The Privatization of Hope: Ernst Bloch and the Future of Utopia, SIC 8

Peter Thompson · Slavoj Zizek

Jan. 2014 · [sic] Series Boek 8 · Duke University Press

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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

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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.