Episode 5: Hope and Nihilism in These Trying Times

Episode 5: Hope and Nihilism (Jan. 20)

 

L and M ask: what roles do hope and/or nihilism play in shaping political culture. In a meditative discussion held shortly after the US 2024 General Election, they reflect on how social movements and artistic expression hold potential to counter the isolation/alienation/exhaustion of the season ahead. 

 

Tressie Cottom, Daily Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nno64FGj8d0

WEB DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935) https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/w-e-b-du-bois-black-reconstruction-an-essay-toward-a-history-of-the-part-which-black-folk-played-in-the-attempt-to-reconstruct-democracy-2.pdf 

Jiirgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

https://arditiesp.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/habermas_structural_transf_public_sphere.pdf

Ursula Le Guin, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9Nf-rsALk

Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000)

Gabriel Winant, Exit Right https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/exit-right/

Calvin Warren, Abandoning Time: Black Nihilism and the Democratic Imagination

https://amst.winter-verlag.de/article/amst/2021/1/40