Cruel Optimism as an Ecology of Powers


Karataş İ. B.

THEORY CULTURE AND SOCIETY, cilt.0, ss.1-19, 2024 (SSCI)

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 0
  • Basım Tarihi: 2024
  • Dergi Adı: THEORY CULTURE AND SOCIETY
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Academic Search Premier, IBZ Online, International Bibliography of Social Sciences, Periodicals Index Online, ABI/INFORM, Communication & Mass Media Index, Communication Abstracts, Educational research abstracts (ERA), Gender Studies Database, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, Philosopher's Index, Political Science Complete, Social services abstracts, Sociological abstracts, Violence & Abuse Abstracts, Worldwide Political Science Abstracts
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1-19
  • Marmara Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

How do the flexibilized scenes of cruel optimism crystallize and resonate with the situational displays of crises as a governmental oversight? Centering around this question, the paper aims to offer a critical fulcrum for problematic attachments toward future-mediated fantasies in the aftermath of the Kahramanmaras earthquakes. It starts with evaluating how the pastoral mode was applied as a cruel diagram of positivity by the Turkish government through the omnipresent prowess of the media, which presents an ‘ordinaryizing’ affect in regularizing the fatalistic discourses and relief efforts. It then continues to analyze the retributive discourses by the politicians and officials that triggered the oscillatory porosity among varied (de)subjectivities, toggling between sovereign misrecognitions and exclusions, as well as spiritually vivifying the optimistic barriers of cruelty. Lastly, it discusses in what ways the hopeful projections reconciled with the preemption by the dominant scientific narratives paradoxically prolong the preexistence of uncertainty and trust.