Remembering Hope : The Cultural Afterlife of Protest

Abstract

This book is the first to explore how protest is remembered in the stories told about it. How does the memory of past protest feed into new mobilizations? At stake is understanding how hope in the possibility of making the world a better place is communicated across time with the help of media and cultural forms. Remembering Hope addresses this issue with reference to a range of cases from late nineteenth-century socialism to today’s climate activism, using the shape-shifting memory of the Paris Commune as a unifying thread. It treats a wide variety of cultural forms, from periodicals, radical calendars, and archives to photography, graffiti, documentaries. In the process, it shows that cultural memory and activism are deeply entwined, that stories can offer resistance to defeat and hence act as a mobilizing force in kick-starting campaigns. Overall it challenges the assumption that looking back can never be progressive. Above all, it demonstrates how culturally mediated memories become carriers of hope by mobilizing a readiness to act irrespective of the outcome.