Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on the Text
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Political History and the Diagnostic of Revolutionary Praxis
- 2 Intervention and the Future Anterior
- 3 The Body Politic and the Process of Participation
- 4 Political Affinity and Singular-Universal Solidarity
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Political History and the Diagnostic of Revolutionary Praxis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on the Text
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Political History and the Diagnostic of Revolutionary Praxis
- 2 Intervention and the Future Anterior
- 3 The Body Politic and the Process of Participation
- 4 Political Affinity and Singular-Universal Solidarity
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Neither Marx nor Engels ever came close to developing a theory of history, in the sense of an unpredictable historical event, unique and aleatory, nor indeed to developing a theory of political practice. I refer here to the politico-ideologico-social practice of political activism, of mass movements and of their eventual organizations, for which we possess no concepts and even less a coherent theory, in order for it to be apprehended in thought. Lenin, Gramsci, and Mao were only able to partially think such a practice. The only theorist to think the political history of political practice in the present was Machiavelli. There is here another huge deficit to overcome, the importance of which is decisive, and which, once again, sends us back to philosophy.
(Althusser 1994: 48)Introduction
In light of its apparent exhaustion, how is it possible to return to revolution? This is the central question of this book. Given the scope of such a question, I proposed in the introduction to focus my philosophical interrogation of this question on three figures in the history of the present revolutionary sequence who have been particularly influential to its development: Deleuze, Guattari and the Zapatistas. Thus, in order to shed some light on the larger revolutionary sequence that began to take place at the end of the twentieth century, I also proposed four distinct revolutionary strategies that help us clarify and develop this new political philosophy of revolution.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Returning to RevolutionDeleuze, Guattari and Zapatismo, pp. 37 - 79Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2012