The main contents of this issue – second-to-last of the current editorial team – consist of a special section on Jeffrey Goldfarb's work edited by Siobhan Kattago (our former book reviews editor) and Patrick Gilger, titled Small Things, Deep Resonance. The articles, range from theoretical and analytical to personal and reflective, sometimes even within the same piece. What comes clearly through in all of them, even for a reader not that well-versed in Goldfarb-ese, is the immense effect he has had, both on his students as well as on broader academic community. Building a theory of hopeful critique, and thinking through how our mundane grievances can, in the right situation, grow to size of a whole revolution, can give us a reason to pause and reflect.
In the other papers of this issue, Zorica Siročić offers a timely meditation on what she calls ‘temporal activist repertoires’ – how activist groups use temporal framing to coordinate action and create pressure. Her paper, titled ‘Temporal Repertoires in Contemporary Activism: The Cases of Fridays for Future, 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, and “It's Thursday Again!”’, complements recent theorising about time and how understanding temporalities beyond sequencing can advance our efforts. Temporal activist repertoires help connect the past and the future to the present, coordinating action globally, especially in the case of Fridays for Future.
Michael Murray in his paper ‘Fear, class and quiescence: Activist views on the “sinister” narrative during the Irish anti water charges campaign (2014–2016)’ explores how fear is deployed as a deliberate tactic against a unified and broad working-class campaign coalition, fighting for continued access to one of life's basic necessities. Fear is not just an existing thing, it is something created to suit a particular power arrangement. And same goes for hope – hope is something we can create through our collective action.
Our time is seemingly one all about fear. Fear caused by actual horrible events in the world, fear caused by rational responses to our unstable futures, but also fear as a deliberate strategy to nullify our collective power. Maybe what the papers in this issue teach us is that this fear does not need to define us. Wherever we can live like we already were free, we can create bubbles of agency, bubbles of defiance, and you never know how big those bubbles can grow. Against the politics of fear, we can create a culture of hope. Through living in the culture of hope, we can remember that there's always a space for action, for creating a ‘we’ that can act – and by doing so, create a more hopeful future.