Instead, it grasps the New as something that is mediated in what exists and is in motion, although to be revealed the New demands the most extreme effort of will. That is why real venturing beyond never goes into the mere vacuum of an In-Front-of-Us, merely fanatically, merely visualizing abstractions. Not in the causes of deprivation, let alone in the first signs of the change which is ripening within it. Not in its deprivation, let alone in moving out of it. But in such a way that what already exists is not kept under or skated over. So that the wheat which is trying to ripen can be encouraged to grow and be harvested. Then let the daydreams grow really fuller, that is, clearer, less random, more familiar, more clearly understood and more mediated with the course of things. Not in the sense of merely contemplative reason which takes things as they are and as they stand, but of participating reason which takes them as they go, and therefore also as they could go better. Let the daydreams grow even fuller, since this means they are enriching themselves around the sober glance not in the sense of clogging, but of becoming clear. Nobody has ever lived without daydreams, but it is a question of knowing them deeper and deeper and in this way keeping them trained unerringly, usefully, on what is right. It can be extricated from the unregulated daydream and from its sly misuse, can be activated undimmed. This other part has hoping at its core, and is teachable. Everybody’s life is pervaded by daydreams: one part of this is just stale, even enervating escapism, even booty for swindlers, but another part is provocative, is not content just to accept the bad which exists, does not accept renunciation. How richly people have always dreamed of this, dreamed of the better life that might be possible. The work against anxiety about life and the machinations of fear is that against its creators, who are for the most part easy to identify, and it looks in the world itself for what can help the world this can be found. It will not tolerate a dog’s life which feels itself only passively thrown into What Is, which is not seen through, even wretchedly recognized. The work of this emotion requires people who throw themselves actively into what is becoming, to which they themselves belong. The emotion of hope goes out of itself, makes people broad instead of confining them, cannot know nearly enough of what it is that makes them inwardly aimed, of what may be allied to them outwardly. Hope, superior to fear, is neither passive like the latter, nor locked into nothingness. Its work does not renounce, it is in love with success rather than failure. But now that the creators of fear have been dealt with, a feeling that suits us better is overdue. In the time that has just passed, it came easier and closer, the art was mastered in a terrible fashion. Once a man travelled far and wide to learn fear. Theirs is a state of anxiety if it becomes more definite, then it is fear. The ground shakes, they do not know why and with what. Bloch’s time of “not-yet”), as displaced by the questioning of “utopia” in today’s catastrophic circumstances.Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What are we waiting for? What awaits us? In his lecture, “ Uncovering lines of escape: towards a concept of concrete utopia in the age of catastrophes ,” the philosopher Étienne Balibar develops three dimensions of the urgency of rethinking concrete utopias in these times of crises: first, Balibar discusses the dilemmas surrounding the concept of utopia and utopian thinking, without which there could be no “radical” politics, but at a time and in an age of at least three major catastrophes (the climate, the nuclear, and the digital) second, Balibar explores “real” or “concrete” utopias in light of the Foucauldian distinction between “utopias” and “heterotopias,” which could also be interpreted as a conversion of utopia into heterotopias third, Balibar concludes on the transcendental problems of the different modalities of the “possible,” the “impossible,” the “necessary,” the “inevitable,” in their relationship to a concept of time (e.g. Harcourt read and discuss Ernst Bloch, The Spirit of Utopia (1918) Michel Foucault, “ Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” (1967/1984) Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future (2005) Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1847) Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek, Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics (2013) Erik Olin Wright, Envisioning Real Utopias (Verso 2010) and Zapatista Army of National Liberation, Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandonia (2005) (all readings available on-line here) ~ ~ ~ Wednesday, SeptemMaison Française, Columbia University ~ ~ ~ “ Uncovering lines of escape: towards a concept of concrete utopia in the age of catastrophes,” by Étienne BalibarĮtienne Balibar and Bernard E.
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