6.5 Slowly Moving Again
In the face of this situation, what did these volunteers, members and activists long for? Rather than a bright distant future, those at SAT- Amikaro who expressed such rhetoric of loss were simply yearning for a near future in which the association would count more active members, busier language classes and activities, well-attended congresses, a regular magazine and stronger links between Esperanto and progressive politics.
While the literature on regimes of temporal reasoning equips us to perceive the present as the frame wherein action gains prominence, the left-wing, workers' Esperanto movement depicts a scenario in which the present appears partially deprived of its potential to provoke changes. Focusing on volunteers' and activists' discourses on the past and future enables us to grasp, through ethnography, how their yearnings were directed towards ordinary accomplishments. Thus, while looking back and regretting the association's loss of dynamism, these activists also looked ahead, modestly fostering the preservation of the space of polit- ical socialisation they still had within reach. In this way, this chapter has shown how social movement and community appear interwoven here, since turning the associations 'stand still' into a 'move forward'—and its yearning into hope—depends on materialising the movement's expected outcome of building community in the everyday.
In several ways, the uncertainties that such yearning entails also have a bright side. Hopes and futures can be disappointable as a principle (Jansen 2016: 454—458), but the indeterminacy they create also makes room for optimism and hopeful possibilities. As of early 2017, nearly one year after my first meeting with Dominique, JoPo and Yassine, the magazine La SAGo began to be regularly issued again, despite the small number of volunteer editors. In April 2017, the association held a congress in Saint-Sebastien-sur-Loire, near Nantes. At this congress, Marcel—the treasurer who, by then, had become the only remaining member of the executive committee—announced he would quit the committee, which would leave the association without a legal representa- tive within the French state. His farewell speech was highly compelling: six people offered to run for the committee, and all of them were demo- cratically elected at the annual general meeting held during the congress, whose decisions were later ratified on the mailing list. For the time being, SAT-Amikaro seemed to be on its way to a revival. For the time being, their yearning was transformed into a fully-fledged hope. But how stable can 'for the time being' be? To what extent could we say that hope can bring certainties? It cannot. Perhaps the association has found its way
towards the promise heralded by JoPo's cap: 'Antauen', to move forward!
But this is just a perhaps.
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