ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces Ernst Bloch's concept of 'the Front' and illustrates how it can inform work for social justice and radical democracy within conditions of neoliberal capitalism. It argues that the perception, production, inhabitation and pedagogy of the Front are among the most important elements of radical-democratic activity in extreme neoliberal contexts. The chapter examines examples of frontier politics in radical-democratic education and other forms of critical cultural work. It focuses on an exemplary form of frontier politics which demonstrates the power of prefigurative materialism in both spectacular and everyday ways. It considers how the concept of the Front may be used to map co-ordinates of hope on otherwise 'flat' surfaces of possibility, and how it can be conceived as the site of laboratories for revolutionary, practical-critical activity and learning. The chapter encounters a new concept, the 'arc of justice', which opens conceptual space for thinking critically about the temporalities of radical-democratic practices and revolutionary social change.
