My talk at the recent “Apocalyptic Anxieties” conference, at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, is available for viewing at the SFU Institute for the Humanities YouTube page, or below. Here is an abstract of the talk:
From the Angel of Apocalyptic History to the Optimism of the Will: Climate Hope within States of Urgency
Apocalyptic scenarios have accompanied environmental politics for decades; today they are globalized in a profusion of political and ecological anxieties (representing a “pessimism of the intellect”) and a welter of conspiracy theories. Apocalyptic trauma has also been the shadow side of the centuries-long “slow violence” of extractive colonialism, and of the fascisms of the twentieth, and arguably twenty-first, centuries. This talk will seek insight into apocalypse in the historical meditations of Walter Benjamin — specifically, in his “angel of history” who “sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage” in front of his feet — and in the writings of Gramsci, Stengers, Mbembe, and others. It will propose an “optimism of the will” rooted in a willingness to face Benjamin’s “angel,” who challenges us to acknowledge commonality with humans and nonhumans facing the uncertainties of a world unmoored from any guarantees — of “nature,” of “truth,” of “progress,” of scientific knowledge, or even of human survival itself.
