“This is Not a Moment”

Theorising the Temporal Aspects of Hope in Antiracist Protest

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/irtp.v3i1.167385

Keywords:

hope, antiracism, collective action, Black Lives Matter

Abstract

This paper explores the theorisation of the temporal nature of hope within antiracist protest. It arises out of a larger research project, a qualitative case study of a Black Lives Matter protest which took place in Bristol, UK, on 7th June 2020. During this, a statue of a slave trader (Edward Colston) was toppled and thrown into the River Avon. Building on social psychological studies of collective action and critical theories of hope, the paper takes a processual ontological approach, theorising hope as an emotion with cognitive influences and dynamic, relational and temporal qualities. Hope is seen as a situated and affective mode of world-making linked to solidarity and community and expressed in many social and cultural forms. It is conceptualised as having liminal qualities, part of a temporal landscape linked to collective and personal memory and historical narratives related to melancholy. Theorising is developed through explorations of: the complex interrelations of memory, history and time; the concepts of racialized time (Al-Saji, 2013, 2021), reparatory history (Hall, 2018) and memory activism (Gutman & Wüstenberg, 2023); the protest context; a temporally and contextually sensitive methodology; temporally saturated data; and, a reflexive practice rooted in decolonial understandings and epistemic modesty (Teo, 2019).

Author Biography

Magi Young, The Open University

Magi Young is a Social Psychology PhD researcher at the Open University, UK. She brings to her research her transdisciplinary experience: she has a Human Geography degree (University of Bristol B. Soc.Sci), a Psychology degree (Open University B.Sc.) and is a qualified lawyer of 25 years (Manchester Metropolitan University C.P.E. and London Metropolitan University L.S.F). She has a research interest in political activism and crowd experience, particularly the emotional experience of protest and activism e.g. female activists’ experiences in the Extinction Rebellion movement in the UK. She has research assistant experience with British Academy/Leverhulme projects: researching understandings of ‘normativity’ in political protest in Bristol, UK and exploring the work of political activists in the Irish conflict who have gone on to careers as professional authors. Her PhD examines understandings, experiences and expressions of hope in antiracist protest through a mixed methods qualitative study of a Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol, UK in June 2020 during which the statue of a slave trader was toppled and thrown in the River Avon. She is committed to using her research to promote racial, social and environmental justice.

References

Al-Saji, A. (2013). Too late: Racialized time and the closure of the past. Insights 6(5), 1–13. https://www.iasdurham.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Al-Saji_Too-Late-Racialized-Time-and-the-Closure-of-the-Past.pdf

Al-Saji, A. (2021). Too late: Fanon, the dismembered past, and a phenomenology of racialized time 1. In L. Laubscher, D. Hook, & M. U. Desai (Eds.), Fanon, phenomenology, and psychology (pp. 177–193). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003037132-17

Badaan, V., Jost, J. T., Fernando, J., & Kashima, Y. (2020). Imagining better societies: A social psychological framework for the study of utopian thinking and collective action. Social and Personality Psychology Compass,14(4), Article e12525. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12525

Badaan, V., Akil, C., Zebian, Y. & Jost, J.T. (2022). Envisioning change: An empirical test of the social psychological model of utopian thinking and collective action. Journal of Social Psychology Research, 1(1), 77–96. https://doi.org/10.37256/jspr.1120221140

Ball, R. (2017). Calculating the number of enslaved Africans transported by the Royal African Company during Edward Colston’s involvement (1680-92). Bristol Radical History Group. https://www.brh.org.uk/site/articles/edward-colston-research-paper-1/

Bar-Tal, D. (2001). Why does fear override hope in societies engulfed by intractable conflict, as it does in the Israeli society? Political Psychology, 22(3), 601–627. https://doi.org/10.1111/0162-895X.00255

Bar‐Tal, D., Halperin, E. & De Rivera, J. (2007). Collective emotions in conflict situations: Societal implications. Journal of Social Issues, 63(2), 441–460. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2007.00518.x

Benjamin, W. (2009). On the concept of history (D. Redmond, Trans.). Marxists Archive. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm (Original work published 1940)

Bibi, R. and Ehgartner, U. (2021). Walkalong interviews. In A. Barron, A. L. Browne, U. Ehgartner, S. M. Hall, L. Pottinger, & J. Ritson (Eds.), Methods for Change: Impactful social science methodologies for 21st century problems. Aspect and The University of Manchester.

Bird, L.H., Thomas, E.F. & Wenzel, M. (2024). ‘We despair’: Examining the role of political despair for collective action and well‐being. European Journal of Social Psychology 54(3), 745–766. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.3052

Braun, V., Clarke, V., & Gray, D. (2017). Innovations in qualitative methods. In B. Gough (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of critical social psychology (pp. 243–266). https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51018-1_13

Bristol Radical History Group. (2021). The fall of Colston: A timeline of impact in Bristol Britain and the world. https://www.brh.org.uk/site/articles/the-fall-of-colston-a-timeline-of-impact-in-bristol-britain-and-the-world/

Bury, S.M., Wenzel, M. & Woodyatt, L., (2020). Against the odds: Hope as an antecedent of support for climate change action. British Journal of Social Psychology, 59(2), 289–310. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12343

Clarke, D. & Drury, J. (2024). Emergent prefigurative politics and social psychological processes: A systematic review and research agenda. Qeios. https://doi.org/10.32388/MAMYEK.3

Cherry, F. (1995). The ‘stubborn particulars’ of social psychology: Essays on the research process. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315788197

Chevrier, M., Bosone, L., Zenasni, F. & Delhomme, P. (2025). The role of collective positive prospection in motivating social change: A scoping review of methods and findings. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 103, Article 102576. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2025.102576

Cohen-Chen, S., Crisp, R.J., & Halperin, E., (2015). Perceptions of a changing world induce hope and promote peace in intractable conflicts. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(4), 498–512. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167215573210

Cohen-Chen, S., & Van Zomeren, M. (2018). Yes, we can? Group efficacy beliefs predict collective action, but only when hope is high. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 77, 50–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.03.016

Cohen-Chen, S., & Pliskin, R. (2024). Hope: The experience and functions of a seemingly-positive group-based emotion. European Review of Social Psychology, 36(1), 35–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2024.2347815

Cole, T. (2023). After the fall, where? Relocating the Colston statue in Bristol, from 2020 to imaginary futures. Journal of Historical Geography, 82, 156–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2023.03.001

DiAngelo, R. (2011). White fragility. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3(3), 54–70.

Dinerstein, A. C. (2015). The politics of autonomy in Latin America: The art of organizing hope. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316011

Eagleton, T. (2015). Hope without optimism. Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvj7wnnv

Eng, D. L., & Kazanjian, D. (Eds.). (2003). Loss: The politics of mourning. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520936270

Emelife, A. (2020). ‘Hope flows through this statue’: Marc Quinn on replacing Colston with Jen Reid, a Black Lives Matter protestor’. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jul/15/marc-quinn-statue-colston-jen-reid-black-lives-matter-bristol

Fanon, F. (1967). The Wretched of the Earth (C. Farrington, Trans.). Grove Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-05194-3_4 (Original work published 1961)

Fanon, F. (2008). Black skin, white masks (R. Philcox, Trans.). Grove Press. (Original work published 1952)

Fine, M., (2006). Bearing witness: Methods for researching oppression and resistance—A textbook for critical research. Social Justice Research, 19, 83–108. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-006-0001-0

Fine, M., Weis, L., Pruitt, L.P., & Burns, A. (2012). Off white: Readings on power, privilege, and resistance. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203621479

Frank, S., & Ristic, M. (2020). Urban fallism: Monuments, iconoclasm and activism. City, 24(3), 552–564. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2020.1784578

Freire, P. (2021). Pedagogy of hope: Reliving pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury Publishing. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350190238 (Original work published 1992)

Fromm, E. (2010). The revolution of hope: Toward a humanized technology. American Mental Health Foundation Books. (Original work published in 1968)

Gayle, D. (2021). Campaigners try to block Edward Colston display at Bristol museum. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/07/campaigners-try-to-block-edward-colston-display-at-bristol-museum

Geiger, N., Dwyer, T., & Swim, J. K. (2023). Hopium or empowering hope? A meta-analysis of hope and climate engagement. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, Article 1139427. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1139427

Greenaway, K.H., Cichocka, A., van Veelen, R., Likki, T., & Branscombe, N.R. (2016). Feeling hopeful inspires support for social change. Political Psychology, 37(1), 89–107. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12225

Griffith, R. (2024) My roots and routes. In C. Horvath, & R. S. White (Eds.). Breaking the dead silence: Engaging with the legacies of empire and slave-ownership in Bath and Bristol’s memoryscape (pp.149–171). Liverpool University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.12949048.11

Gutman, Y., Wüstenberg, J., Dekel, I., Murphy, K. M., Nienass, B., Wawrzyniak, J., & Whigham, K. (Eds.). (2023). The Routledge handbook of memory activism. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003127550

Gutman, Y., & Wüstenberg, J. (2023). Introduction: The activist turn in memory studies. In Y. Gutman, J. Wüstenberg, I. Dekel, K. M. Murphy, B. Nienass, J. Wawrzyniak, & K. Whigham (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of memory activism (pp. 5–15). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003127550-2

Hall, C. (2018). Doing reparatory history: Bringing ‘race’ and slavery home. Race & Class, 60(1), 3–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306396818769791

Halperin, E., Bar-Tal, D., Nets-Zehngut, R., & Drori, E. (2008). Emotions in conflict: Correlates of fear and hope in the Israeli-Jewish society. Peace and Conflict, 14(3), 233–258. https://doi.org/10.1080/10781910802229157

Hasan-Aslih, S., Pliskin, R., Van Zomeren, M., Halperin, E., & Saguy, T. (2019). A darker side of hope: Harmony-focused hope decreases collective action intentions among the disadvantaged. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(2), 209–223. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218783190

Hawlina, H., Pedersen, O.C. & Zittoun, T. (2020). Imagination and social movements. Current Opinion in Psychology, 35, 31–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.02.009

Heaney, S. (1990) The Cure at Troy. Faber and Faber Ltd.

hooks, b. (2013). Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope. Routledge

hooks, b. (2000). All about love: New visions. William Morrow.

Hopkins, N., Reicher, S.D., Khan, S.S., Tewari, S., Srinivasan, N. & Stevenson, C. (2016). Explaining effervescence: Investigating the relationship between shared social identity and positive experience in crowds. Cognition and Emotion, 30(1), 20–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2015.1015969

Hornsey, M. J., & Fielding, K. S. (2016). A cautionary note about messages of hope: Focusing on progress in reducing carbon emissions weakens mitigation motivation. Global Environmental Change, 39, 26–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. gloenvcha.2016.04.003

Horvath, C., & White, R. S. (2024). Breaking the dead silence: engaging with the legacies of empire and slave-ownership in Bath and Bristol’s memoryscapes. Liverpool University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.12949048

Jin, B., & Kim, Y. C. (2019). Rainbows in the society: A measure of hope for society. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 22(1), 18–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12339

Kidder, L. H., & Fine, M. (1997). Qualitative inquiry in psychology: A radical tradition. In D. Fox & I. Prilleltensky (Eds.), Critical psychology: An introduction (pp. 34–50). Sage Publications, Inc.

Kim, D. S., Kim, H. S., Schwartz-Barcott, D., & Zucker, D. (2006). The nature of hope in hospitalized chronically ill patients. International journal of nursing studies, 43(5), 547–556. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2005.07.010

King, J. (2020). Toppling of Edward Colston statue referenced at George Floyd’s funeral. Bristol Post. https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/toppling-edward-colston-statue-referenced-4210700

Kisuule, V. (2020) Hollow. Poetry International. https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poems/poem/103-30428_HOLLOW

Lear, J. (2006). Radical hope: Ethics in the face of cultural devastation. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674040021

Lopez, P. J. (2023). For a pedagogy of hope: Imagining worlds otherwise. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 47(5), 792–804. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2022.2155803

McConnell Simpson, H. (2024). New display at M Shed: The toppling of the Colston statue. Bristol Museums. https://www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/blog/new-display-at-m-shed-the-toppling-of-the-colston-statue

Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the development of a concept. Cultural studies, 21(2-3), 240–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162548

Maldonado-Torres, N. (2016). Outline of ten theses on coloniality and decoloniality. Fondation Franz Fanon. https://fondation-frantzfanon.com/outline-of-ten-theses-on-coloniality-and-decoloniality/

Malherbe, N., Kopano R., Adams G., Reddy G., & Shahnaaz Suffla, S. (2021). A decolonial Africa(n)-centered psychology of antiracism. Review of General Psychology 25(4), 437–450. https://doi.org/10.1177/10892680211022992

Moody, J. (2025). Decolonizing memory in Bristol: Dance and augmented reality as a coproduced radical counter-memorial. Radical History Review, 2025(152), 91–110. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-11609968

Morrow, C., and Garrick, N. (2001). Survival. Eye Magazine. https://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/survival

Ngo, H. (2019). ‘Get over it’? Racialised temporalities and bodily orientations in time. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 40(2), 239–253. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2019.1577231

Nussbaum, M.C. (2013). Political emotions. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt6wpqm7

O’Donnokoé, N., Steffen, C., & Langer, P. C. (2024). Hope in crisis: Revisiting Erich Fromm’s dialectic of transformation. Journal of Psychosocial Studies, 17(3), 330–340. https://doi.org/10.1332/14786737y2024d000000029

Páez, D., Rimé, B., Basabe, N., Wlodarczyk, A. & Zumeta, L. (2015). Psychosocial effects of perceived emotional synchrony in collective gatherings. Journal of personality and social psychology, 108(5), 711–729. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000014

Philogene Heron, A. (2022). Goodnight Colston. Mourning slavery: Death rites and duppy conquering in a circum‐atlantic city. Antipode, 54(4), 1251–1276. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12831

Power, S.A., Zittoun, T., Akkerman, S., Wagoner, B., Cabra, M., Cornish, F., Hawlina, H., Heasman, B., Mahendran, K., Psaltis, C. & Rajala, A. (2023). Social psychology of and for world-making. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7(4), 378–392. https://doi.org/10.1177/10888683221145756

Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. International sociology, 15(2), 215–232. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580900015002005

Reicher, S.D. (1984). The St. Pauls' riot: An explanation of the limits of crowd action in terms of a social identity model. European journal of social psychology, 14(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2420140102

Robinson, H. (2022, June 23). Bristol’s Black Lives Matter movement captured on camera by BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-61882722

Saad, L. (2020). Me and white supremacy: How to recognise your privilege, combat racism and change the world. Hachette UK.

Schraube, E. (2015). Why theory matters: Analytical strategies of critical psychology. Estudos de Psicologia (Campinas), 32(3), 533–545. https://doi.org/10.1590/0103-166x2015000300018

Selvanathan, H.P., Jetten, J. & Umeh, A. (2023). A history of collective resilience and collective victimhood: Two sides of the same coin that explain Black Americans' present‐day responses to oppression. British Journal of Social Psychology, 62(1), 136–160. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12562

Snyder, C. R. (2002). Hope theory: Rainbows in the mind. Psychological Inquiry,13(4), 1047–1084. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1304_01

Solnit, R. (2016). Hope in the dark: Untold histories, wild possibilities. Canongate Books Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478007135-086

Steeds, M., & Ball, R. (2020). From Wulfstan to Colston: Severing the sinews of slavery in Bristol. Bristol Radical History Group. https://www.brh.org.uk/site/pamphleteer/from-wulfstan-to-colston/

Stenner, P. (2024). A. N. Whitehead and Process Thought. Human Affairs, 34(3), Article 325339. https://doi.org/10.1515/humaff-2024-0072

Suffla, S., Malherbe, N., & Seedat, M. (2020). Recovering the everyday within and for decolonial peacebuilding through politico-affective space. In Y. G. Acar, S. M. Moss, & Ö. M. Uluğ (Eds.). Researching peace, conflict, and power in the field: Methodological challenges and opportunities (pp. 343–364). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44113-5_18

Suzuki, S., May, S. C. & Seider, S. (2023). Associations between hope and trajectories of critical consciousness among US youth of color. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 33(4), 1235–1253. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12872

Teo, T. (2019). Academic subjectivity, idols, and the vicissitudes of virtues in science: Epistemic modesty versus epistemic grandiosity. In K. C. O’Doherty, L. M. Osbeck, E. Schraube, & J. Yen (Eds.), Psychological studies of science and technology (pp. 31–48). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25308-0_2

Teo, T. (2022). What is a white epistemology in psychological science? A critical race-theoretical analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, Article 861584. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.861584

Teo, T. (2023). Autoepistemology when disentangling “North and South entanglements.” Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 43(3), 144–148. https://doi.org/10.1037/teo0000239

Thompson, J. (2021). The story behind: A Movement Not A Moment. Bristol Museums. https://www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/blog/the-story-behind-a-movement-not-a-moment/

Trawalter, S., Higginbotham, G. D., & Henderson, K. (2022). Social psychological research on racism and the importance of historical context: Implications for policy. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 31(6), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214221114092

UNESCO (n.d.). Island of Gorée. Unesco World Heritage Convention. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/26/

Van Zomeren, M., Pauls, I. L., & Cohen-Chen, S. (2019). Is hope good for motivating collective action in the context of climate change? Differentiating hope’s emotion-and problem-focused coping functions. Global Environmental Change, 58, Article 101915. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.04.003

Vestergren, S. K., Drury, J., & Hammar Chirac, E. (2019). How participation in collective action changes relationships, behaviours, and beliefs: An interview study of the role of inter-and intragroup processes. Journal of Social and Political Psychology 7(1), 76–99. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v7i1.903

Williams, R. (1989). Resources of hope: Culture, democracy, socialism. Verso.

Winters, J.R. (2016). Hope draped in black: Race, melancholy, and the agony of progress. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smfb0

Wlodarczyk, A., Basabe, N., Páez, D., & Zumeta, L. (2017). Hope and anger as mediators between collective action frames and participation in collective mobilization: The case of 15-M. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 5(1), 200–223. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v5i1.471

Downloads

Published

2026-05-08

How to Cite

Young, M. (2026). “This is Not a Moment”: Theorising the Temporal Aspects of Hope in Antiracist Protest. International Review of Theoretical Psychologies, 3(1), 184–206. https://doi.org/10.7146/irtp.v3i1.167385

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2026): Theory as Engagement

Section

Theorising Lived Meaning and Subjectivity

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Magi Young

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

IRTP operates based on a non-exclusive publishing agreement, according to which the journal retains the right of first publication, but authors are free to subsequently publish their work. The copyright of all work rests with the author(s). 

All content published in IRTP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This license allows authors and readers to share and adapt content for non-commercial purposes, provided that they abide by the following terms: 

- Give credit to the original author(s)/creator(s) and attribution parties (i.e., IRTP);

- Provide a link to the original source, to the extent practicable;

- Include the copyright notice and/or indicate the corresponding Creative Commons license;

- Indicate what, if any, adaptations were made to the original; and

- Share adapted content under the same license as the original.

Authors are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the various Creative Commons licenses. Readers are advised to consult the licensing information embedded in each published work to ensure that they are familiar with the terms of use that apply.