CANCELLED - York Hope Consortium in conversation with Dr Ana Dinerstein
Event details
York Hope Consortium Symposium
Due to unforeseen circumstances this event is cancelled. Apologies for any disappointment.
For this instalment, we will be joined by the incredible Ana Dinerstein from the University of Bath to reflect on the concept of ‘Hope’.
Hope matters. Its significance is particularly poignant during the present moment of uncertainty, during which narratives of multiple and overlapping crises abound. Humans and non-humans encounter one another in extraordinary ways. Automation disrupts the economies of labour with which we are familiar. Artificial intelligence challenges recognisable forms of human personhood. Climate change endangers the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Unprecedented prosperity coexists with growing
inequality.
Religious and ethnic polarisation jeopardises the hard-won gains by movements for social justice in recent decades. Democracies across the world face erosions. Just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse, the COVID19 pandemic struck, changing our world in ways that few other events in recent memory have. As fear, anxiety, hatred and disappointment loom, it is easy to lose sight of the possibilities offered by hope. Yet, hope has never been more important.
About the speaker
Ana Cecilia Dinerstein (PhD) is a Reader in Sociology at University of Bath, United Kingdom. She is a critical theorist, writer, activist, and one of her generation's most influential open Marxists. Her term 'the art of organising hope,' which creates synergies between contemporary prefigurative struggles and Ernst Bloch's philosophy of hope, has been celebrated within the academic, artist, and activist communities. She opened a new post-disciplinary field of decolonial, feminist and critical research: the global politics of hope aiming to help present and future collective ventures to flourish toward transforming society beyond capitalist relations. She is a member of the core group of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, founder or the Women on the Verge collective and the Decolonising Knowledge Research Centre (Bath), and co-founder of the Standing Seminar in Critical Theory (funded by the Southwest Doctoral Training Partnership, Economic and Social Research Council, UK). Her recent publications include The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America: The Art of Organising Hope (2015); Women Theorising without Parachutes (ed. 2016); Open Marxism 4: Against a closing world (co-ed. with A Garcia Vela, E. Gonzalez, and J. Holloway, 2019); A World Beyond Work? Labour, Money and the Capitalist State Between Crisis and Utopia, Emerald (co-authored with Harry Pitts). The Global Politics of Hope (PM Kairos) and A Decolonising Marxism (Pluto Press) are forthcoming in 2023.
Website: https://www.