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Uses 20th century existentialism to confront the challenge of political judgement after moral absolutismHow can we reinvigorate the human capacity for political judgement as a practical activity capable of addressing the uncertainties of our postfoundational world? The book takes up this challenge by drawing on the historically attuned perspective of 20th-century philosophies of existence – in particular the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus and Hannah Arendt. Displacing the lingering rationalist temptations, Maša Mrovlje engages these thinkers' aesthetic sensibility to delve into the experiential reality of political judgement and revivify it as a worldly, ambiguous practice. The purpose is to illustrate the prescient political significance of existentialists' narrative imagination on two contemporary perplexities of political judgement: the problem of dirty hands and the challenge of transitional justice. This engagement reveals the distinctly resistant potential of worldly judgement in its ability to stimulate our capacities of coming to terms with and creatively confronting the tragedies of political action, rather than simply yielding to them as a necessary course of political life.Key FeaturesFocuses on the activity of judging as a paramount political abilityQuestions the traditional understanding of the relationship between thought and action Unearths the distinct critical, resistant potential contained in worldly judgementMethodologically distinctive: combines textual and conceptual analysis with a narrative approach, drawing on literary sensibility to enrich the flow of theoretical argumentationIllustrates the political significance of the existential narrative imagination on concrete examples that challenge and perplex our capacity to judge politicallyOpens new vistas of inquiry in the fields of ethics of narrative and politics of recognition

This article explores how an existential account of emotions can enrich debates about negative emotions in transitional justice and peacebuilding scholarship. A growing literature has examined the challenge that the ex-resisters' negative emotions, including disappointment, pose to the creation of sustainable peace in post-conflict societies. It has however not sufficiently accounted for disappointment's potentially productive political value. The paper fills this gap by examining how the ex-resisters' disappointment affects their capacity for political action against the remainders of past violence and oppression, with a specific focus on the South African context. I draw on Jean-Paul Sartre's existential account of the emotions' 'magic' as a way of coping with the complexities of political action arising from our situated condition. I put Sartre's account in conversation with Nadine Gordimer's novel No Time Like the Present and experiences of disappointment among South African ex-resisters to show how disappointment can lead ex-resisters to different ways of confronting the complexity of political engagement in the wake of the incomplete transition. This dialogue reveals disappointment as a powerful source of resistance against the persistence of injustice, while also disclosing significant constraints upon political engagement in conditions of systemic violence.

Hegemonic practices of memorialization rely on narratives of heroic, morally untainted resistance, which cast traitors as the aberrant "other." This paper draws on Simone de Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity and historical and sociological accounts of betrayal to trouble this binary and construct a framework for memorializing betrayal in its ambiguity—in relation to the everyday reality of tragic dilemmas that resisters face. I show how attentiveness to the ambiguity of betrayal can help rethink heroic resistance myths beyond the exclusionary logic pitting moral purity against the depravity of treason—and warn against the reproduction of systematic practices of othering in the new political order. The paper develops the political relevance of this theoretical exploration via the example of a South African novel, The Texture of Shadows, examining how its insights into the ambiguity of betrayal challenge the myths of heroic resistance in South Africa.

The article aims to expose and contest the gendered representation of betrayal in resistance movements. For a theoretical framework, I draw on Simone de Beauvoir's critique of masculinist myths of femininity inThe Second Sex, combined with contemporary feminist scholarship on the oppressive constructions of female subjectivity in debates on war and violence. I trace how the hegemonic visions of virile resistance tend to subsume the grey zones of women's resistance activity under two reductive myths of femininity – the self-sacrificial mother and the seductivefemme fatale– while obscuring the complexities of betrayal arising from women's embodied vulnerabilities. I demonstrate the political relevance of this theoretical exploration on the example of two representative French Resistance novels, Joseph Kessel'sArmy of Shadowsand Roger Vailland'sPlaying with Fire.

This essay examines how the disappointment of ex-resistance fighters can illuminate the grey zone of founding—the ambiguity of beginning anew against the background of systemic violence that eludes the predominant linear visions of transition. For a theoretical framework, I draw on Hannah Arendt's insights into the ambiguity of beginning anew as a practice of attunement that takes oppressive practices as points of departure for democratizing political action. I explore how the ex-resisters' stories of disappointment can invigorate this practice, focusing on their ability to reorient political action towards reframing unjust relationships in a way that guards against systematic exclusions in the future. This essay demonstrates the political relevance of disappointment on the example of a South African ex-resister's memoir, Pregs Govender's Love and Courage. Govender's narrative discloses how experiences of disappointment can orient the ex-resisters' efforts to confront the complexities of founding obscured from the official story.

How can we reinvigorate the human capacity for political judgement in our uncertain post-foundational world? This book takes up the challenge by calling on 20th-century existentialism, in particular the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus and Hannah Arendt.

The article engages the grey zone of violent resistance – the morally ambiguous situations facing liberation activists that have generally fallen outside the grasp of transitional justice scholarship. For this purpose, it draws on Albert Camus's artistic sensibility, reconstructing how his artistic appeal to the limits of rebellion can tackle the difficulty of judging violent resistance. The article demonstrates the relevance of Camus's artistic sensibility on the case of the armed anti-apartheid struggle. It analyses two South African novels, Afrika's The Innocents and Wicomb's David's Story, in an attempt to show how their literary insights can enrich the official vision of reconciliation as propounded by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Gramsci and the problem of fatalism / Lukas Slothuus -- The promise of solidarity : learning from failure with Rosa Luxemburg / Maša Mrovlje -- Between loss and hope : reflections on the Black revolutionary tradition / Alex Zamalin -- Memorials of 'Third World' solidarity in Latin American and African narratives / Sarah M. Quesada -- Staying with melancholy? : an archive of the future's past / Brigitte Bargetz -- Despair and other political feelings / Deborah Gould -- Resistance and/or metamorphosis : politics as breathwork / David McIvor -- Responding to failure : the case of the US disability rights movement / Gisli Vogler -- Beside the point of hope : a thought experiment on (Black) life, death, and literary puncturing / Joseph Winters.