Revolutionary Disappointment and Recalibration will explore whether radical social transformation can remain a credible historical possibility absent an underlying belief in teleology. The question is inspired by the work of the anthropologist David Scott, a member of the research team, and more particularly by what he describes as the “waning” of the “longing for total revolution” that framed and animated the great modernist politics of emancipation, including (indeed, especially) its anticolonial and socialist forms. We ask: What might emancipatory political thought and affect look like now that we can no longer appeal to the ideas of progress that provided the theoretical underpinnings for that longing? Does collectively willed transformation—the kind to which leftist and anti-colonial movements have traditionally aspired—become impossible without a belief in guaranteed progress? And if not, how do we begin adjudicating what counts as an emancipatory politics today? Put another way, we are interested in investigating the forms that political hope might take in the disappointing and exhausted ruins of our postcolonial and post-socialist present. As a way of getting at these questions, we plan to hold a series of workshops, conferences, and lecture events that will allow us to think theoretically, historically, and globally about these concerns. Theoretically, the project aims to bring together political and social theorists who are engaged with issues of revolution, defeat, and the possibilities for remaking one’s world in the wake of crushing political disappointment. Historically and globally, we plan to consider modern revolutionary movements, their ideas, emancipatory possibilities, institutional formations, artistic products, and defeats over time and in comparative perspective.