hope v. optimism

cross-posted

In the February 2007 issue of Harper’s, Barbara Ehrenreich (who has earned my ire because of Nickel and Dimed, but that’s another issue), writes against hope in her “Notebook” contribution “Pathologies of Hope.” In this essay, she relays her struggles with remaining hopeful and being told to remain hopeful while fighting cancer. She discusses the positivity and optimism of our culture, whether it be in regards to cancer, the war in Iraq, or self-improvement: it all uses the rhetoric of “hope” and “optimism.” She derides our “Cult of Positivity [that] demands not only acts but faith” (10). She sees this positivity as harmful, especially for those who are suffering:

Not only are you failing to get better but you’re failing to feel good about not getting better. Similarly for the long-term unemployed, who, as I found while researching my book Bait and Switch, are informed by career coaches and self-help books that their principal battle is against their own negative, resentful, loser-like feelings. This is victim-blaming at its cruelest, and may help account for the passivity of Americans in the face of repeated economic insult. (11)

She concludes that she is now “hope-free” which is not the same as hopeless or unhappy. “To be hope-free,” she writes, “is to acknowledge the lion in the tall grass, the tumor in the CAT scan, and to plan one’s moves accordingly” (11).

I must admit that I am sympathetic to Ehrenreich’s claims. I remember when my grandmother was struggling with cancer and how hard it was to remain optimistic that she would come through, especially when something new kept causing her return to the hospital. I don’t know how hopeful my grandmother felt, but it seemed she was hopeful, the way she talked about returning to quilting as soon as she could (though she would never quilt again). Our society’s manufactured cult of positivity is certainly pervasive, but I wonder if Ehrenreich has the wrong word when she states she is hope-free. Though perhaps she is actually hope-free. But I think that hope is a necessary component of struggle, whether that struggle be for a more just society, for overcoming cancer, or for a better classroom and university. I think what Ehrenreich should really be eschewing is optimism, not hope.

Cornel West makes the distinction between hope and optimism. In his interview with the Progressive, West states:

You have to draw a distinction between hope and optimism. Vaclav Havel put it well when he said “optimism“ is the belief that things are going to turn out as you would like, as opposed to “hope,“ which is when you are thoroughly convinced something is moral and right and just and therefore you fight regardless of the consequences. In that sense, I’m full of hope but in no way optimistic.

It seems that our Culture of Positivity is driven by optimism: a belief that things will turn out how we want them: I won’t die of cancer, given time there will be gender parity, someday our culture won’t be racist. But I think that optimism does not require action, whereas hope does two things for us: requires action and deters despair.

In “What’s Hope Got to Do With It?“, Dale Jacobs draws from Paulo Friere, bell hooks, and Gabriel Marcel in order to discuss the need for hope in education. For Jacobs, critical hope involves “pushing beyond simply dreaming of a better day and into consciously thinking about how to work toward that collective vision“ (788).

I’ve written about Jacobs’s article before, so I’ll just quote my synopsis from this blog post:

Jacobs also discusses the dichotomy of hope and despair: “Despair, then, is not inevitable, but the temptation to despair is and this is why hope is so important… hope puts time on our side wile despair pits time against us“ (792). Disappointment, however, is inevitable, but “Disappointment silences us and pushes away from the kind of critical hope that can help us to intervene in our circumstances; when disappointment sets in, intervention in our future no longer seems possible and process seems to yield to inevitability“ (795).

The need for hope is important because it denies that history has already written the future: “It’s important, then, to see the world as always in a state of change and as a site for change and intervention“ (793). “If, as teachers and as human beings, we see the world as unfinished and open to revision, then we can resist the inexorability of social forces outsid our control and instead attempt to intervene to promote institutional and/or social change“ (794).

Jacobs offers the distinction of what makes critical hope “critical“: it involves “reflection on action“ (797). He quotes Macquarrie: “Hope can remain healthy and be prevented from lapsing into optimism and other aberrations only so long as its intellectual side continues to criticize the objects which hope proposes“ (797).

I bring up the distinction between hope and optimism now largely because my friend Dennis linked to this post in which No Impact Man writes:

Perhaps people will think I’m too optimistic. But this is for certain: these things can’t be true if no one takes the chance of believing they’re true. Because if we don’t believe they are true, we won’t act as though they’re true. And if we don’t act as though they’re true, they can’t come true. That’s why realism does little but protect the status quo.

Being optimistic, on the other hand, is the most radical political act there is.

Perhaps the distinction I am arguing for is purely semantic, but I would like to think that it is not. I do not see being optimistic as “the most radical political act there is” because, well, optimism is rampant and does not require action. I don’t see realism (by which I think No Impact Man means an acceptance of the status quo and working within those confines) and optimism as opposing each other. I do see, however, critical hope as in opposition to the status quo (a problematic term, also), because it involves reflection on action and the potential to change our conceptions of what we are working toward. Additionally, I see optimism as working alongside the rampant cynicism of our culture, in that “I can believe in a better future but I don’t have the power to work toward it” form of that that leaves so many citizens inactive or passive in politics and culture.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. “Notebook: Pathologies of Hope.” Harper’s Magazine. February 2007. 9-11.

Jacobs, Dale. “What’s Hope Got to Do With It? Toward a Theory of Hope and Pedagogy.“ JAC 25.4 (2005): 783-802.