OPTIMISM-2018: Optimism at the End of the World: between Hope and Ignorance Helenekilde Badehotel Tisvildeleje, Denmark, August 22-24, 2018 |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=optimism2018 |
OPTIMISM AT THE END OF THE WORLD:
BETWEEN HOPE AND IGNORANCE
Anthropological workshop proposed by Anja Kublitz and Michael Ulfstjerne
Helenekilde Badehotel, 22–24 August 2018
Experiences of and concerns with endings and dystopias underwrite the contemporary world. Confronted with escalating climate crises and political disintegration, pessimism seems to prevail. Some argue that we have entered a ‘post-utopian’ time marked by a dwindling faith in overarching political ideals and the parallel dissolution of meta-narratives (Schklar 1957). Nevertheless – post-utopian or not – optimism still presents itself as an empirical phenomenon. While the world is falling apart, humans – as well as other species – are building it anew. In this workshop, we want to explore optimism as a force in the world that crafts communities, ecologies and economies. Moving beyond what is realistic, probable or even imaginable, optimism engenders relations, ideas and materialities that – if only for a moment – allow new worlds to flourish.
In anthropology, optimism has been dealt with from a number of perspectives. Following along the lines of critical theory and Marxist approaches, optimism occupies an ambiguous position. On the one hand, the dialectics of historical materialism are premised on the very idea of a revolutionary transcendence, while on the other hand, the optimist consciousness of pre-revolutionary subjects is rendered as false – and the optimist subject as deceived. In more recent critiques of the attachments and affects of neoliberal imaginaries, scholars have dubbed optimism as ‘hegemonic’ (Berlant and Warner 1998) or even ‘cruel’ (Berlant 2006). Following a different trajectory, Anna Tsing writes that ‘… in the face of almost certain destruction, hope is a Gramscian optimism of the will. Such “unrealistic” hope begins in considering the possibility that tiny cracks might yet break open the dam’ (2005: 267). Advancing optimism as an analytical concept, this symposium aims to unfold the notion in all its destructive and constructive ambivalences through ethnographies of more or less steadfast optimism – also in the face of looming extinction.
As a first step towards carving out optimism as an analytical concept, we suggest that it might be helpful to think of optimism as balancing between hope and ignorance.
Optimism and Hope
Optimism, we suggest, is related to but distinct from hope in at least three ways. First, there might be a difference between hope and optimism in terms of temporality. Hope is often related to the future. Ernest Bloch’s work on utopia and hope paved the way for a future orientation in philosophical thought. Man, Bloch argues, is not driven simply by the unconscious stemming from an ever-accumulating past but equally by the ‘not-yet conscious’, i.e. man is determined by a ‘future becoming’ (Bloch 1986: 11). Generally, the concept of hope takes up what Pedersen and Liisberg (2015: 1) call a ‘subjunctive space’ that is premised on a radical break with the present condition that an imagined or hoped for future may bring. Conversely, we propose that optimism can be oriented towards a past that never was (e.g. Trump’s slogan ‘Make America great again’ or the establishment of an Islamic caliphate) or a radical present (like a miracle) that may collapse pre-established assumptions about time (cf. Bergson 2002[1907]; Dalsgaard and Nielsen 2013; Hamann 2016). Second, hope is often construed as a wilful way for individuals to cope with everyday life in a meaningful way (cf. Crapanzano 2003; Miyazaki 2004; Tsing 2005). Bourdieu’s (2000) work on illusio is a central reference here (Gren 2015; Lindquist 2006), adding emphasis to the subtle forms of agency and future-oriented investment that ethnographers encounter, often among dispossessed groups. In contrast, we suggest that optimism can denote a strong de-individualizing quality. Housing price bubbles, political revolutions and investment frenzies spur collective atmospheres that allow optimism’s affective and mimetic qualities to be manifested in force. Optimism may be particularly potent as an apposite tool to engage crowds and masses. Finally, there is something hopeful about the literature on hope. Hope is often posited as ‘resistance’ or a ‘weapon of the weak’ that we more often than not locate among marginalized groups working against capitalist, neoliberal and authoritarian regimes. This normative bias can provide us with what Kleijst and Jansen (2016: 378) call ‘hopeful glimpses of radical political alternatives’ yet it may also exclude others’ – potent – hopes. Optimism, we contend, may offer a less normative concept that equally can be used to analyse what drives neo-nationalist and populist movements, global jihad and neoliberalism.
Optimism and Ignorance
Optimism raises certain epistemological questions. At first glance, it relates to a particular deficit of knowledge and entails taking a distinctively ‘positive’ position in relation to this lack. Being premised on not knowing something – or the wilful disregard of certain ‘facts’ – optimism is closely related to ignorance (cf. Sullivan and Tuana 2007; Proctor and Schiebinger 2008; Proctor and Dilley 2010; High, Kelly and Mair 2012; Kirsch and Dilley 2015). In this vein, ignorance has several implications for our present attempt to engage optimism. First of all, optimism might be thought of as an effect of aphasia (cf. Stoler 2016) or false consciousness. Since knowledge might be occluded or unequally distributed, lack of knowledge could mislead people into taking an optimistic stance. Yet ignorance may equally be considered strategic and a way of resisting existing hegemonies of power (Bailey 2007: 84). By implication, optimism as ignorance serves as a heuristic tool to ponder questions of power in knowledge production: why some and not other forms of knowing gain ground (Proctor and Schiebinger 2008). Second, ignorance can be a central prerequisite for what we might call optimistic actions (e.g. certain forms of political activism or millenarian practices). Arendt argues that all action is a venture because ‘we do not know what we do’ (2013(1965): 38). As such, ignorance has positive generative effects and optimism might be thought of as a specific intense modality of action characterized by the active suspension of knowledge: ‘we refuse to know (the realistic outcome of) what we do’. Attachment to a certain ignorant vantage point may even be considered benign in the sense that it actively guards us from ambiguity (cf. Bubant and Liisberg 2015: 139). In this way, strategic or even subversive uses of ignorance echo iconic optimists in literature history; for example, Voltaire’s Candide; Hasek’s The Good Soldier Schweik and Habibi’s The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist. Finally, optimism, by way of ignorance, might be considered a way of caring. Letting sleeping dogs lie can be a central element of providing optimism for others. The knowledge that our interlocutors choose not to pass on to their children (Kublitz 2011) or the silences that prevail within a specific field might be considered ways of protecting and sustaining specific people or believes. This last issue reflects a moral standpoint through which the interlocutor or the ethnographer actively chooses to engage phenomena in the field in terms of their perceived optimistic effects.
Optimism and Ethics
As an empirical phenomenon, optimism presents the ethnographer with a set of ethical and moral predicaments. Does the belief in continuously rising house prices reflect sound calculation on behalf of the prospective buyer or does it simply reflect the dishonest rhetoric of powerful developers and lenders? Are the optimisms and religious aspirations to establish a caliphate empowering for marginalized minorities or merely religious elites’ prescriptions of disillusionment and death? The recent turn to ontology and radical empiricism could push ethnographers to take the optimist stance seriously: Accept the premises that prices do rise in the eyes of investors and house owners, that piousness and meditation may momentarily obliterate gravity, that revolutions will yield a more just society and that thousand-year kingdoms may come. Yet, at what cost do we as observers entertain utopianisms that may yield disastrous effects?
Proceeding from these initial reflections, we ask what could be gained from making optimism itself a locus for anthropological inquiry. We invite papers that think about optimism across a range of different contexts: economic booms, new age spiritualism, political revolutions, technological leaps, millenarian movements, urban planning, positive psychology and emerging ecologies.
We ask participants to present ethnographic examples in which ‘optimism at the end of the world’ features as a central element that lends itself to exploring the aspects and limits of optimism as a theoretical concept.
Practicalities
The workshop will gather a small group of researchers together to work towards clarifying the way anthropology may critically engage with optimism at the end of the world.
In the spirit of the title, the workshop will be held on 22–24 August 2018 at the beautiful Helenekilde Badehotel (http://helenekilde.com/en/) on the north coast of the Danish island of Zealand. Should you be able to join us, please submit an abstract of your paper (250 words) via EasyChair by 1 March 2018. Following this, we will ask you to submit a written paper of up to 8,000 words via EasyChair by 1 August 2018. Presentations at the workshop itself will need to be 20–30 minutes long.
Please confirm your participation by responding to kublitz@cgs.aau.dk no later than 5 January 2018. Marianne Ellersgaard, ellersgaard@cgs.aau.dk, can assist you with your travel arrangements. We will cover all travel and accommodation costs.
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