2011 was the year we dreamed dangerously, the year of the resurgence of radical emancipatory politics around the world. Now, a year later, every day brings us new evidence of how fragile and inconsistent that awakening was, as evidenced by the new symptoms of exhaustion: the enthusiasm of the Arab Spring is blocked between unstable pacts and religious fundamentalism; the Occupy Wall Street movement is losing momentum to such an extent that, in a good example of "cunning of reason," police charges in Zucotti Park and other places of protest seem like a minor evil, concealing the impending loss of inertia of the movement. The same story is repeated all over the world: Maoists in Nepal seem overtaken by reactionary realistic forces; Venezuela's "Bolivarian" experiment seems to be increasingly moving towards a caudillist populism...

What should we do in such depressing moments, when dreams seem to fade? Is the only choice we have left is one between the nostalgic-narcissistic memory of sublime moments of enthusiasm and the cynical-realistic explanation of why these attempts to change the situation were inevitably destined for failure?