The concept of hope is central to the work of the German philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885–1977), especially in his magnum opus, The Principle of Hope (1959). The "speculative materialism" that he first developed in the 1930s asserts a commitment to humanity's potential that continued through his later work. In The Privatization of Hope, leading thinkers in utopian studies explore the insights that Bloch's ideas provide in understanding the present. Mired in the excesses and disaffections of contemporary capitalist society, hope in the Blochian sense has become atomized, desocialized, and privatized. From myriad perspectives, the contributors clearly delineate the renewed value of Bloch's theories in this age of hopelessness. Bringing Bloch's "ontology of Not Yet Being" into conversation with twenty-first-century concerns, this collection is intended to help revive and revitalize philosophy's commitment to the generative force of hope.
Contributors. Roland Boer, Frances Daly, Henk de Berg, Vincent Geoghegan, Wayne Hudson, Ruth Levitas, David Miller, Catherine Moir, Caitríona Ní Dhúill, Welf Schröter, Johan Siebers, Peter Thompson, Francesca Vidal, Rainer Ernst Zimmermann, Slavoj Žižek
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Editions and Translations
- Preface: Bloch's Ontology of Not-Yet-Being - Slavoj Žižek
- Introduction: The Privitization of Hope and the Crisis of Negation - Peter Thompson
- Chapter 1. Bloch and a Philosophy of the Proterior - Wayne Hudson
- Chapter 2. An Anti-humanist Utopia? - Vincent Geoghegan
- Chapter 3. Ernst Bloch's Dialectical Anthropolgy - Johan Siebers
- Chapter 4. Religion, Utopia, and the Metaphysics of Contingency - Peter Thompson
- Chapter 5. The Privatization of Eschatology and Myth: Ernst Bloch vs. Rudolph Bultmann - Roland Boer
- Chapter 6. The Education of Hope: On the Dialectical Potential of Speculative Materialism - Catherine Moir
- Chapter 7. Engendering the Future: Bloch's Utopian Philosophy in Dialogue with Gender Theory - Caitríona Ní Dhúill
- Chapter 8. The Zero-Point: Encountering the Dark Emptiness of Nothingness - Frances Daly
- Chapter 9. A Marxist Poetics: Allegory and Reading in The Principle of Hope - David Miller
- Chapter 10. Singing Summons the Existence of the Fountain: Bloch, Music, and Utopia - Ruth Levitas
- Chapter 11. Transforming utopian into Metopian Systems: Bloch's Principle of Hope Revisted - Rainer E. Zimmermann
- Chapter 12. Unlearning How to Hope: Eleven Theses in Defense of Liberal Democracy and Consumer Culture - Henk de Berg
- Chapter 13. Can We Hope to Walk Tall in a Computerized World of Work? - Francesca Vidal and Welf Schröter, Translated by Nck Hodgin
- Contributors
- Index
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