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It isn't getting better: the transformative potentials of hopelessness

This thesis approaches hopelessness through the work of Deleuze and Guattari, situating their thought in relation to Baruch Spinoza and Brian Massumi. Drawing on Massumi’s theorizing of fear, and Spinoza’s theorizing the link between hope and fear, I argue that hope keeps bodies and politics bound to a future that comes to organize the present. From this perspective, I argue that hopelessness can become an important element of not only undoing the ways that future forces come to organize the present, but can open immanent ways of participating in the organization of emergent forces. The thesis also clarifies the differences between affect and emotion, and the body and the subject. This supports an understanding of politics as the undoing and warding off of hope through attending to hopelessness, and an increase in bodies’ capacities to experiment and participate in the organization of their own desires and situations. / Graduate

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/8926
Date02 January 2018
CreatorsSmith, Kimberly
ContributorsGarlick, Steve
Source SetsUniversity of Victoria
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Formatapplication/pdf
RightsAvailable to the World Wide Web

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