Revolutionary Hope in a Time of Crisis

Maša Mrovlje is Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Leeds. Her research interests are located within contemporary political thought, with a specific emphasis on theories of resistance and resistance movements. She is the author of Rethinking Political Judgement: Arendt and Existentialism (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). Her articles appeared in leading international journals, including The Journal of Politics, Millennium, Philosophy & Social Criticism and Political Theory . Her current project, entitled Disappointment: Reclaiming the Unfulfilled Promise of Resistance , explores the political potentials of disappointment within the modern revolutionary tradition. Alex Zamalin is Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. He is the author of six books, African American Political Thought and American Culture: The Nation’s Struggle for Racial Justice (New York: Palgrave, 2015), Struggle on their Minds: The Political Thought of African American Resistance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), Antiracism: An Introduction (NYU Press, 2019), Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism (Columbia University Press, 2019) which was named a 2020 Choice Outstanding Title by the American Library Association, and Against Civility: The Hidden Racism in Our Obsession with Civility (Beacon, 2021). His most recent book is All Is Not Lost: 20 Ways to Revolutionize Disaster (Beacon Press, spring 2022). Zamalin is also a co-editor for a collection of scholarly essays aimed at reinterpreting the American political tradition, American Political Thought: An Alternative View (New York: Routledge, 2017). His scholarly essays have appeared in various edited book collections and journals like New Political Science , Contemporary Political Theory and Political Theory . Zamalin has been a guest on NPR and MSNBC and his work has been featured in The Guardian , Literary Hub , Religion Dispatches , ESPN’s Undefeated , and YES! magazine.

Introduction
Maša Mrovlje and Alex Zamalin
Part 1: Rethinking the Relationship Between Loss and Revolutionary Politics
1. Gramsci and the Problem of Fatalism
Lukas Slothuus
2. The Promise of Solidarity: Learning from Failure with Rosa Luxemburg
Maša Mrovlje
3. Between Loss and Hope: Reflections on the Black Revolutionary Tradition
Alex Zamalin
4. Displacing Hope: A Black Thought Experiment
Joseph Winters
Part 2: Negative Affect, Mobilisation and the Troubles of Democracy
5. Staying with melancholy? An archive of the future’s past
Brigitte Bargetz
6. Negative Affect and Political (De)Mobilization
Deborah Gould
7. Politics as Breath-work
David McIvor
Part 3: Resisting Resistance, Disavowal and Resilience
8. Existential Political Commitment and Radical Love as Resources Against Resisting Resistance
Lewis R. Gordon
9. Revolutionary Nonviolence and the Problem of Disavowal
Erin Pineda
10. The Promise of Resilience: Governance and Resistance in ‘Complex Times’
Alix Olson