Hopepunk
Hopepunk is a subgenre of speculative/science fiction tied to resistance, using the fictional worlds to encourage resistance by showing alternatives to the systems we have now.
Punk = “fight the man” + hope = “we deserve a better world”.
About
A body of imagined worlds which are positive but not utopias, because their positivity lies, not in the world already being excellent, but in the world moving toward the better thanks to the efforts of excellent people who work to make a difference.
The subgenre has also been described as weaponized optimism, and as rising from a culture of resistance, specifically anti-authoritarian resistance which swelled around the globe in the wake of 2016, connected with what Malka Older has called speculative resistance: the use of fictional worlds to encourage resistance by showing alternatives to the systems we have now.
Speculative resistance
Speculative resistance is about looking at other ways the world could work (worse, better, mixed), and using that to help us think outside the box and push for new things.
The hopepunk subsect of speculative resistance is about depicting how that push requires kindness, compromise, teamwork, resilience, and—tired as we are—a lot more time.
Hopepunk stories tend to showcase cooperation, collective action, resilience, partial victories as the world is moved toward, not to, a better state, ending with (re)construction underway and the world changing, not changed.
Good points
- fiction about the difficult path of rebuilding,
- messing up is an unavoidable part of taking action in the first place,
- fiction does not give us many stories of continuing to slog on after an unsatisfying partial victory. That makes hopepunk powerful.
Related:
Peter
Peter
Kayti Burt