Political fatalism and the (im)possibility of social transformation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6250877 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lukas Slothuus (0000-0002-6773-2244, University of Sussex, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 41-59 |
| Publication date | 2025-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary Political Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1470-8914 • E-ISSN: 1476-9336 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1057/s41296-024-00685-1 |
| OpenAlex | W4392510060 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 25 |
How can the world be improved if the people inhabiting it do not believe they can transform it? A belief in such political fatalism is an important obstacle to social transformation, yet underexplored in the contemporary political theory literature. Political fatalism can be understood as a commitment to the belief that human agency cannot effectuate social transformation. In this article, I provide a typology of such political fatalism, considering its two main forms: fatalism of inevitability as the positive version that humans do not have the power to affect positive social change, and fatalism of impossibility as the negative version that human agency does not play a role in avoiding negative social change such as climate catastrophe. Focussing particularly on the more pressing contemporary problem of the fatalism of impossibility, I develop three distinct dimensions along which fatalism has an impact: the cognitive, the affective, and the practical. Finally, I offer solutions, focussing on how to combine interventions on the cognitive, affective, and practical levels: historically sensitive critique, imagination, and a combination of bounded spontaneism and long-term political organisation
Critical theory · Epistemology · Fatalism · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Social change · Social science · Social transformation · Sociology · Transformation (genetics · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism
Feeling, Emotion, Affect
Left-Wing Melancholia
No Other Planet
Selections from the Prison Notebooks
Marx's 'Eighteenth Brumaire'
Suicide
Making History
“The Most We Can Hope For…”
The Mute Compulsion of Economic Relations’
The Aptness of Anger
Insurgency trap
Mute Compulsion
Bodies in Action
Discourse and Human Agency
The Catachronism of Climate Change
Islamic Fatalism and the Clash of Civilizations
Passionate Politics
The Origin of Fatalistic Tendencies
| Citations per year | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |