Hope in Turbulent Times: Derrida on Messianism and Rupture

Abstract

For many of us, I suspect, the last two years have called hope into question. Millions have died from COVID-19, millions have lost someone they cared about, and millions more have fallen ill themselves. In addition to these direct effects, the virus has disrupted normal patterns of life. Some of us have endured exhausting lockdowns, while others were exposed to infection by virtue of their employment. In typical fashion, the neoliberal systems that govern our lives have placed the heaviest burdens on those who were already vulnerable, but even those of us who are insulated from the worst effects of the pandemic have had moments in which our hope was challenged by suffering and uncertainty. In a strange coincidence, my first book—Hope in a Secular Age—appeared at exactly the moment that COVID began to spread around the world. I had no idea what was coming, of course, but the book sought to address a situation like the one we are experiencing. Even before the challenges of pandemic life, I was convinced that the only hope worth keeping has to be honest rather than easy. As we have found, hope has a certain fragility, but I believe that this is the source of its power. In my view, hope is premised upon the possibility of disappointment, pressing forward without guarantees. At some level, although we invent a thousand ways to forget it, we all know that we are vulnerable. We cannot be sure that our loves will endure, that our projects will succeed, or that we stand on the side of justice and truth. It does no good to pretend that things are more certain than they are; as we have repeatedly seen over the last two years, such bluster is prone to shatter upon the complexity of lived experience. This is the context in which I hear the question that frames this symposium: “Is hope reasonable or necessary?” My answer on both counts will be “no,” but that does not mean hope must be abandoned. Instead, I aim to suggest that hope is an extra-rational discipline that is contingent but indispensable.