Contingency of historical conjunctures is a precondition for political possibility

Evidence

Why contingency? What is it that I have been wanting to say about contingency? I do not want to say, of course, that the world has no pattern, no structure, no determinate shape, no determinacy. But I do want to say that its future is not already wrapped up in its past, that it is not part of an unfolding teleological narrative whose end is known and given in its beginning. I do not believe, in that sense, in “the laws of history.” There is no closure yet written into it. And to be absolutely honest, if you do not agree that there is a degree of openness or contingency to every historical conjuncture, you do not believe in politics, because you do not believe that anything can be done about it. If everything is already given, what is the point of exercising yourself or of trying to change it in a particular direction? — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1197

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Defines contingency as openness of outcomes within structured history, and its political stakes: no contingency, no politics.
• XREF: This is the theoretical ground for the field’s insistence that the anti-Muslim present is not inevitable — it was made and can be remade.

Related

• Historical forces are determinate but not predetermined, allowing contingency without closed determinism. (similarity 0.82)
• The present is overdetermined yet fundamentally open to contingency (similarity 0.81)
• Counterfactual hypotheses can refocus attention on present political possibilities. (similarity 0.79)
• Contingency and inherency always mix but cannot both be equally basic (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Counterfactual hypotheses can refocus attention on present political possibilities. #complicates (0.70) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 760