in which the deadening force of words – tense – is countered with presence, continuous life. We need a language that is not old, nor presents itself too enthusiastically as ‘new,’ thus becoming commercial-like, claiming and promising ‘newness’ in order to legitimatize its existence. What does language need? It needs faith. It needs speakers (and listeners) who believe in its performativity, who recognize the effects of language, understanding that the expression (of an event, an experience) actually changes the event, the experience. It needs speakers who believe in plurality and constant noticing. This way, the performativity of words will not create a chain of sameness and definitions will not stall life into comprehensible situations that can be compared and strategically used for progress.‹/paragraph›‹paragraph›I listen to “Low Lights” nearly every day, when running in the same park and making the same laps. I only run when I feel healthy, but when I don’t run, I don’t feel healthy. That too is a lapse. The running is by no means making me healthy. There isn’t one assignable cause for how I feel. When I run, it is not like I’m trying to get through. It is the actual running, the moving, that excites me. I pass people whom I have passed for years and I always see new people. Some may see me. I don’t hate the hill halfway through my 6K run, I’m with the hill, not getting over it or through it. My heart beat rises and I hear the singer’s worship, her expression of love and thereby the existence of love. I suddenly realize that, of course, talking to or about or with God is a way to eternalize the conversation. A feminist queer language may well be that: God-language. A God-language without the need for one grand Lord listening and speaking, but an eternal effort from all, allowing everything to be alive – amorphous and recognized.‹/paragraph›‹/section›
-
‹section›
diff --git a/TEST b/TEST
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e69de29
diff --git a/UNDECIDABILITY/index.html b/UNDECIDABILITY/index.html
index fe17877..8e000e8 100644
--- a/UNDECIDABILITY/index.html
+++ b/UNDECIDABILITY/index.html
@@ -621,7 +621,7 @@ h1 {
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.
+ 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.
@@ -678,14 +678,7 @@ An undecidable artwork is, in other words, a site where different and even contr
-
- multiplicity and works and author and reality and multiplicity and wholes
- imaginations and alter and works and imaginations and lecture and imaginations
- potentiality and fact and place and worlds and Nevertheless and conditions
- subject and forms and nature and modes and forms and gazes
- alters and is and keep and is and detached and glimmering
-
-
+
@@ -735,7 +728,7 @@ chap1.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
var chap2 = document.getElementById("emoji2");
chap2.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
- chap2.innerHTML = "You've got some pictures in your head. They aren't emobodied in reality yet, but you seem excited somehow. Because potentiality of the pictures are infinite. They are fluid and ungrabbable. As if they are like : ☁️ and 🌫and 🌈and 🌊and ☄... You grab a 🖊 and start to 📝 all the scenarios on a note and wear 🎧 to listen to 🎶 to get into emotions, and read some 📚 for inspirations These might not be considered as so called productiveandefficient. But still they are a signficant source of your work.";
+ chap2.innerHTML = "You've got some pictures in your head. They aren't emobodied in reality yet, but you seem excited somehow. Because potentiality of the pictures are infinite. They are fluid and ungrabbable. As if they are like : ☁️ and 🌫and 🌈and 🌊and ☄... You grab a 🖊 and start to 📝 all the scenarios on a note and wear 🎧 to listen to 🎶 to get into emotions, and read some 📚 for inspirations. These might not be considered as so called productiveandefficient. But still they are a signficant source of your work.";
chap2.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;"
});
@@ -744,7 +737,7 @@ 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 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.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;"
});
@@ -752,7 +745,8 @@ chap3.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
var chap4 = document.getElementById("emoji4");
chap4.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
- chap4.innerHTML = "You may not directly feel direct effect and influence that your performance have. This is because what 👨👨🦳👩🦱🧕 purchased from you is emotions and time and thoughts. Despite of the invisibility, you need 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 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.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;"
});
@@ -761,7 +755,7 @@ 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. Your labour was undecidable, as it accompanied immaterial activities and it triggered feelings, which are abstract. For you, the labours are a majour part of yourself. Your identity and existence aren't seperate with your work, meaning you pursue what you want to do as your living method. As you are bing undecidbable, you get freedom.";
+ 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 and it triggered feelings, which are abstract. For you, the labours are a majour part of yourself. Your identity and existence aren't seperate with your work. As you are being undecidbable, you get freedom.";
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/__LICENSE/index.html b/__LICENSE/index.html
index 0c2eded..5ebea7a 100644
--- a/__LICENSE/index.html
+++ b/__LICENSE/index.html
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@
Kinship:
-
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/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.
+
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:
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.
: parts of original essay
: my voice