Class visit at Colby College

Yesterday, I had the privilege of discussing my paper on ‘Disappointed Hope’ with the students on the course “In the Streets: Politics of Protest and Refusal” convened by Nazli Konya.

The paper pushes against the dominant perception of disappointment as a demobilising affect and explores the politically transformative potential of disappointment. I argue that the resisters’ grappling with their disappointment can lead them to reconfigure their horizon of hope towards a persistent, practice-oriented striving for greater freedom and justice that is willing to bear the risk of failure. I develop the political relevance of such disappointed hope through a selected first-hand account of the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt, Cairo: Memoir of a City Transformed, written by a prominent Egyptian activist and writer, Ahdaf Soueif.

The students offered thoughtful reflections on the potentials and limits of disappointed hope as well as the complexities of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Their questions and comments addressed the different ways of narrating the ‘failures’ of resistance, the conditions required for disappointment to lead to disappointed hope, and the dilemmas of envisioning solidarity across difference. A warm thank you to all for such a rewarding conversation.