Autonomy in the Key of Hope: Understanding Prefiguration

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to produce an alternative understanding of autonomy that engages with the movements’ processes of prefiguration. I offer a definition of autonomy as the art of organising hope. I examine the previously mentioned four modes of autonomy through the prism of Ernst Bloch’s philosophy. By paraphrasing the language of music, I put autonomy in the key of hope. This means that, as a ‘composer’, I use hope as my basic material. If I make use of other concepts, notions and ideas, I will point to the way they are modified by the category of hope. A reading of autonomy in the key of hope repositions the debate about autonomy in three ways. First, it moves away from the dichotomy ‘autonomy vs the state’ by revealing the prefigurative nature of autonomy without avoiding the problem of the state and capital; second, it overcomes the fragmented understanding of autonomy; third, it bridges indigenous and non-indigenous autonomous practices.