Overview

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, Caitriona Ni Dhuill, Welf Schroeter, Johan Siebers, Peter Thompson, Francesca Vidal, Rainer Ernst Zimmermann, Slavoj Zizek

Full Product Details

Author:   Peter Thompson ,  Slavoj Zizek
Publisher:   Duke University Press
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Volume:   8
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.581kg
ISBN:  

9780822355755

ISBN 10:   0822355752
Pages:   336
Publication Date:   19 December 2013
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi Note of Editions and Translations xiii Preface / Slavoj Zizek xv Introduction: The Privatization of Hope and the Crisis of Negation / Peter Thompson 1 1. Bloch and a Philosophy of the Proterior / Wayne Hudson 21 2. An Anti-humanist Utopia? / Vincent Goeghegan 37 3. Ernst Bloch's Dialectical Anthropology / Johan Siebers 61 4. Religion, Utopia, and the Metaphysics of Contingency / Peter Thompson 82 5. The Privatization of Eschatology and Myth: Ernst Block vs. Rudolph Bultmann / Roland Boer 106 6. The Education of Hope: On the Dialectical Potential of Speculative Materialism / Catherine Moir 121 7. Engendering the Future: Bloch's Utopian Philosophy in Dialogue with Gender Theory / Caitríona Ní Dhúill 144 8. The Zero-Point: Encountering the Dark Emptiness of Nothingness / Frances Daly 164 9. A Marxist Poetics: Allegory and Reading in The Principle of Hope / David Miller 203 10. Singing Summons the Existence of the Fountain: Bloch, Music, and Utopia / Ruth Levitas 219 11. Transforming Utopian into Metopian Systems: Bloch's Principle of Hope Revisited / Rainer E. Zimmerman 246 12. Unlearning How to Hope: Eleven Theses in Defense of Liberal Democracy and Consumer Culture / Henk de Berg 269 13. Can We Hope to Walk Tall in a Computerized World of Work? / Francesca Vidal and Welf Schröter 288 Contributors 301 Index 305

Reviews

Late capitalism has been celebrated by its apologists as that stage of society in which nothing more, nothing new, will ever happen (except for wars, catastrophes, bankruptcy and Armageddon): the end of history as the death of the future. In this affluent desolation, at the tail-end of all thought, we confront the immense enigmatic figure of Ernst Bloch and that tangle of the Not-Yet-Conceived --the heritage of unfinished business, loose ends and tired aporias, in which new problems are somewhere hidden, new futures slumber, and a freshening and a renewal of history is promised. The present collection makes a start on renewing Bloch himself as a living multiplicity of themes and questions, and may even mark a beginning of that new beginning with which he tantalized us. --Fredric Jameson, Duke University

Author Information

Peter Thompson is Reader in German at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of The Crisis of the German Left. Slavoj Žižek is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is the author of many books, including Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism.

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