Acknowledgments  xi

Note of Editions and Translations  xiii

Preface / Slavoj Zizek  xv

Introduction: The Privatization of Hope and the Crisis of Negation / Peter Thompson  1

1. Bloch and a Philosophy of the Proterior / Wayne Hudson  21

2. An Anti-humanist Utopia? / Vincent Goeghegan  37

3. Ernst Bloch's Dialectical Anthropology / Johan Siebers  61

4. Religion, Utopia, and the Metaphysics of Contingency / Peter Thompson  82

5. The Privatization of Eschatology and Myth: Ernst Block vs. Rudolph Bultmann / Roland Boer  106

6. The Education of Hope: On the Dialectical Potential of Speculative Materialism / Catherine Moir  121

7. Engendering the Future: Bloch's Utopian Philosophy in Dialogue with Gender Theory / Caitríona Ní Dhúill  144

8. The Zero-Point: Encountering the Dark Emptiness of Nothingness / Frances Daly  164

9. A Marxist Poetics: Allegory and Reading in The Principle of Hope / David Miller  203

10. Singing Summons the Existence of the Fountain: Bloch, Music, and Utopia / Ruth Levitas  219

11. Transforming Utopian into Metopian Systems: Bloch's Principle of Hope Revisited / Rainer E. Zimmerman  246

12. Unlearning How to Hope: Eleven Theses in Defense of Liberal Democracy and Consumer Culture / Henk de Berg  269

13. Can We Hope to Walk Tall in a Computerized World of Work? / Francesca Vidal and Welf Schröter  288

Contributors  301

Index  305

Slavoj Zizek

Peter Thompson

Wayne Hudson

Vincent Geoghegan

Johan Siebers

Roland Boer

Catherine Moir

Caitríona Ní Dhúill

Frances Daly

David Miller

Ruth Levitas

Rainer E. Zimmermann

Henk de Berg

Francesca Vidal

Welf Schröter

"Bloch . . . is one of the rare figures of whom we can say: fundamentally, with regard to what really matters, he was right, he remains our contemporary, and maybe he belongs even more to our time than to his own."—Slavoj Žižek, from the preface

"Late capitalism has been celebrated by its apologists as that stage of society in which nothing more, nothing new, will ever happen (except for wars, catastrophes, bankruptcy and Armageddon): the end of history as the death of the future. In this affluent desolation, at the tail-end of all thought, we confront the immense enigmatic figure of Ernst Bloch and that tangle of the Not-Yet-Conceived —the heritage of unfinished business, loose ends and tired aporias, in which new problems are somewhere hidden, new futures slumber, and a freshening and a renewal of history is promised. The present collection makes a start on renewing Bloch himself as a living multiplicity of themes and questions, and may even mark a beginning of that new beginning with which he tantalized us."—Fredric Jameson, Duke University

Permission to Photocopy (coursepacks)

If you are requesting permission to photocopy material for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com;

If the Copyright Clearance Center cannot grant permission, you may request permission from our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Permission to Reprint

If you are requesting permission to reprint DUP material (journal or book selection) in another book or in any other format, contact our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Images/Art

Many images/art used in material copyrighted by Duke University Press are controlled, not by the Press, but by the owner of the image. Please check the credit line adjacent to the illustration, as well as the front and back matter of the book for a list of credits. You must obtain permission directly from the owner of the image. Occasionally, Duke University Press controls the rights to maps or other drawings. Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions@dukeupress.edu.
For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department.

Subsidiary Rights/Foreign Translations

If you're interested in a Duke University Press book for subsidiary rights/translations, please contact permissions@dukeupress.edu. Include the book title/author, rights sought, and estimated print run.

Disability Requests

Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here.

Rights & Permissions Contact Information

Email: permissions@dukeupress.edu

Email contact for coursepacks: asstpermissions@dukeupress.edu

Fax: 919-688-4574

Mail:
Duke University Press
Rights and Permissions
905 W. Main Street
Suite 18B
Durham, NC 27701

For all requests please include:

1. Author's name. If book has an editor that is different from the article author, include editor's name also.

2. Title of the journal article or book chapter and title of journal or title of book

3. Page numbers (if excerpting, provide specifics)

For coursepacks, please also note: The number of copies requested, the school and professor requesting

For reprints and subsidiary rights, please also note: Your volume title, publication date, publisher, print run, page count, rights sought