Description
A growing literature in peace-building studies has examined the challenge that the ex-resisters’ negative emotions, including disappointment, pose to the creation of sustainable peace in post-conflict societies. However, these accounts focus primarily on evaluating negative emotions in terms of the stability of a post-conflict political order, while failing to account for their ability to inspire political action against the remainders of past violence and oppression. The paper fills this gap by examining the politically transformative potential of ex-resisters’ disappointment and interrogating how it affects the resisters’ horizon of hope. To that end, I theorise disappointment as an existential feeling that manifests itself as a way of being in the world and reframes our perception of the possibilities for political action. I argue that ex-resisters’ disappointment can lead to what Ernst Bloch called “educated hope,” a hope embodying a renewed commitment to fighting injustice that remains tempered by an ever-present possibility of failure. I demonstrate the prescient political relevance of this theoretical exploration by engaging with two cinematic representations of the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt: the documentary The Square (2013) and the feature film Clash (2016). The two films show how deep disappointments over the failed promise of revolution did not mark the end of activism, but inspired a new hopefulness about the however uncertain potentials of political action in the present.
