532021, issue 2
Truthful Hope
Ruth Sonderegger
Wherever we look these days too little is happening too late although it is utterly clear
what needs to be done.
Despite the facts presented by both scientists and activists, the recent Glasgow
Climate Change Conference ended with empty proclamations and promises that will
hardly change the alarming speed of the climate change on planet earth. Similarly, the
pandemic, which is not yet over, has made it very clear that it is the poorly-paid jobs
related to reproduction and care that are the most essential ones; jobs that are executed
by people on whom we all depend. However, reproductive work is as belittled and
under- or unpaid as ever since the onslaught of capitalism. The worlds of so-called
professional caregiving, meatpacking, or logistics, are still the very hells of exploitation
and exhaustion as those which have been identied in earlier phases of the current
pandemic. Against all evidence that zoonotic diseases (like covid-19) have everything
to do with human practices of ever-more cruel encroachment into the habitats of
animals, for example by way deforestation, monocultures, or the sealing of soils, such
practices are intensied by the hour. Also, there is ample evidence that all of these
and many other global challenges cannot be met within the borders of nation-states.
Nevertheless, national borders are more than ever protected, if not militarized, and new
border walls are erected. “Westernized” (Ramón Grosfoguel) humans in particular seem
to be attracted to the illusion that they can rescue themselves by denying vaccines no
less than denying breathable air, non-toxic soil, regions of bearable temperatures, and
much more, to others, although there is plenty of evidence to suggest that isolated
solutions are a part of the problems we are facing. The brutalizing tendency of acting
with reckless disregard to the deaths of millions on the shores of rising seas, in deserts,
war-, border- or otherwise toxic zones, takes its toll even on those (mainly inhabiting
the global north) who prot from this neglect; what is more, we know it.
The blame for us northerners’ inability to act in light of what is knowable, if
not blatantly obvious, cannot solely lie with the defenders of post-truth or alternative
truth, although neither their existence nor the powerful networks and unsocial media
associated with them can be denied. Such enemies of truth are too easy a target for
those who see themselves as representatives of enlightenment and the search for truth.
The failure of the Glasgow Climate Change Conference is a very good case in point.
It made room for impressive and moving speeches by scientists, activists, and politicians
(particularly from the global south) whose ndings and warnings were not denied but,
worse, simply ignored, and therefore remained without consequence. Of course, there
are the myriads of vested (class) interests that are always present at conferences like
this one which recently ended in Glasgow, but there has to be more than the blatant
incapability of acting in accordance with what is obviously known; more than the
unwillingness to sacrice egoistic prots and privileges that are so clearly tied to the
ruin of the earth as we know it. It can’t be the vastness of the relations and networks of
a globalized world that keep humans from acting in accordance with what they know.
For there are fascinating stories, animated statistics, and what have you… that bring
542021, issue 2
us closer to the devastating and excruciating facts than we seem to be able to digest.
What is missing in even the most compelling evidence and the most obvious truths is
hope. Truth alone seems to not be enough. Or, according to Theodor W. Adorno, truth
alone is not even fully true. This is so because mere truth ties us, today more than ever,
to a cluster of disastrous barbarities that are obviously wrong even if their depiction
is correct. Therefore, Adorno writes in his reections upon the damaged life: “In the
end hope, wrested from reality by negating it, is the only form in which truth appears.
Without hope, the idea of truth would be scarcely even thinkable, and it is the cardinal
untruth, having recognized existence to be bad, to present it as truth simply because it
has been recognized.” (§ 61).
Such Adornian hope cannot be reduced to empty wishes. Much rather it is the
art of imagining and improvising an alternative to the facts that need to be researched,
talked about, and circulated as meticulously as possible and fought against as hopefully
as we can. However, only the ercest and most negative critics seem to be able to
practice such hope; critics such as, for instance, Asad Rehman, who spoke on behalf of
the “black, brown and indigenous people” of the global south at COP26. His closing
speech addressed the rich who oered nothing but “more empty words”. And he con-
tinued: “You’re not keeping 1.5 alive. You are setting us on a pathway to 2.5 degrees,
you’re setting the planet on re while claiming to act. Your greenwashing kills […]
but we are not without hope. It just will not rest with you but with us and we don’t
compromise on justice.”1
Adorno, Theodor W. 1951. Minima Moralia.
Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben. Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp.
Adorno, Theodor W. 2005. Minima Moralia. Reflections
on a Damaged Life. London/New York: Verso.
Ruth Sonderegger (1967) is Professor of Philosophy
and Aesthetic Theory at the Academy of Fine
Arts Vienna, Austria. She completed her PhD in
Philosophy at the Free University Berlin. From 2001
to 2009 she worked at the Philosophy Department
of the University of Amsterdam. Currently, she
researches the history and systematics of the concept
of critique as well as (everyday) practices of critique;
her second research focus is on the history of
aesthetics and its entanglements with the history
of colonial capitalism. Since 2004 she has been a
member of the editorial staff of Krisis: Tijdschrift voor
actuele filosofie [Krisis: Journal for Contemporary
Philosophy].
“‘Blackness Itself Is the Crime’: Bishop
William Barber on Racism in the Ahmaud Arbery
Murder Trial,” Democracy Now!, accessed November
17, 2021, cf. min15:06-16:28. https://www.
democracynow.org/2021/11/15/rev_dr_william_
barber_ahmaud_arbery.
Notes Biography
1
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