Revolutionary Hope After Nihilism: Marginalized Voices and Dissent

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As we face new and debilitating catastrophes caused by capitalism and nation-state politics, Saladdin Ahmed argues that our only hope is to create space for a new world by negating the existing order. To achieve this new society, Revolutionary Hope After Nihilism outlines a practical philosophy of change that rejects ideologies of false hope and passive hopelessness. Drawing public attention to the decisiveness of the present historical moment, Ahmed introduces a critical theory of social emancipation based on post-Soviet revolutionary movements that have emerged at the margins of the global social order. The rise of socially and politically exclusionary movements in multiple parts of the world, ongoing ecological crisis, anti-Black racism, and the concretization of despair brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic demand a new approach to revolution, which Ahmed argues, must be rooted in the experiences of the most oppressed in society. Realizing the epistemological potential of emancipatory movements, Ahmed rejects dystopian nihilism and positions our focus on marginalized spaces to break out of capitalist totalitarianism.

Reviews

In this challenging and courageous book, Saladdin Ahmed thinks through the terms and textures of negation. He acutely interrogates thereby collective contemporary crises, global and planetary. Via a reinvigorated post-nihilism, the work articulates formations of critical solidarity with marginal subjects while unframing fascism as an ideology form. Such formidable conviction is rare in our present. * Saurabh Dube, Distinguished Professor-Researcher in the Centre of Asian and African Studies, The College of Mexico, Mexico *
This book offers a bold vision for a transformative politics that passes through the hopelessness of the present situation. Declining the liberal reformist agenda (a better world imaginable only from within the existing realm of possibilities) and the defeatist attitude (nothing can overcome global capitalism), Ahmed calls for an exit from the current state of affairs via an inventive reinvention of cosmopolitanism. * Zahi Zalloua, Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature, Whitman College, USA *

Author Bio

Saladdin Ahmed is a critical theorist and philosopher, teaching political theory and international relations at Union College, Schenectady, USA.