Hope in the Anthropocene: Agency, Governance and Negation

by Valerie Waldow (Editor), Pol Bargués (Editor), David Chandler (Editor)

Overview

New modes of Hope have emerged in the Anthropocene, increasingly grounded in an ethics of attentiveness and responsibility. Through incorporating contemporary approaches to both theory and policy practice, including critical, feminist, black and indigenous perspectives, this book analyses how Hope works with the uncertainties and interdependencies of human agency and interaction. It draws out the problems of integrating Hope into governance and policy management, and engages with Hope as a potentially negating force, in a world which can be seen as one of unending catastrophe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399529853
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	08/31/2024
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Valerie Waldow is Lecturer at the Department of Political Science at Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg, Germany. Her research interests include international political theory, rationalities of international interventions and governance, Anthropocene discourses, and prospects for hope and critique in IR.

Pol Bargués is Senior Research Fellow at Barcelona Centre for International Affairs, Spain. Over the years he has developed an interest in the intersection of philosophy, critical theory and International Relations. In particular, he has critically interrogated international interventions in conflict-affected societies and explored the increasing prevalence of the ideas of resilience, hybridity, and hope.

David Chandler is Professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster, UK. He edits the open access journal Anthropocenes: Human, Inhuman, Posthuman. His recent books include: The World as Abyss: The Caribbean and Critical Thought in the Anthropocene (2023); International Relations in the Anthropocene: New Agendas, New Agencies and New Approaches (2021); and Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds (2021).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Dark Hope in the Anthropocene

Valerie Waldow (Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg), Pol Bargués (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs) and David Chandler (University of Westminster)

Part One: Agency

Chapter 2

The Anthropocene and the Unseen: Speculative, Pragmatic and Nihilist Hope

David Chandler (University of Westminster)

Chapter 3

A Hope against Hope: Scandal, Cynicism and Critique in the Wake of the Covid-19 polycrisis

Chris Zebrowski (Loughborough University)

Chapter 4

Working for 'Minor Utopias': Youth Employment in Sierra Leone and Liberia

Sukanya Podder and Raul Zepeda Gil (King’s College London)

Chapter 5

Visualising Hope in the Radical Data Work of W. E. B. Du Bois

Kiran K Phull (King’s College London)

Chapter 6

A Feminist Ethic of Care for Orienting Utopia in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico

Christie Nicoson (Lund University)

Part Two: Governance

Chapter 7

Enduring Hopelessness: Governance without Horizon in Pandemic Times

Nicolas Gäckle (University of Groningen)

Chapter 8

Securing the Hopeful Subject? The Militarisation of Complexity Science and the Limits of Decolonial Critique

Claes Tängh Wrangel (Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism, Uppsala University)

Chapter 9

The Hope-Colonialism Nexus

Marjo Lindroth (University of Lapland) and Heidi Sinevaara-Niskanen (University of Lapland)

Chapter 10

Hopeful Times, Black Futures, and Things Quantum Technologies Tell about International Institutions

Geoff Gordon (Asser Institute, University of Amsterdam)

Chapter 11

In the Breaches of Cancelled Futures: The Entropies of Modernisation and Ecological Recomposition

Renan Porto (University of Westminster)

Part Three: Negation

Chapter 12

Hope and the End of Critique? Crisis and Affirmation in the Anthropocene

Valerie Waldow (Otto von Guericke University, Magdeburg)

Chapter 13

Hope in a World that will Never End? The Problem of Fanatical Hope in Critical Dystopias

Aristidis V. Agoglossakis Foley (University of St Andrews)

Chapter 14

Hope Makes Strange: Affect, Hope, and Strangeness

Srishti Malaviya (O.P. Jindal Global University)

Chapter 15

Reimagining Hopeful Anthropocene Futures: From Entanglements to Radical Openness

Ignasi Torrent (University of Herefordshire)

Chapter 16

Hope As a Theopolitical Virtue: Eschatology and End of Time Politics

Vassilios Paipais (University of St Andrews)

Hope: An Epilogue

Fleur Johns (University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney)

Editorial Reviews

Hope is not commonly associated with the Anthropocene and its catastrophic implications. Without some positive hope – that is, recognition, planning, experimentation, invention and, above all, a new relation to the earth – we cannot face the unknowns that lie ahead. This book explores what a guarded and strategic hope, a ‘dark hope,’ might add to our understanding of what lies ahead.

Elizabeth Grosz