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: tragic politics
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…
Slavoj Žižek: “Why a Communist Should Assume Life Is Hell”
‘There is absolutely no contradiction between a “pessimist” view of our world as a valley of tears, of our life itself as a decaying corpse of a dead god, of non-being that is better than being, and a dedication to Communism. Today’s Communist has to accept the immanent despair of the human condition and propose…
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. “
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…
Peter Gelderloos: “Geopolitics for 2024 on the probabilities of state power or revolution”
“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…
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…
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…
Mariana Budjeryn: Calling the war in Ukraine a ‘tragedy’ shelters its perpetrators from blame and responsibility
“Tragedy is a word used ubiquitously by Ukraine empathizers discussing the horrors of the war in Ukraine. But, it turns out, the word tragedy is also popular with autocrats who are responsible for bringing those events about – but have no intention of admitting their responsibility.”
Jamie Allinson: “The Actuality of Counter-Revolution”
“Counter-revolutions are difficult to circumscribe because they belong both to the past that preceded the revolution and make the future that succeeds it. Or to put the issue in more prosaic language: when does counter-revolution begin? And, what does it counter – does counter-revolution simply restore the past, or make its own new present? What…