Read more
This volume aims to commemorate, criticize, scrutinize and assess the undoubted significance of the Russian Revolution both retrospectively and prospectively in three parts. Part I consists of a palimpsest of the different representations that the Russian Revolution underwent through its turbulent history, going back to its actors, agents, theorists and propagandists to consider whether it is at all possible to revisit the Russian Revolution as an event. With this problematic as a backbone, the chapters of this section scrutinize the ambivalences of revolution in four distinctive phenomena (sexual morality, religion, law and forms of life) that pertain to the revolution's historicity. Part II concentrates on how the revolution was retold in the aftermath of its accomplishment not only by its sympathizers but also its opponents. These chapters not only bring to light the ways in which the revolution triggered critical theorists to pave new paths of radical thinking that were conceived as methods to overcome the revolution's failures and impasses, but also how the Revolution was subverted in order to inspire reactionary politics and legitimize conservative theoretical undertakings. Even commemorating the Russian Revolution, then, still poses a threat to every well-established political order. In Part III, this volume interprets how the Russian Revolution can spur a rethinking of the idea of revolution. Acknowledging the suffocating burden that the notion of revolution as such entails, the final chapters of this book ultimately address the content and form of future revolution(s). It is therein, in such critical political thought and such radical form of action, where the Russian Revolution's legacy ought to be sought and can still be found.
List of contents
1.Preface.- 2. Beyond the Horizon: The Russian Revolution Seen from Afar.- 3. Reenacting the Revolution? Theater and Politics of Repetition.- 4. Revolution in Sexual Ethics: Communism and the 'Sex Problem'.- 5. Revolution and Salvation.- 6. Law, Absolute Will, and the 'Withering of the State': Sovereignty at the Limits of Lenin's 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat'.- 7. What Is Life Like After Revolution? Administration, Habit, and Democracy in Lenin's The State and Revolution - and Beyond.- 8. German and Jewish Conspiracies: The October Revolution from the perspective of the Italian Fascists and the German National Socialists.- 9. A Narrative Theory for the October Revolution (From Maugham to Benjamin and Back).- 10. October and the Prospects for Revolution. The Views of Arendt, Adorno, and Marcuse.- 11. Memory politics and the 'politics of memory'.- 12. Into Historical Limbo: The Legacy of the October Revolution in Russia.- 13. The Concepts of Revolution.- 14. The Possibilityof the Revolution.- 15. Time Intensification in Revolutionary Dynamics.- 16. Postscript: Communist Subjectivity and the Politics of Collectiversalism.
About the author
Thomas Telios is Lecturer of Philosophy at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
Dieter Thomä is Professor of Philosophy at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
Ulrich Schmid is Professor of Russian Studies at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
