“The public space of freedom was not preserved by either of the two revolutions mainly discussed in On Revolution, and we should include their failure alongside that of the Bolsheviks when we read Arendt’s appreciation of the fact that Rosa Luxemburg ‘was far more afraid of a deformed revolution than an unsuccessful one’”.
Category: Arendt
Hannah Ohlén Järvinen & Johan Örestig: “Revolution as accelerated modernity: Hannah Arendt and Anselm Jappe on radical social transformation”
“Though their approaches are very different, Hannah Arendt and Anselm Jappe take similar positions on the ambiguities of modernity and revolution. They not only analyse the contradictions of ‘modernity’, but show that the modern situation undermines the conditions for its existence, pointing towards its own revolutionary transformation.”
Lewis R. Gordon interviewed on Fanon’s “The Damned of the Earth”
“The tragedy is already staged in a system where innocence suffers. The good among both will suffer. Colonialism, enslavement, and racism are tragic so long as we understand that that the suffering of the damned is ignored or, for the most part, doesn’t matter. It is a lived reality of not mattering.”
Daniel Cohn-Bendit & Claus Leggewie: “1968: Power to the Imagination”
“Our solidarity with the national liberation movements was immense. … What we largely ignored, however, was the suppression proceeding from the liberators themselves, once they had seized power.”
Yavor Tarinski: “The Commons: Beyond the State and the Market”
“The commons can be found all around the world in different forms: from indigenous communities resisting the cutting of rainforests and Indian farmers fighting GMO crops, to open source software and movements for digital rights over the internet. The main characteristics that they all share, are the direct-democratic procedures of their management, the open design…
Never-before-published Hannah Arendt on What Freedom and Revolution really Mean
Thoughts on misery and revolution.
Roger Berkowitz: ‘Why Arendt Matters: Revisiting “The Origins of Totalitarianism”’
On the rejuvenation of local governance as a defense against totalitarianism: “A unified and sovereign government combined with a disempowered citizenry poses the greatest danger of totalitarianism. The best way to protect ourselves is, perhaps, to turn back to our roots in local self-government. We cannot turn back the clock. But we might begin to…
Juan Carlos Velasco: ” Revitalizing democracy through civil disobedience”
Political dissidence: “Civil disobedience is a widespread form of political protest used by minorities to make their voices heard in democratic societies. It is a mechanism of participation in the process of shaping public opinion, and of intervention, by via negativa, in the legislative process. In exercising it, citizens can assert their public autonomy when…
Zoe Williams: “Totalitarianism in the age of Trump: Lessons from Hannah Arendt”
“Tangentially, I have a sudden new faith in the feminist framing of recent demonstrations as women’s marches, which does something to allay the intimation of public violence that is always used as the justification of suppression. It seems clear, nonetheless, that it isn’t enough: that perhaps Arendt’s most profound legacy is in establishing that one…