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Hope in the AnthropoceneAgency, Governance and Negation

Edited by Valerie Waldow, Pol Bargués and David Chandler

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About this book

Explores the centrality of hope to political thought and policy practice in the Anthropocene

  • Examines topical concerns of the Anthropocene including a loss of belief in human exceptionalism and in a telos of progress
  • Engages with hope conceptually and materially rather than merely as a positive attitude of mind
  • Draws on contemporary theoretical approaches, including drawing upon Critical, Feminist, Black, and Indigenous studies
  • Uses contemporary empirical and policy examples including environmental issues of land use and extraction and Covid governance
  • Takes an interdisciplinary approach, including expertise from the fields of geography, law, politics, and international relations

New modes of Hope have emerged in the Anthropocene, increasingly grounded in an ethics of attentiveness and responsibility. Through incorporating contemporary approaches to both theory and policy practice, including critical, feminist, black and indigenous perspectives, this book analyses how Hope works with the uncertainties and interdependencies of human agency and interaction. It draws out the problems of integrating Hope into governance and policy management, and engages with Hope as a potentially negating force, in a world which can be seen as one of unending catastrophe.

Reviews

Hope is not commonly associated with the Anthropocene and its catastrophic implications. Without some positive hope – that is, recognition, planning, experimentation, invention and, above all, a new relation to the earth – we cannot face the unknowns that lie ahead. This book explores what a guarded and strategic hope, a ‘dark hope,’ might add to our understanding of what lies ahead.

An invaluable source and an inspiring new contribution that will be of interest to anyone researching the concept of hope in the political world.
Table of contents

Introduction: Dark Hope in the Anthropocene
Valerie Waldow, Pol Bargués and David Chandler

Part I. Agency

  1. The Anthropocene and the Unseen: Speculative, Pragmatic and Nihilist Hope
    David Chandler
  2. A Hope against Hope: Scandal, Cynicism and Critique in the Wake of the Covid-19 polycrisis
    Chris Zebrowski
  3. Working for 'Minor Utopias': Youth Employment in Sierra Leone and Liberia
    Sukanya Podder and Raul Zepeda Gil
  4. Visualising Hope in the Radical Data Work of W. E. B. Du Bois
    Kiran K. Phull
  5. A Feminist Ethic of Care for Orienting Utopia in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico
    Christie Nicoson

Part II. Governance

  1. Enduring Hopelessness: Governance without Horizon in Pandemic Times
    Nicolas Gäckle
  2. Securing the Hopeful Subject? The Militarisation of Complexity Science and the Limits of Decolonial Critique
    Claes Tängh Wrangel
  3. The Hope-Colonialism Nexus
    Marjo Lindroth and Heidi Sinevaara-Niskanen
  4. Hopeful Times, Black Futures, and Things Quantum Technologies Tell about International Institutions
    Geoff Gordon
  5. In the Breaches of Cancelled Futures: The Entropies of Modernisation and Ecological Recomposition
    Renan Porto

Part III. Negation

  1. Hope and the End of Critique? Crisis and Affirmation in the Anthropocene
    Valerie Waldow (Otto von Guericke University, Magdeburg)
  2. Hope in a World that will Never End? The Problem of Fanatical Hope in Critical Dystopias
    Aristidis V. Agoglossakis Foley
  3. Hope Makes Strange: Affect, Hope, and Strangeness
    Srishti Malaviya
  4. Reimagining Hopeful Anthropocene Futures: From Entanglements to Radical Openness
    Ignasi Torrent
  5. Hope as a Theopolitical Virtue: Eschatology and End of Time Politics
    Vassilios Paipais

Hope: An Epilogue
Fleur Johns

About the contributors

Valerie Waldow

Valerie Waldow is Lecturer and Research Associate at the Department of Political Science at Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany. Her research focuses on critical international political theory, liberal violence and democratic critique, and International Relations in the Anthropocene, with particular attention to intervention, governance, and political imaginaries. She works on critique, epistemic limits, and transformations of political thought, especially in relation to debates on hope and negativity in contemporary political theory. She is co-editor of Hope in the Anthropocene: Agency, Governance and Negation (2024, EUP).

Pol Bargués

Pol Bargués is Senior Research Fellow at Barcelona Centre for International Affairs, Spain. Over the years he has developed an interest in the intersection of philosophy, critical theory and International Relations. In particular, he has critically interrogated international interventions in conflict-affected societies and explored the increasing prevalence of the ideas of resilience, hybridity, and hope.

David Chandler

David Chandler is Professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster and edits the journal Anthropocenes: Human, Inhuman, Posthuman. His recent publications include: Hope: Shortcuts to a Big Idea (2026); Race in the Anthropocene: Coloniality, Disavowal and the Black Horizon (2025); Hope in the Anthropocene: Agency, Governance and Negation (2024); The World as Abyss: The Caribbean and Critical Thought in the Anthropocene (2023); International Relations in the Anthropocene: New Agendas, New Agencies and New Approaches (2021); and Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds (2021).