Contribution short abstract:

This paper discusses the key role of hope for radical social change in light of current authoritarian developments. Drawing on research on Turkey, it illustrates how envisaging radical transformation is impeded through a paradoxical production and deferral of hope by contradictory state practices.

Contribution long abstract:

The starting point of my paper is the notion of “hope”. Hope for change is intrinsically connected to with the ability to envisage the possibility of change. While liberal democracy has institutionalized this possibility within its provisions for alternating power, radical change is tied to the ability to think a future beyond the given and hence entails an affective dimension.

Drawing on research on current state government in Turkey, this paper illustrates how hope is dismantled not through its absolute foreclosure, but rather through its deferral. This ‘soft’ authoritarian government distinguishes itself from full dictatorship or fascism through its specific use of contradictions. It fundamentally undermines basic democratic principles, while upholding formally democratic structures. It does this not only by legal means, but with an array of administrative, discursive, social and affective practices whose key characteristic is to “sustain and contain contradictions” (Martin & Krause-Jensen) that make it impossible to critique the contradictions they entail. The result is what my interlocuters call a state of total ‘absurdity’ or: madness. As part of this, hope is repeatedly produced in different constellations generating a limbo which traps those who envisage change into its logics.

This paper takes the opportunity to revisit the key role of contradictions and hope for radical social change expressed in the works of e.g. Holloway, Eagleton, and Bloch, and discusses how the ability to frame, think and organise radical transformation is impeded through the cunning soft authoritarian production and deferral of hope.