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A Hopeful Political Imagination

Courage and Fantastic Critique in the Age of Meltdown

A Hopeful Political Imagination cover

A Hopeful Political Imagination

Courage and Fantastic Critique in the Age of Meltdown

Description

Bringing political criticism, a variety of theoretical approaches, and the author's concrete experiences together, this book offers a political definition of hope as a utopian signifier, rooted in concrete processes of historical differentiation. Oscar Guardiola-Rivera addresses the problem of current limitations to the exercise of political imagination which severely contain, encrypt, and obscure our vision of social alternatives and normative possibilities? While grounding ethical and political stances on liberation philosophy and the anthropology of visual systems, A Hopeful Political Imagination: Courage and Fantastic Critique in the Age of Meltdown engages in dialogue with theories of encryption, a-legality, and the critique of anthropological absolutism coming from decolonial and ecological approaches. It allows us to understand 'decryption' as reversing encrypting linguistic and spatial processes in modernity, and proposes a new approach called 'fantastic critique' to reinvent the dynamics of power, judgement, time and the imagination, based on historical, literary, and philosophical examples. This book recovers and reimagines principles of hope and courage as republican, ethical virtues of revelation of what is figured and made in movement together, for practical action.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: This Book Is a Gift to Make You Hopeful

Part I: Survivance Stories

Chapter 1. Critique Fantastique
Chapter 2. Investigating Hope
Chapter 3. Why This Book Is (Like) a Detective Story

Part II: The Child

Chapter 4. The Secret
Chapter 5. Stop Making Sense
Chapter 6. Let's Dance
Chapter 7. Children of the Revolution
Chapter 8. Light & Magic

Part III: The Poet-Collector

Chapter 9. A Past We Can Look Forward To
Chapter 10. Boomerang Effect
Chapter 11. Ghosts In the Museum

Not a Conclusion, But an Invitation in Three Parts
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published Sep 18 2025
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Pages 280
ISBN 9781978760288
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Series Decrypting Power and Coloniality: Philosophical Perspectives from and through the Global South
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera teaches international law a…

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