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Summary and Analysis of

Hope in the Dark

Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

Based on the Book by Rebecca Solnit

The summary and analysis in this ebook are meant to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction. This ebook is not intended as a substitute for the work that it summarizes and analyzes, and it is not authorized, approved, licensed, or endorsed by the works author or publisher. Worth Books makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this ebook.

Contents

Context

In the wake of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Rebecca Solnit began writing Hope in the Dark , a book-length argument for the necessity of hope to combat the bleakness of despair. The global peace movement had staged the largest international protest of all time to try to prevent the Iraq War; after it failed to course of the conflict, Solnit worried that people would give up the fight rather than being carried by the momentum of what they had accomplished. So she set out to turn people back toward hopefulness by collecting a history of victories people had achieved in the face of great odds.

By the time she published the book in 2004, President George W. Bush had been reelected, and most progressive-minded people were sinking deeper into their negative outlooks. More than a decade later, Solnit saw the telltale signs of hopelessness threatening the United States once again as the 2016 election drew near, and Donald Trump inched closer to the presidency. Hope in the Dark was rereleased in 2016 to serve as a reminder that the world is still not spiralling into ruin, especially not if people retain enough hope to spur themselves into action.

Overview

Darkness is often associated with sadness and fear, but it doesnt necessarily contain these things, as Rebecca Solnit points out at the beginning of Hope in the Dark . The essential quality of darkness is its lack of light or visibility; hence, darkness is the unknown, which could be either positive or negative. This is why, Solnit argues, we should have hope: We may not know what will happen, but, if we carry on, something certainly will.

Hope is the counteraction to the despair that Solnit saw settling over the United States in 2004, after its soldiers invaded the Middle East, and George W. Bush was reelected. In 2003, the global peace movement had reached a fever pitch, protesting against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; by 2004, those who were opposed to the Bush Administrations tactics felt defeated and trapped. Acknowledging this collective disillusionment, Solnit points out that giving up is the easy way out; finding hope is harder because it means that there is work to do. In the chapters that follow, she identifies watershed events from the past 50 years, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, and September 11, 2001, and then examines the small, steady movements that built up to and up from these events. The result is an aggregate of grassroots, radical and indigenous actions that exemplify the power of peoples determinationeven when it seems like it is enacted on the smallest scale.

Solnit attempts to overcome cynicism by assembling a primer on social and environmental activism and uprisings from the mid to late 20th century till now. She makes the case that hope is the necessary catalyst for action, and that activists (and would-be activists) must hold onto hope in order to create a world more like the one they want to live in, even in the face of enormous obstacles, especially, and necessarily, in the face of uncertainty.

Summary

Foreword to the Third Edition (2015): Grounds for Hope

Over a decade has passed since Rebecca Solnit wrote Hope in the Dark , and as her text anticipated, things have changed in unimaginable ways. The changes are both bad and goodconsider, for instance, global tech companies destroying other commerce, and government surveillance of citizens, but also Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and the Dream Act. In most cases, if not all, it is too soon to make a value judgment.

Solnits reasons for writing about hope have stayed the same, only growing more clear to her over time. Hope is necessary to outweigh cynicism, but hope does not mean convincing people that everything will be fine, or naively thinking it already is. Solnit has written a history of victories attained by activism because one way to produce hope is through memory, by recognizing that things were once different than they are now. Amnesia, on the other hand, creates depression, and is sometimes used as a tactic to suppress resistance.

She also celebrates the virtues of uncertainty and time. Uncertainty, because it means the realm of possibility is open to any of uswhen no one knows what will happen, it could be any individual or groups influence that matters. Time, because it allows space for viewpoints to shift and events to take on new meaning. For instance, people who experience disasters often find an invigorating sense of connection from their community in the aftermath.

Ultimately we must remember that together, people are the most powerful force; hope can motivate us to seek change en masse.

Need to Know: Activists have a tendency to start from scratch when the practices they need already exist in the world; they just need to be sought out and brought into new contexts. The past is set in daylight, and it can become a torch we carry into the night that is the future.

1. Looking Into Darkness

The future of our world is unknown, but we dont need to fear the unknowable: it has as much potential to be positive as it does to be negative. The present can, itself, be used as an example here: We often fail to recognize huge ways in which the world and society have changed, especially when the change is positive. Who could have believed that the political prisoner Nelson Mandela would go on to be the president of a new South Africa? Or that nonwhite Americans could vote? Or that same sex marriage was attainable? It is important to take note of those changes and take pride in them, for moral support and as a reminder to continue protecting them.

Need to Know: Hope should not be treated as a potential stroke of luck but instead heeded as a call to action. By naming victories and identifying changes, we can begin to abandon helplessness.

2. When We Lost

After George W. Bush won reelection in 2004, despite widespread opposition, many citizens of the United Statesand the worldfell into despair. Solnit observed the progressive people around her participating in what she calls the Conversation, a back-and-forth of weariness and complaining that is fueled not only by participants despair, but by their certainty that despair is the only futureand the only option. Solnit, who refuses to join in this conversation, suggests that those of us who are lost need to start telling a different story.

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