Elbe Trakal
The Problem with Hope
Seminar, English/Deutsch, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Thursdays, 16-20h, bi-weekly, 8 dates: 16.10., 30.10., 13.11, 27.11., 11.12.2025, 15.1., 29.1., 12.2.2026, Hardenbergstraße 33, room 110

Registration on Moodle starts on 13.10.2025:https://moodle.udk-berlin.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=2864
Enrollment Key: hoping

In 1945, the global security architecture and its institutions (like the UN, or the International Court of Justice) were founded in the collective ethos of a hope for a different kind of future after the global catastrophe of World War II. These institutions inefficacy today stands apparent in the reality of reckless promises for a supposedly imminent World War that are proliferating daily in the media to justify aggressive armaments amid Russia’s full scale attack on the Ukraine. Hope seems to be a meager argument in times of militarization, accelerating fascism and impending climate doom. But can we afford to lose hope? Or is giving up hope our best chance to get out of the mess? How is a lofty affect such as hope, regularly employed by both liberal (Obama’s Hope campaign) and conservative (pro-life slogans) culture, a viable tool to fathom what is breaking apart around us? How to reclaim something so cringe as hope?

This course tries to outline the contradictory dynamics in the cultural imaginary of hope, through a reading of philosophy, psychoanalytic and cultural theory, art, literature and culture. Using Ernst Bloch’s The Principle of Hope we try to understand the conditions for hope in the post-World War moment, as well as Bloch's attempt to reinstate the subject in real socialist Marxist philosophy. His vision of hope is deeply repressive and productivist. Following we look at several theorists who have taken up Bloch, and critiqued him specifically in the context of affect theory and performance studies. Kathy Weeks asks what are the performative possibilities of a Utopian demand; Lauren Berlant conveys in Cruel Optimism, how false hopes keep us trapped in desire structures that might hinder us to live truthfully and build just societies; theorists of the Afro-Pessimist perspective like Saidiya Hartman reject reconciliations of the black subject with a fundamentally anti-black society; cultural critics Julia Kristeva or Mark Fisher think about depression as strategies of dealing with the present.

Still we have to ask how to think futurity despite the pitfalls of hope, and how artistic practices can enact complicated and infectious forms of hope, that stay committed to transformation. Among other art works we’ll read Ursula LeGuin's and Samuel Delany’s dispute about how an anarchist Sci-fi Utopia should be (written), and follow José Esteban Muñoz’ reading of Amiri Baraka's performance practice towards a queer utopia. By reading texts, discussing others and our own art works and writing we will keep sight of the contemporary moment and its ability to sprout hope despite the problems with hope. 

Literature:
Ernst Bloch – The Principle of Hope (1954).
Kathy weeks – The problem with work (2011).
Lauren Berlant – Cruel Optimism (2011).
Anna Potamianou – Hope: A shield in the Economy of Borderline States (1997).
Saidiya Hartman – The burdened Individuality of Freedom (1997).
José Esteban Muñoz – Cruising Utopia (2009).
Mark Fisher – Capitalist Realism (2014).
Julia Kristeva – Black Sun (1987).
Ursula LeGuin – The Dispossessed (1974).
Samuel Delany – To Read the Dispossessed (1978).

Fulfilment criteria for ungraded accreditation: Texts should be read before the class; active participation in the discussion of the texts, presentation and communication of one of the texts at a specific time (in a group of 2-3), development of a formulated position over the course of the course (own text production or artistic research regarding the question of the effect of hope).

Elbe Trakal (*1988 Dresden, DDR) ist freischaffender Künstler, Autor und Researcher. Seine Arbeiten untersuchen Bedingungen von Kollektivität durch künstlerische Anwendung psychoanalytischer und post-marxistischer Theorie. Er arbeitet partizipativ mit Performance („Theme Park of Death“ SAAVY Contemporary), Film, (“under the covers the waves” 7 Athen Biennale), Rollenspielen und Workshops (“Magischer Materialismus”, Gegenwarten Festival Chemnitz). Elbe war Fellow des Whitney Independent Study Programms 2019. Er ist Mitbegründer des online Magazins Mimesis - Cinema as Performance und organisiert die Science-fiction und Theorie Studiengruppe Xenoverse bei Cittipunkt in Berlin. Momentan promoviert er an der Filmuniversität Babelsberg mit einem künstlerisch-wissenschaftlichen Forschungsprojekt welches ostdeutsche Arbeitserfahrungen performativ nachstellt.