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
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
