Seeking essays on the politics of "contemptuous despair"
Post date: 2021-01-18 06:10:51
Views: 106
I teach an undergrad seminar on the politics of hope, especially re: the climate crisis, and am seeking articles exploring the notion of "contemptuous despair" (which I could assign to my students)

The last time I taught the class, I included a module connecting hopelessness with right-wing radicalization and extremism through a politics of "contemptuous despair." I assigned a couple pieces introducing eco-fascism (here and here) alongside that essay about 4chan by Dale Beran (here) which presented a more intimate portrait of how this sensibility of "contemptuous despair" can take root and how it could be expressed in contemporary politics.

While engagingly written, I remain kind of ambivalent about how effective the 4chan piece was in helping students connect these dots (lots of inside baseball details about gamer culture). That said, I was really struck by the essay, which was discussed on this site (with parallels to similar discussions about "incels"), and I wondered whether anybody here could recommend other interesting and engaging work in this vein.
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