{"id":24,"date":"2016-05-20T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T16:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/?page_id=24"},"modified":"2017-11-14T10:54:42","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T15:54:42","slug":"1-13","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/1-13\/","title":{"rendered":"1\/13 | The Modern Concept of Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_3EhC99GuEg\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">The Uprising 1\/13 Revolution Seminar with Etienne Balibar (<a href=\"https:\/\/icls.columbia.edu\/author\/0000000017\/\">Columbia University<\/a>), Simona Forti (<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/simona-forti-2\/\">Columbia University<\/a>), and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (<a href=\"https:\/\/english.columbia.edu\/people\/profile\/409\">Columbia University<\/a>), moderated by <a href=\"https:\/\/laic.columbia.edu\/author\/1965197982\/\">Jes\u00fas R. Velasco<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/cgt.columbia.edu\/about\/people\/committee-faculty\/bernard-e-harcourt\/\">Bernard E. Harcourt<\/a><\/h1>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>September 14, 2017<\/strong><\/h2>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIn politics, words and their usage are more important than any other weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\">\u2014\u00a0 Reinhart Koselleck, \u201cHistorical Criteria of the Modern Concept of Revolution,\u201d 1968.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Revolution. Uprising. Insurrection. Insurgency. Revolt. Disobedience. Standing Ground. Occupy&#8230; If indeed it is true that, in politics, words are more important than any other weapon, then surely we must pay heed to what people say when they resist or revolt. We must explore the different modalities of uprising associated with these different concepts.<\/p>\n<p>We had originally called this seminar series Revolution 13\/13. That was our original plan, and we martialed thirteen of them, in fact\u2014from the French and American Revolutions of course, and for it\u2019s one hundred\u2019s anniversary this year, the 1917 Russian and Bolshevik Revolutions, but also the scientific, the sexual, the velvet. We had them all, and yet, we were unable to get past the very word \u201crevolution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Why? Because the term has become so fraught today. So historicized, so privileged, and raised so high above all its illegitimate children\u2014resistance, revolt, insurgency, disobedience, hacktivism, standing ground&#8230; those peripheral, those ancillary, those sometimes aborted struggles for social change. So we changed course somewhat and called this series Uprising 13\/13, deciding to focus on those other modalities in large part\u2014but we could not do it without, first, theorizing and rethinking the notion of revolution.<\/p>\n<p>So that is where we start here in this first seminar, with &#8220;The Modern Concept of Revolution.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The essays we <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/the-modern-concept-of-revolution-readings\/\">read<\/a> for Uprising 1\/13 on the modern concept of revolution\u2014namely, Reinhart Koselleck\u2019s \u201cHistorical Criteria of the Modern Concept of Revolution,\u201d Marx\u2019s <em>Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte<\/em>, Etienne Balibar\u2019s \u201cThe Idea of Revolution,\u201d Simona Forti\u2019s \u201cThe Modern Concept of Revolution,\u201d and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak\u2019s \u201cGlobal Marx\u201d\u2014provide a number of key insights into the complexity of thinking about revolution today.<\/p>\n<p>The starting point, naturally, is Koselleck\u2019s original etymological elaboration of the ancient concepts of revolution\u2014revolution as the cyclical returning to the point of origin, as the astronomical cycle of the stars, as the ancient philosophical progression of constitutions (from monarchy to its dark twin tyranny, to aristocracy and then oligarchy, and finally democracy and ultimately ochlocracy, or mass rule) (Koselleck 2004:45). Koselleck argued that what marks the <em>modern<\/em> conception of revolution is the passage from the notion of <em>political<\/em> to <em>social<\/em> revolution: the idea that a revolution is about social change, about \u201cthe social emancipation of all men, [about] transforming the social structure\u201d (Koselleck 2004:52).<\/p>\n<p>Koselleck drew a contrast between the modern 16<sup>th<\/sup> and 17<sup>th<\/sup> century conception of revolution and the earlier Middle Age uses of terms such as uprising, revolt, riot, insurrection, rebellion, and civil war (Koselleck 2004:47). The latter were connected to a different form of struggle, one that was marked by religious confrontations and inquisitorial struggles. \u201cCivil war, <em>guerre civile, B\u00fcrgerkrieg<\/em>\u2014these were the central concepts by which the suffering and experience of fanatical confessional struggles were precipitated, by means of which, moreover, they were legally formulated\u201d (Koselleck 2004:47).<\/p>\n<p>Etienne Balibar traces a different genealogy, this time back to the Eurocentrism of the modern conception of revolution: the contrast, on his view, is between notions of citizenship embedded in the concept of revolution and ideas of the colonial subject embedded in the notion of uprising or insurgency. For Balibar, revolution relates to uprisings in the same way that the core relates to the periphery: \u201cIn the dominated colonial peripheries,\u201d Balibar writes, \u201cthere were no \u2018revolutions\u2019 but only \u2018resistances,\u2019 \u2018guerillas,\u2019 uprisings\u2019 and \u2018rebellions\u2019\u201d (Balibar 2016:*3). In contrast to these latter peripheral uprisings, the great revolutions of the 19<sup>th<\/sup> century \u201cwere supposed to be <em>political processes typical for the center<\/em> because they involve a participation of \u2018citizens\u2019 who exist only in the nation-states\u201d (Balibar 2016:*3).<\/p>\n<p>Marx\u2019s classic essay from 1851-52, <em>Eighteenth Brumaire, <\/em>becomes important here, as a philosophical demonstration of Marx&#8217;s philosophy of history as it relates to revolution. The essay reflects, on the one hand, how it might be possible to actualize, philosophically, a materialist conception of history, as evidenced by the unfolding of the various stages of political upheaval\u2014from the first more popular period, from February to May 1848, that proclaimed a social republic, to the second more bourgeois period, from May 1848 to May 1849, that laid the foundations for a bourgeois republic, and so on, to the bourgeois republic, the June insurrection, the parliamentary republic, and ultimately Bonaparte\u2019s <em>coup de main<\/em> of December 1 and 2, 1851. The historical periodization itself is a <em>tour de force<\/em> that instantiates Marx\u2019s entire philosophical method.<\/p>\n<p>But simultaneously, on the other hand, Marx&#8217;s essay expresses his faith in history and his conviction that the failures of the 1848 revolution serve as the foundations of a coming revolution. The metaphor of the \u201cold mole\u201d drawn from Shakespeare\u2019s <em>Hamlet<\/em> and Hegel\u2019s <em>Lectures on the History of Philosophy<\/em>\u2014of the old mole that burrows itself until completion, only to break through the crust of the earth when all the work is done\u2014is a most powerful expression of faith in the ultimate success of the revolution. \u201cWell grubbed, old mole!\u201d (Marx 1978:606). Well grubbed, indeed. What faith in the &#8220;laws of movement of history,&#8221; as Arendt would say!<\/p>\n<p>Koselleck\u2019s own relation to revolution becomes clear in his text, which evinces a certain pessimism or disheartedness&#8211;as when he asks, in a plea-full way: \u201cHas not the \u2018world revolution\u2019 been reduced to an empty formula which can be appropriated pragmatically by the most diverse groups of countries and flogged to death?\u201d (Koselleck 2004:26).<\/p>\n<p>Simona Forti embraces a particular vision of new spaces of <em>revolutions<\/em>\u2014with the emphasis on the <em>s<\/em>, on the horizontal <em>participations,<\/em> under the sign of Arendt, rejecting the determinism of Marx in all its forms, social, historical, and natural. (Forti 2017)<\/p>\n<p>Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak reminds us, in her &#8220;Global Marx,&#8221; that a conceptual problem is baked into the early incarnations of the modern concept of revolution, especially in Marx\u2019s original twining of knowledge and revolutionary action. \u201c\u2019Knowing\u2019 Marx\u2019s writings,\u201d Spivak emphasizes\u2014and we might instead say here \u201cknowing\u201d the modern concept of revolution\u2014&#8221;preserves the old conviction that the idea of knowledge is knowledge about knowledge, halting Thesis 11 before its end:\u00a0 the supplementary task is to try to change the world.\u201d (Spivak 2017)<\/p>\n<p>In this context, Simona Forti develops a powerful argument, against the singular collective experience that produces <em>a<\/em> concept of revolution, for a multiplicity of revolutionary spaces. Drawing on Arendtian strands, Forti envisages a space for more polyvalent conceptions of revolutions that represent, in her words, \u201ca new political space, a space of horizontal participation, against any social, historical, and natural determinism\u201d (Forti 2017).<\/p>\n<p>Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, for her part, makes a powerful intervention,\u00a0 drawing on her \u201cthirty years of work in a backward district of West Bengal,\u201d and invites us to \u201cget out of this acceptance of powerlessness as normal, to stop us-and-them-ing, to acknowledge complicity, and act the conjuncture.\u201d (Spivak 2017)<\/p>\n<p>These texts raise provocative questions about the meaning of revolution today, and push us to interrogate more deeply, as we did in Uprising 1\/13, the modern concept of revolution.<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to Uprising 1\/13!<\/p>\n<p>[Read full post <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-on-revolution\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-epilogue-on-revolution\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>. \u00a9 Bernard E. Harcourt]<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/1-13\/marx-and-engel-cropped\/#main\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1730\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1730 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/files\/2016\/05\/Marx-and-Engel-cropped-300x196.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"196\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/files\/2016\/05\/Marx-and-Engel-cropped-300x196.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/files\/2016\/05\/Marx-and-Engel-cropped.jpg 487w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">This seminar discussed two texts: Reinhardt Koselleck&#8217;s chapter,\u201cHistorical Criteria of the Modern Concept of Revolution,\u201d from <em>Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, <\/em>and Karl Marx&#8217;s <em>18 Brumaire of Louis Napol\u00e9on<\/em>.\u00a0Both texts can be found in the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/the-modern-concept-of-revolution-readings\/\">readings<\/a>\u00a0 for Uprising 1\/13, in the right column here. Also, please read the remarkable posts by our guests, also in the right column here.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>September 14, 2017<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/heymancenter.org\/visit\/low-memorial-library\/\"><strong>The Rotunda in Low Memorial Library<\/strong><\/a><\/h2>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Uprising 1\/13 Revolution Seminar with Etienne Balibar (Columbia University), Simona Forti (Columbia University), and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Columbia University), moderated by Jes\u00fas R. Velasco and Bernard E. Harcourt September 14, 2017 \u201cIn politics, words and their usage are more&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/1-13\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1642,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-24","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1642"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}