Journal Issues by Karolina Jesień
Dreams of a Better Life - Rethinking Marxism with Ernst Bloch, 2020
Since the 1970s, a neo-liberal paralysis of political imagination has maintained
a tight grip on ... more Since the 1970s, a neo-liberal paralysis of political imagination has maintained
a tight grip on many leftist thinkers and social activists. While
the 2008 crisis once again proved capitalism’s suicidal tendencies to be
ineradicable, the global response to it seems to have been far from hopeful for the left. This is especially true in the wake of Brexit, Trump,
Bolsonaro and Johnson, as well as many grassroot neo-fascist movements which have been steadily on the rise across Europe in the last decades. As Mark Fisher wrote, “capitalism seamlessly occupies the horizons of the thinkable” (Fisher 2013, 8). It is not coincidental that this sentence was published a year after the 2008 banking crisis, which has as yet failed to ignite a revolutionary sparkle. However, perhaps refuting, Fisher’s over-fatalistic predictions to some extent, recently there has been a significant rise of feminist and ecologically oriented grassroot movements. This has undoubtedly sparked new hopes for a possibility of an alternative to the capitalist Now, however proposals for a radical change of the mode of production are still very rare. As a possibly hopeful contribution to this debate, we propose turning to the almost century-old prolific writings of Ernst Bloch and, in particular, his concept of utopia.
Papers by Karolina Jesień
Praktyka Teoretyczna, 2020
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Journal Issues by Karolina Jesień
a tight grip on many leftist thinkers and social activists. While
the 2008 crisis once again proved capitalism’s suicidal tendencies to be
ineradicable, the global response to it seems to have been far from hopeful for the left. This is especially true in the wake of Brexit, Trump,
Bolsonaro and Johnson, as well as many grassroot neo-fascist movements which have been steadily on the rise across Europe in the last decades. As Mark Fisher wrote, “capitalism seamlessly occupies the horizons of the thinkable” (Fisher 2013, 8). It is not coincidental that this sentence was published a year after the 2008 banking crisis, which has as yet failed to ignite a revolutionary sparkle. However, perhaps refuting, Fisher’s over-fatalistic predictions to some extent, recently there has been a significant rise of feminist and ecologically oriented grassroot movements. This has undoubtedly sparked new hopes for a possibility of an alternative to the capitalist Now, however proposals for a radical change of the mode of production are still very rare. As a possibly hopeful contribution to this debate, we propose turning to the almost century-old prolific writings of Ernst Bloch and, in particular, his concept of utopia.
Papers by Karolina Jesień
a tight grip on many leftist thinkers and social activists. While
the 2008 crisis once again proved capitalism’s suicidal tendencies to be
ineradicable, the global response to it seems to have been far from hopeful for the left. This is especially true in the wake of Brexit, Trump,
Bolsonaro and Johnson, as well as many grassroot neo-fascist movements which have been steadily on the rise across Europe in the last decades. As Mark Fisher wrote, “capitalism seamlessly occupies the horizons of the thinkable” (Fisher 2013, 8). It is not coincidental that this sentence was published a year after the 2008 banking crisis, which has as yet failed to ignite a revolutionary sparkle. However, perhaps refuting, Fisher’s over-fatalistic predictions to some extent, recently there has been a significant rise of feminist and ecologically oriented grassroot movements. This has undoubtedly sparked new hopes for a possibility of an alternative to the capitalist Now, however proposals for a radical change of the mode of production are still very rare. As a possibly hopeful contribution to this debate, we propose turning to the almost century-old prolific writings of Ernst Bloch and, in particular, his concept of utopia.