Too Bad for the Facts: Confronting Value with Hope (Notes on the Argentine Uprising of 2001)

The essay discusses negativity as the force underpinning social antagonism, with particular reference to the fleeting moment of hope experienced in Argentina in December 2001. Developing Ernst Bloch’s notion of “real as process,” the essay problematizes “factual reality” and argues that the “real as process” informs both the process of valorization of capital and the process of prefiguring a reality that is not-yet. In moments of negation/creation value is confronted by hope. Negation creates an excess that occupies a wide space in the reality of struggle that cannot be appropriated by the state.