Hope is a passive affect distinct from confidence and undermines political action

Evidence

Hope and fear are essentially interchangeable; they are passive affects, which arise from our incapacity to actually act. Like all superstitions, hope is something we call upon when we have nothing else. This is why Obama’s “politics of hope” ended up so deflating — not only because, inevitably, the Obama administration quickly became mired in capitalist realism, but also because the condition of hope is passivity. The Obama administration didn’t want to activate the population (except at election time). … We don’t need hope; what we need is confidence and the capacity to act. “Confidence”, Spinoza argues, “is a joy arising from the idea of a past or future object from which cause for doubting is removed”. Yet it is very difficult, even at the best of times, for subordinated groups to have confidence, because for them/us there are few if any “future objects from which cause for doubting is removed.” — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1870

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Fisher collapses hope with fear as passive affects against Spinoza’s confidence — a genuinely paradigm-touching reframing that resists summation: hope is superstition, activism requires confidence, and subordinated groups are structurally denied the grounds of confidence.
• SEED: Could seed an essay on why ‘hopeful’ political campaigns always deflate — the structure of hope itself guarantees disappointment because hope is passivity awaiting rescue.
• XREF: connects to: Political hope can lift personal mood and restore creative capacity; Hope is a passive affect called upon when we lack capacity to act — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1870; Confidence can degrade into hope when it no longer tracks one’s own actions — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2767 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Hope is a passive affect called upon when we lack capacity to act #expands (0.95) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1870
• Hope is active struggle rooted in human incompletion, not waiting #contradicts (0.95) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 267
• Confidence is a self-fulfilling virtuous spiral unlike superstitious hope #corroborates (0.92) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1873
• Confidence can degrade into hope when it no longer tracks one’s own actions #expands (0.90) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2767
• Pedagogical hope must be anticipatory and critical rather than merely compensatory #complicates (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2684