Ambivalent Hope
Mekong Review
2026
I am ambivalent about hope.
This ambivalence is mostly due to the pernicious and successful co-opting of the vocabulary and gestures of hope by corporations, politicians, advertising, and wellness influencers. But it is also due to hope’s relationship to futurity, such that, at its worst, hope provides solace that anything is possible in the future, even—or especially—when it’s not. Indeed, the philosopher Eugene Thacker has described our era as being “haunted by the shadow of futurity, precisely because there is no future”. By which he means, ‘the future’ is a construct.
See the full essay here.