Chapter 1 Introduction: The Problems of Pessimism

Chapter 2 Pessimism in International Relations

Chapter 4 Cassirer, Fatalism and Political Myth: Historical Lessons in the Consequences of Pessimism for International Relations

Chapter 5 Liberal Pessimism: An Intellectual History of Suspicion in the Cold War

Chapter 6 Productive Pessimism: Rehabilitating John Herz’s Survival Research for the Anthropocene

Chapter 7 The Global Politics of Ugly Feelings: Pessimism and Resentment in a Mimetic World

Chapter 8 Pessimism and the Alt-Right: Knowledge, Power, Race and Time

Chapter 9 The Pessimism of the Shipwreck: Theorising Μigration in International Relations

Chapter 10 The Pessimism Traps of Indigenous Resurgence

Chapter 11 After Pessimism? Affirmative Approaches to the Anthropocene

Chapter 12 Afterword: The New Pessimism in Twenty-First-Century World Politics