|aIncludes bibliographical references (p. I couldn’t be more pleased to share Cruel Optimism with you.|aDurham, N.C. It’s an object of projection, from me to you and onward from there. This record is one of protest against the immediate threat of abhorrent possible futures. I leave it to you then, to listen as you can. It also led to me using a range of studio spaces to explore new techniques, informed by what I had learned taking Wilderness Of Mirrors on the road for the better part of two years. It was this desire that led me to reach out to friends, old and new, and invite them to contribute to Cruel Optimism.
I wanted the opportunity for exchange, to trial new ideas in various spaces and to find myself surprised by the perspectives of others. Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren. Having worked largely alone in recent years, I wanted to shift away from that approach. Subjects Sociology > Social Theory, Theory and Philosophy > Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies > Affect Theory A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. The author of many works of literary criticism, including Cruel Optimism (2011) which thoroughly dissected our culture’s attachment to dreams that we know, consciously or unconsciously. The storm has broken and feels utterly visceral.Ĭruel Optimism is a meditation on these challenges and an encouragement to press forward towards more profound futures.īeyond the motivations forging the record, the process by which this edition was created was unlike many of my other records.
Acutely for me and other Australians, we've faced dire intolerance concerning race and continued inequalities related to gender and sexuality. In this case, the optimistic attachment to the pursuit of an academic career is life-giving (giving doctoral researchers and graduates a goal to work. This analytical engagement extends empathetic engagement with the lived experiences and rationalisations of precariously employed academic workers, paying homage to their desires and negotiations. Under cruel optimism, affect theorist Lauren Berlant argues, good life fantasies which give your life meaning or enable you to add up to something also impede upon your wellbeing. Over the course of creating the record, we collectively bore witness to a new wave of humanitarian and refugee crisis (captured so succinctly in the photograph of Alan Kurdi’s tiny body motionless on the shore), the black lives matter movement, the widespread use of sonic weapons on civilians, increased drone strikes in Waziristan, Syria and elsewhere, and record low numbers of voting around Brexit and the US election cycle, suggesting a wider sense of disillusionment and powerlessness. This article introduces the notion of cruel optimism to analyse the unethical exploitation of desires of precariously employed academics. Synopsis: Music by Lawrence English, 16mm film by Paul Clipson. As I have worked through Cruel Optimism, what seemed an unimaginable future just a few years prior, began to present as actual. Cruel Optimism (S) is a Documentary directed by Paul Clipson. What can we learn from successes and failures in the pursuit of racial justice in the UK and elsewhere in the Global Nor. When I made Wilderness Of Mirrors, clouds of unease were overhead. Read 'The Cruel Optimism of Racial Justice' by Meer, Nasar available from Rakuten Kobo. This pyramid is an affective ecology of the (ever)present moment. The fact is most people have a natural tendency to reject the label of being firmly optimistic when an alternative other than. And above all, I will argue the necessity for preserving, against all shame, a demanding question of revolution itself, a question about utopia that keeps pushing its way through a field of failed aspirations, like a student at the back of the room who gets suddenly, violently, tired of being. It meditates on how power consumes, augments and ultimately shapes two subsequent human conditions: obsession and fragility. Lauren Berlant ’s 2012 book Cruel Optimism suggests that a much broader, deeply ingrained and potentially dangerous sense of optimism is far more pervasive and that the poll’s 50 figure is wildly pessimistic. Cruel Optimism is a record that considers power (present and absent).