Problems of Hope - Free Download

Editors Leila Dawney, Claire Blencowe & Patrick Bresnihan

However hopeless we often feel, we are creatures of hope. This collection of short accessible essays explores the ways in which hope is bound up with power in worlds that are composed through imagination, transformation and feeling. Hope is the most precious ingredient of power. The essays do not assume hope to be inherently good or emancipatory. Rather they reflect on how hope can both support and obstruct us in our efforts to make lives more livable, or futures more just. The essays draw on social research, philosophy, literature, music and film to show how hope might re-enchant writing and politics for a post-hopeful age. This is a book for those who want to remain hopeful but find it hard to see how.

Contents
Introduction: Problems of hope
Cranes, Luke Carter
On finding hope beyond progress, Leila Dawney
Xanadu, Miles Link
Hope without a future in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Patrick Bresnihan
Eagles, Luke Carter
Seeking, Claire Blencowe
Hope in a minor key, Naomi Millner
Hopefully indebted, Sam Kirwan
Starlings, Luke Carter
Rhythms of hope, Julian Brigstocke
Networked hope, Aécio Amaral
The Psychonaut’s journey: Race, closure, and hope, Tehseen Noorani
Epilogue
Further Reading

Published by ARN Press, February 2017, ISBN 978-0-9575882-2-6