Social Hope and Prophetic Intellectuals in a ‘Hopeless’ World

This paper argues for the following propositions: 1) That aestheticism, nihilism, fatalism and political detachment are the least momentous legacy of the “first wave” of postmodern culture. 2) That far from being a historical destiny, postmodernism as nihilism was eventually dismissed by a number of “second wave” postmodern intellectuals. Thanks to postmodern anti-realism, those intellectuals rediscovered their role in society and a clever way to effectively use the conceptual means that postmodernism offers. 3) That historical evidence is available for a postmodern intellectual’s attempt to buttress social hope. 4) That postmodern intellectuals can play a prophet’s role in building socialism as a net of “institutions of hope.”