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: revolution
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…
Bernard Harcourt: “A Modern Counterrevolution”
First, a “counterrevolution” has been underway since the invention of counterinsurgency warfare in the 1950s and ’60s by French, British, and American commanders during the wars of independence in Algeria, Indochina, Malaya, Vietnam, and other former colonies. Those campaigns gave birth to counterinsurgency warfare logics and strategies—also known as unconventional or antiguerrilla warfare, or, as…
James Livingston: “Zizek Sends In The Clowns”
“How to conceive of revolution under the historical circumstances in which we find ourselves? Does radical pessimism allow us to see that our ethical principles are actually inscribed and faintly legible in those circumstances, so that our project need not be plotted as an escape—a prison break—from the benighted past? A better way to put…
Alexander Aerts: “Alexandre Kojève: Bildung in a Revolutionary Cell”
“Kojève thought that this revolutionary terror formed the necessary condition for the creation of freedom to come. The realisation of this ‘actual’ freedom came about with the eventual dissolution of ‘absolute’ freedom. In 1918, with Russia standing at the crossroads of history, the constitution of the Bolshevik regime and the previous period of war communism…
Farzeen Nasri: “Is a Revolution in Iran on the Horizon?”
Revolutions have been understood in different ways, but two primary definitions are particularly relevant. One views a revolution as “a movement that brings about the (violent) overthrow of a government,” which leads to significant social and political changes. The other defines it as a radical shift in political order, where one system is replaced by…
Jiří Juhász: ‘“Losers” in History: Charles Tilly and the Fates of the Defeated in Revolutionary Change’
“In examining the experiences of the “losers” in revolutionary change, Charles Tilly’s work provides a critical lens for understanding the dynamics of resistance and counter-revolution. Whether in the context of the Vendée, the Arab Spring, or the 1989 revolutions, the losers often sought to preserve aspects of the old order. “
Roberto Breña: “The Age of Revolutions Under the Microscope”
“This bibliographic essay critically reviews two recent books on the Atlantic Revolutions and the Age of Revolutions: The Age of Atlantic Revolution by Patrick Griffin (2023) and The Age of Revolutions by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (2024).”
Patrick Kingsley: “Revolutions Swept the Middle East in 2011. Will Syria’s End Differently?”
“Mr. al-Assad’s stunning fall finally allows Syrians to feel the joy that their counterparts experienced more than a decade ago in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen — the four Arab countries where dictators were toppled far more quickly. Yet while those four states provided a template for revolutionary success, their trajectories since the Arab Spring…
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.”