Living in Blochian Times: Opening Remarks

Hope is an essential component of any process of resistance against power. Nothing new. No hope, no change. Yet, my argument has been that we must see the present condition as ‘living in Blochian times’, a time when utopia can be no longer objected. But this is of course a different kind of ‘utopia’. Bloch highlights that ‘Once [s]he has grasped [her]self and that which is [hers], without alienation and based in real democracy, so there will arise in the world something that shines into everyone’s childhood, but where no one has yet been: Heimat [Home]’ (cited from Thompson, 2009: xix). This utopia, or the art of organising hope, is a ceaseless search for ‘home’ for at home, paraphrasing Bloch, the subject becomes the predicate.