Join us for the workshop on Hopes, Disappointments, Unfulfilled Promises!
4–6 May 2022, University of Vienna
How can we respond to the pervasive sense of disappointment and left melancholia lingering in the wake of the failed projects of revolutionary societal transformation? Among theorists and activists alike, twentieth-century narratives of inevitable progress and universal human emancipation have been replaced by a sober reckoning with past disappointments, failures, and defeats. At the same time, narratives of loss can have a stifling effect on our sense of political possibility, quenching any residual hopes for a better world. Moving beyond lamentation of failure, this workshop asks how an engagement with past disappointments, losses and defeats can help us creatively respond to the difficulties and failures of resistance – and inspire our imagination of political alternatives in the present. The contributors address the conjunction of high aspirations and deep disappointments within the modern revolutionary experience – from the socialist and anti-colonial revolutions of the twentieth century to the multipronged struggles for justice and equality today. The purpose is to interrogate the hopes, disappointments and unfulfilled promises engendered by past revolutionary projects, and explore how they can help us imagine and reimagine the future of resistance.
You can book your ticket here. Please register for each session separately.
Programme
Wednesday, 4th May, 18:00-19:30 CEST
Anne-Maria Makhulu, Anti-Black Racism and the Truth of the World
Sarah M. Quesada, Reconstruction in Nostalgia: Latin(x) American Narratives of African Decolonization
Discussant: Matthias Lorenz
Thursday, 5th May, 18:00-19:30 CEST
Brigitte Bargetz, Staying with melancholy? An archive of the future’s past
Deborah Gould, Negative Affect and Political (De)Mobilization
David McIvor, Politics as Breath-work
Discussant: Valerie Scheibenpflug
Friday, 6th May, 18:00-19:30 CEST
Lewis R. Gordon, Existential Political Commitment and Radical Love as Resources Against Resisting Resistance
Erin Pineda, Revolutionary Nonviolence and the Problem of Disavowal
Alex Zamalin, All is Not Lost: Ways of Revolutionising Disaster
Discussant: Anna Wieder