In this episode of For Love of the World, the Hannah Arendt Center's Klemens von Klemperer Postdoctoral Fellow Jess Feldman guest hosts a conversation with Mie Inouye, Assistant Professor of Politics at Bard College. The discussion centers around the topics of hope and despair in contemporary political life. Inouye articulates the current moment of despair amid various global and national crises, such as the conflict in Gaza, the rise of authoritarianism, the climate crisis, and the rapid, unregulated development of AI. The conversation explores how a sense of powerlessness and an environment of apathy impacts political engagement in civic life. Feldman and Inouye explore the importance of sustaining hope and faith as motivational forces for political action and introduce strategies to cultivate these sentiments, including engaging with like-minded communities, studying theory and history, and participating in activism. The conversation also touches upon the role of religious practices, the differences between hope and faith, and the significance of endurance in ongoing political struggles. The episode concludes with practical advice on how listeners can engage with local community groups and initiatives in Kingston, aiming to build collective hope and resilience.
00:00 Introduction
00:30 Meet the Guest Host and Special Guest
01:23 Discussing Hope and Despair in Politics
05:13 Exploring Responses to Political Despair
07:47 The Role of Hope and Faith in Political Action
14:40 Cultivating Hope and Faith through Community and Struggle
25:52 Local Community Initiatives and Final Thoughts
Mie Inouye writes about organizing, theories of political action, solidarity, socialism, and democracy for public and scholarly audiences. She has published essays on these topics in the American Political Science Review, Jacobin Magazine, the Political Theology Network, and the Boston Review. Her current book project, Antinomies of Organizing, is the first full-length study of the figure of the organizer in political theory.
Jess Feldman holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Brown University and a B.A. in Economics from Amherst College. Jess's research focuses on ideas of collective action in the history of political thought. Jess's book manuscript, Democracy and the General-Strike Tradition, draws on 20th-century political thought, contemporary democratic theory, and African-American political thought to develop an account of how the general strike has shaped the democratic imaginary. Jess's work on W.E.B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction has been published in Political Theory, and an essay on Hannah Arendt's political theory won the Best Paper Award (2024) from the Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association. For more information about Jess and their work, visit jlfeldman.com.
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