Hopeful Times, Black Futures, and Things Quantum Technologies Tell about International Institutions

This chapter looks at international institutions through the lenses of divergent possibilities for hope in the Anthropocene: cruel optimism, identified here with modern discourses of international law, and hope draped in black, drawn from Black social theory. These different possibilities for hope are modeled by two projects organised around imaginaries of quantum technology, namely the European Quantum Flagship (EQF) and Black Quantum Futurism (BQF). Cruel optimism puts mainstream international law in a dual discursive position, predicated on the reality of frustrating hope(ful expectations), while sustaining the imaginary of hope(ful expectations). The EQF contributes with a vision of a radically new future which nonetheless serves to reproduce market conditions. Hope draped in black and BQF instead remain grounded in a traumatic past to enliven a radical future. These different possibilities for hope are not independent, however, but entangled, and together demonstrate the complex politics of hope in the Anthropocene.