I am inspired by the remarkable similarities between Robert B. Pippin’s book Modernism as a Philosophical Problem (1991, 2nd edition 1999, Blackwell) and my book-length scholarly project-in-progress, Tragedy of Revolution. Here are the basic ones. Both Pippin and I focus on the “paradox of autonomy” in Modernity: Pippin discusses (the ideal of) autonomy (in pursuit…
Category: melancholy
Dylan Riley: “Reflections on an Inverted Revolution”
“We are living through an inverted revolution. The political heirs of Lenin and Gramsci are leading a right-wing transformation from the White House rather than a left-wing one from the streets. It is not the campus Marxists, but the thought leaders of the nativist right, who turned out to be the real followers of the…
T.J. Clark: “Knife at the Throat”
“Shatz, just as much as Macey, wishes to tell the story of the making of a revolutionary. He too knows that in Fanon’s case the identity ‘revolutionary’ held together (just) many half-identities, many human conditions, some embraced and some rejected, some explicit, others living on in an inflexible Unconscious.”
Tyler McBrien: The Struggle Continues: On Vincent Bevins’s “If We Burn”
“Bevins chronicles the protest movements that made the 2010s the most politically active in history, considering why such unprecedented mass protests so often had the opposite effect from what the protesters intended. Still, rather than focusing solely on these losses, he tracks the small wins, as well as the lessons learned and edifying counterfactuals disseminated…
Mario Tronti interviewed: “I am defeated”
Nostalgia for revolutions?“No, if anything the twentieth century was the century of revolutions. But not only that. Where are the grand ideas, the great literature, the grand politics or the great art? I don’t seen anything like what the first half of the twentieth century produced.”
Krzysztof Tyszka-Drozdowski: “The failure of May 1968”
“The nature of revolution changed. It ceased to be a collective project based on economic considerations, pursued to change society. Revolution became privatised, reduced to the domain of inner lives.”
Talya Zax: “How Did the Arab Spring Change Fiction?”
“That shift, from narratives of the revolution to stories about the psychological ramifications of those narratives, marks a natural evolution in the realm of Egyptian literature after Arab Spring.”
Amador Fernández-Savater: “15M in the Spanish labyrinth”
“15M invents a place from which to feel, think and act with autonomy, a space that does not sell promises or solutions, that does not ask for adherence, but rather invites anyone to elaborate questions about and take actions with regard to life in common.”
Brecht de Smet: “Egypt’s Decade of Revolution and Counterrevolution”
“The fall of the Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, ten years ago today, was a triumph for popular mobilization. But the revolutionary forces lacked the political organization and vision needed to head off a counterrevolutionary backlash that restored the authoritarian state’s power.”
Robert Solé: “Ten Years of Hope and Blood”
“But in Lebanon, as in Algeria or Sudan, the game is not over. The same can be said of all the countries that have experienced a “Spring”, however fleeting, followed by a counter-revolution. The Arab peoples now know that it is not enough to overthrow an authoritarian regime to achieve democracy. Elsewhere in the world,…