![]() ![]() As the focus and responsibility is placed on the individual, attention is drawn away from structural injustices. At the same time, the responsibility for attaining these desired objects-as well as the failure to attain them-is placed on the individual (Paolantonio 2016 Brunila and Siivonen 2016). ![]() However, in contemporary late-capitalist societies, these goods are increasingly difficult to cash in: education no longer guarantees economic or job security or an esteemed position in society. Namely, Western democratic societies have typically been characterized by meritocratic thinking and especially the idea that the type of education one receives is intimately associated with the possibility to attain certain economic and social goods. This present neoliberal restructuring, described by Berlant by the notion of “cruel optimism”, is particularly interesting from the perspective of education. The cruelness thus rests on the fact that the individual is affectively attached to pursuing these unattainable and empty objects and holds on to the illusion of their necessity, although these goals are ultimately harmful to the individual’s well-being. Nevertheless, as the capitalist system only provides objectives that serve its own reproduction, for the individual it is more meaningful to pursue them than have no goals or purpose at all. However, from a Berlantian perspective, even more than the hopelessness and despair that Freire witnessed among underprivileged citizens in the society of his time, the antithesis of hope in late-capitalist societies is the false form of hope associated with unattainable objects to which people become affectively attached, but which are not realistically within their reach. For Freire, hope is an essential human quality that enables resisting the “culture of silence” and cynical discourses that the neoliberal ideology entails. According to Berlant ( 2011), the pursuit of these objects gives the individual a sense of purpose and meaning in life, but the downside is that because these objects remain unattainable to most, their pursuit merely engages the individual in a constant struggle of self-management and self-improvement that ultimately keeps her from engaging in collective political action.Īlthough written in a different time and for a different kind of society, the central message of Freire’s philosophy of hope is anything but outdated, as he saw the functioning of neoliberalism as destructive for collective human hope and solidarity. Berlant’s notion of “cruel optimism”, which refers to the affective mechanisms of the neoliberal rationality or “common sense”, was born out of the observation that people continue to construct their lives and identities around the pursuit of such desirable and socially esteemed objects as upward social mobility, job security, equality and economic well-being, although these objects have become increasingly difficult to redeem under today’s neoliberal restructuring. More recently, through her notion of “cruel optimism”, Lauren Berlant ( 2011) has characterized the way the neoliberal culture directs individual hopes and dreams towards goals that serve neoliberal economy rather than collective political transformation. ![]() Freire saw this “democratic inexperience” characteristic to capitalism as major impediment to hope (Freire 1997, pp. Paulo Freire formulated his philosophy of hope as a response to the ideological operations of capitalist societies, which he recognized as causing political inaction and impeding collective endeavours of transformative political struggle for democratization. However, the particular feature of contemporary late-capitalist societies is that these injustices manifest themselves in ways that are increasingly hard to recognize and intervene in. We are living in societies characterized by structural injustices, which are tied to the functioning of market economy and neoliberal rationality in many ways. ![]()
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