This talk begins with a question inspired by the work of the anthropologist David Scott, as to whether radical social transformation can remain a credible historical possibility if it is not undergirded by a belief in teleology. Does collectively willed transformation—the kind to which leftist and anticolonial movements have traditionally aspired—become unthinkable absent some degree of confidence in the arc of History bending toward social amelioration on its own? And if not, how do we begin adjudicating what counts as an emancipatory politics today? Put another way, this talk searches for forms that political hope might take in the disappointing and exhausted ruins of our postcolonial and post-socialist present. It approaches answers to these questions by examining a core concept in key narratives of leftist collective transformation, that is, by exploring anew the promise and limitations of “the dialectic.” It puts Frantz Fanon and Slavoj Žižek into conversation with the playwright Mohammad Al Attar, whose play While I Was Waiting not only shows us the dialectic in action, but in so doing offers a compelling approach to political transformation in the present.

Lisa Wedeen is a political scientist and the Mary R. Morton Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Known for her influential work on symbolic politics, authoritarianism, and the Middle East—particularly Syria—she combines interpretive methods with grounded ethnographic research. She is the author of Ambiguities of Domination, Peripheral Visions, and numerous widely cited articles that have shaped debates in comparative politics and political theory.

Co-presented by the Center for the Middle East and North Africa and the History of Consciousness Department