Radical hopelessness can open political horizons by refusing growth logics

Evidence

Too-lateness as a condition for climate affect and cultural style heats up the present, but, were we to dialecticize our relation to time, this extremity could ordain action rather than resignation. Every past deed of oligarchic malfeasance now come to light, every terror come home, every threshold exceeded nevertheless admits the possibility of more amelioration. Too-lateness pegs the hopelessness that contrasts the hopefulness pinged in “late” capitalism’s anticipation of an end. And yet, hopelessness is not self-identically fatalist; a kind of radical hopelessness that dares refuse the old promissory and progressive logics of capitalist growth could open political horizons. Such openings need not be novel: old forms, outmoded institutions, and residual constructs still have more to offer. Diagnosing too-lateness as it materializes in the style of immediacy shouldn’t be an invitation to melancholy so much as an incitement to collaboration: it’s not too late—things can still be less worse. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 40

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to her argument that mediation is politically necessary; this is the affirmative program behind the Antitheory critique — ‘make a cut’ recurs here in the book-map passage. — connects to: Politics must escape the motivation-despair binary capitalism prescribes. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 68