Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T03:27:42.824Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Dark Futures: Toward a Philosophical Archaeology of Hope

The Royal Institute of Philosophy Cardiff Lecture, 2023

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2024

Abstract

Early in World War I, Virginia Woolf wrote these words: ‘The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be […]’. It is tempting to assume that darkness simply hides the unknown and the threatening. It is more challenging to think of it as Woolf did: rich with possibility in even the most desperate times.

We live in what many would readily describe as dark times. These times have brought (among much else) a once-in-a-century public health crisis, the continued redemption of toxic white supremacy, declining trust in and support for public institutions, and growing evidence of impending climate devastation. ‘Dark Futures’ will consider some of the scenes of this devastation and mine them for insights into our predicaments and our prospects.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of Philosophy

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adorno, Theodor, ‘The Essay as Form’, in Nicholsen, Shierry Weber (trans.), Notes to Literature, Vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 323.Google Scholar
James, Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, in Toni, Morrison (ed.), Baldwin: Collected Essays (1962; New York: Library of America, 1998).Google Scholar
Balfour, Lawrie, The Evidence of Things Unseen (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
BBC, ‘Atlanta Spa Shootings: Who Are the Victims?’ (21 March 2021), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56446771.Google Scholar
Cavell, Stanley, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).Google Scholar
Eliot, T.S., Four Quartets (1941; New York: Ecco, 2023).Google Scholar
Glaude, Eddie S. Jr., ‘A Requiem for Michael Brown/A Praisesong for Ferguson’, Theory & Event supplementary volume, 17:3 (2014), np.Google Scholar
Glaude, Eddie S. Jr., We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (2024).Google Scholar
GMA Integrated News (Phillipines) (9 October 2023), available at https://fb.watch/pAiegyOlgi/.Google Scholar
Ford, Paul Leicester (ed.), The Works of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 10 (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1984).Google Scholar
Lerman, Amy E. and Weaver, Vesla M., Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowery, Wesley, They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2016).Google Scholar
Lukacs, Georg, ‘On the Nature and Form of the Essay’, in Bostock, Anna (trans.), Soul and Form, (1911; Cambridge, MA: MIT press, 1974), 118.Google Scholar
Medina, José, The Epistemology of Resistance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).Google Scholar
Medina, José, ‘Epistemic Injustice and Epistemologies of Ignorance’, in Alcoff, Linda Martín, Anderson, Luvell, and Taylor, Paul C. (eds.), The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017).Google Scholar
Mellen, Ruby, Olorunnipa, Toluse, Taylor, Adam, and Balousha, Hazem, ‘Biden says “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza is costing Israel support’, The Washington Post (12 December 2023), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/12/israel-gaza-hamas-biden-netanyahu/.Google Scholar
Morales, Tori, ‘How Reports of Hate Crimes in the US Were Already at Record Highs, in 4 Charts’, CNN.com (11 December 2023), https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/29/us/hate-crimes-antisemitism-anti-muslim-dg/index.html.Google Scholar
Morrison, Toni, ‘The Site of Memory’, in Zinsser, William (ed.), Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, 2nd ed. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 83102.Google Scholar
Murakawa, Naomi, ‘Review of Caught and Arresting Citizenship’, Perspectives on Politics, 13:3 (2015), 805–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perpich, Diane, ‘Levinas and the Face of the Other’, in Morgan, Michael L. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Levinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 243–58.Google Scholar
Solnit, Rebecca, Hope in the Dark, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016).Google Scholar
Solnit, Rebecca, ‘Introduction’, The Best American Essays: 2019 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), 2651.Google Scholar
Stockdale, Katie, ‘Introduction: Oppression and the Question of Hope’, Hope Under Oppression (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, John Jeremiah, ‘Introduction: The Ill-Defined Plot’, The Best American Essays: 2014 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), 2346.Google Scholar
Taylor, Paul C., ‘Taking Post-Racialism Seriously: From Movement Mythology to Racial Formation’, Du Bois Review, 11:1 (2014), 925.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Ferguson Commission, Forward through Ferguson: A Path toward Racial Equity – A Printed Companion to Forwardthroughferguson.Org as of October 14th, 2015 (Ferguson, Missouri: The Ferguson Commission, 2015).Google Scholar
Weber, Jeremy, ‘Hope Is Not “A” Strategy: It's the Only Strategy’, War Room: The Online Journal of the U.S. Army War College (27 February 2018), https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/hope-not-strategy-strategy/.Google Scholar
Savali, Kirsten West, ‘When It Comes to Ferguson, President Obama Could Take a Lesson From Cornel West’, theroot.com (2 December 2014), available at https://www.theroot.com/when-it-comes-to-ferguson-president-obama-could-take-a-1790877922.Google Scholar
Wills, Garry, ‘Behind Obama's Cool’, New York Times Book Review (7 April 2010), https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/books/review/Wills-t.html?hp.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia, The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1915–1919 (United Kingdom: Hogarth Press, 1977).Google Scholar