I met my friend Sarah Amsler from the School of Education at the University of Nottingham last Friday for a catch-up. We discussed issues of how hope is coded, which made me think about how it is eroded, Vanessa Andreotti’s metaphors of the hospice and the beach in relation to institutions and structures, Alexis Shotwell’s ideas of purity and entanglement in our everyday experiences, and the gloopy nature of brownies.

Our discussion took place in the Ugly Bread Bakery in Nottingham, and so there is a lot of background noise. This has made me tetchy, because I forgot my directional microphones. So, I apologise that you will have to turn up the sound and work hard to catch what Sarah has to say. I have uploaded the file anyway because if you ignore my constant interruptions and jibber-jabber (note to self: #stfu), you will hear how insightful she is.

The extra resources Sarah mentions are as follows.

Vanessa Andreotti: How can we hospice a dying way of knowing/being and assist with the birth of something new, still fragile, undefined and potentially (but not necessarily) wiser with radical tenderness? See also: Toward Alternative Futures in Uncertain Times.

Amsler, S. (2016). Learning hope: an epistemology of possibility for advanced capitalist society. In: Social sciences for an other politics: women theorizing without parachutes. Palgrave Macmillan.

Santos, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. London: Routledge.

Shotwell, A. (2016). Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times. Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press.