“We rarely know how to achieve any continuity from one generation to the next within the alienation and scarcity of capitalism, so we commit the same mistakes again and again. And under the colonial spirituality of rationalism we have forgotten that the real world cannot exist without imaginary worlds. We let capitalism do all our…
Category: revolution
Sahar Delijani on the Legacies of the Arab Spring
“The revolution in Tunisia was born on the ashes of Mohammad Bouazizi’s body. The revolution in Egypt on the broken face of the 28-year-old Khaleh Said beaten to death by security forces for posting a photo on social media. The revolts in Syria erupted when little boys were arrested and tortured by the police for…
Jean Vioulac: “Revolution and Destruction: The Fascist Obstacle”
“The revolution is not an ideal or a utopia; it is the fundamental movement of our time. For two centuries, private life and society, art and religion, technology and science, everything has been revolutionised.”
For Alfredo M. Bonanno (1927-2023)
“That is why we are, and define ourselves, insurrectionalist anarchists. Not because we think the solution is the barricades — the barricades could be a tragic consequence of choices that are not our own — but we are insurrectionalists because we think that anarchist action must necessarily face very serious problems.”
“The Revolutionary Temper” (2023) by Robert Darnton reviewed
Darnton “suggests that between the end of the war of the Austrian succession in 1748 and the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the French population underwent a series of convulsions, some as molten as others were icy, which resulted in a subtle but powerful molecular shift.”
Enzo Traverso talks about his book “Revolution”
Athens, 18 October 2023 (starting at 11:40)
Michael A. Allen & Julie VanDusky-Allen: “The ‘Barbie’ and ‘Star Wars’ universes”
Both “Barbie” and “Andor” are useful for those who want to understand why revolutions happen and what it takes for them to happen. Their fundamental point: Before the start of any revolution, the oppressed have to first recognize their oppression.
Carlo Greppi: “Happy Birthday, Toussaint Louverture”
The French Revolution, “confronted with the colonial question,” had to “confront itself,” and “the principles from which it had sprung,” Aimé Césaire writes. It hesitated, wavered, and ended up engulfing itself. But it also learned, thanks to the determination of Toussaint Louverture and his slave army, that freedom is not a force you can stop…
Rodrigo Karmy Bolton: “The ashes of the Republic”
[] the French situation shows us the global situation of which we are witnesses: unlike modern revolutions, contemporary revolts are not guided by the horizon of “progress” but, rather, by that of its destitution. In this sense, they are both more radical and labile than modern revolutions: “radical” because they call into question the modern…
Mansa Musa interviewed: “George Jackson’s unfinished revolution”
“52 years since his death at the hands of California prison authorities, George Jackson’s legacy has left an indelible imprint on the ongoing struggles for liberation from capitalist exploitation and the prison state.”