The concept of hope was central to the German philosopher Ernst Bloch's work. Here, leading thinkers in utopian studies consider the insights that his work might offer the contemporary moment.

Peter Thompson is Reader in German at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of The Crisis of the German Left.

Slavoj Žižek is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is the author of many books, including Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism.

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