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revolution

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is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

is grounded in the impulse to awaken from the feeling that life is a dream.

a dream' becomes geared to an impulse to awaken from it.

is a kind of 'infinite judgement' that keeps on applying the lessons of the revolution to itself. Any bureaucratic implementation of the revolution amounts to a radical questioning of the revolution's own assumptions, the field in which the original decision took place.

Today, in our liberal democracies, the very possibility of revolution seems unthinkable: we can have the endless critique or questioning of the system, but nothing is fundamentally changed. As Zizek writes: 'what is problematic with this position of depoliticizing the revolt is that it precludes any actual radical political change: the existing political regime is never effectively undermined or overturned, just endlessly 'questioned'' (123 n. 32). However, revolution proper is never simply this overturning or doing away with the existing order, which we might associate with a period of revolutionary enthusiasm or even violence (although this too is necessary). Something else is required that is more difficult to grasp: In this suspension of goal-orientated instrumental activity, we effectively get a kind of Bataillean 'unrestrained expenditure' . . . [t]he pious desire to deprive the revolution of this excess is simply the desire to have a revolution without revolution. However, this 'unrestrained expenditure' is not enough: in a revolution proper, such a display of what Hegel would have called 'abstract negativity' merely, as it were, wipes the slate clean for the second act, the imposition of a New Order/ (130). But what exactly is meant by revolution as at once the wiping of the slate clean for a new order ('abstract negativity') and the imposition of a new order (what we might call, following Hegel, the 'negation of negation')' Perhaps Zizek's ultimate example of revolution, which occurs several times in this volume, is paradoxically the restaging of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia some three years afterwards as a kind of theatrical event (48-9, 130). What this restaging suggests for Zizek is revolution as the constant wiping of the slate clean in an 'infinite judgement' that keeps on applying the lessons of the revolution to itself. The bureaucratic implementation of the revolution is not simply the following of some pre-established plan but a radical questioning of the revolution's own assumptions, the field in which the original decision took place. 'And this brings us to the key question: how are we to construct a social space within which revolution can stabilize itself' Perhaps, one of the options is to pursue the trend of self-organized collectives in areas outside the Law. Arguably the greatest literary monument to such a Utopia comes from an unexpected source Mario Vargas Llosa's The War of the End of the World, a novel about Canudos, an outlaw community deep in the Brazilian backlands, which was home to prostitutes, freaks, beggars, bandits and the most wretched of the poor. Canudos . . . was a Utopian space without money, property, taxes and marriage' (51). We could even paraphrase Zizek by saying that the desire for Leninist revolution without its corresponding Stalinist bureaucracy is the desire for 'revolution without revolution'.

is a messianic event made not on behalf of the future but of the past. It is the only one capable of preventing disaster.

A messianic event, the only one capable of preventing disaster. The revolution is made not on behalf of the future but of the past. Nor is it the outcome of a linear historical evolution... rather, it is born of the pain of those humiliated and exploited by progress. It is the only violence capable of ending the violence of history.'

is a necessity, a return from the factitious to the real, and it takes place because it must.

Revolutions spring not from accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the factitious to the real. It takes place because it must. Victor Hugo

is a period of history when individuals count most.

Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most. Norman Mailer

is a word for which one kills, for which one dies, for which one sends the laboring masses to their deaths... and yet contains no content.

a word for which you kill, for which you die, for which you send the labouring masses to their deaths... but which does not contain any content.Simone Weil

is an age when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared... when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope... when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era.

If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution... when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared... when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope... when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era'

revolution, n.Trivia

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