Disconsolate Dreamers
It's time for the Left to consider the pessimist a helpful guide out of the somnolence of capitalist realism.
It's time for the Left to consider the pessimist a helpful guide out of the somnolence of capitalist realism.
It's time for the Left to consider the pessimist a helpful guide out of the somnolence of capitalist realism.
History & theory, Political, Political ideologies (general)
Our world is increasingly sceptical of happy endings. Notions of resistance or alternatives - of hope - seem evermore ill-fated as we resign to a slow and painful descent further into capitalism. However, from a critical position, one that does not shy away from the scale of the horror facing us, we can begin to rethink utopianism, and plot new and speculative pathways for collective escape. Through quiet acts of naysaying to the world, of nihilistic or self-destructive events, or in wider-ranging renegotiations of what’s acceptable and possible at the limits of reason, pessimism revives the possibility for radical change. It calls for a disentanglement from the world and, in so doing, offers a glimpse at the utopian impossible.
Against the pernicious machinations of modern-day capitalism and a perverse optimism that sustains it, Disconsolate Dreamers explores the extent to which pessimism is compatible with a radical utopian goal - namely, a collective escape from the misery of modern existence. It shows that, in a thoroughly hopeless world devoid of rational alternatives, it is time for the Left to consider the pessimist a helpful guide out of the somnolence of capitalist realism, revealing how pessimism necessitates a radical revision of utopian alterity.
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Pessimism all along the line - that was the cry of Walter Benjamin, and it is one Rachid M'Rabty takes up in this provocative, stylish theoretical intervention. Expertly drawing on a range of cultural and theoretical touchstones, this short book rejects both the vapid optimism of neoliberalism and the easy avenues of 'Some revolution to come.' M'Rabty forces us into the abyss. His aim is not to collapse all hope into annihilation but to show the true scale of the disaster we face. Utopia in these pages is a void, out of which comes a terrifying possibility - the much-needed revolutionary negation of all that is. If, like me, you are exhausted by a political Utopianism that buys its hope on the cheap, then start here. If there are grounds for hope, and for Utopian thought, then it must lie beyond naive optimism. Maybe, if we look into the dark pessimistic shadows, we will find something new for which to hope. ~ Jon Greenaway, academic, writer and teacher based in the North of England