The Day After the Revolution (Revolutions) - Softcover

Zizek, Slavoj

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1786636301 ISBN 13: 9781786636300

Publisher: Verso, 2018

Synopsis

One hundred years after the Russian Revolution, i ek shows why Lenin’s thought is still important today

V. I. Lenin’s originality and importance as a revolutionary leader is most often associated with the seizure of power in 1917. But, in this new study and collection of Lenin’s original texts, Slavoj i ek argues that his true greatness can be better grasped in the last two years of his political life. Russia had survived foreign invasion, embargo and a terrifying civil war, as well as internal revolts such as the one at Kronstadt in 1921. But the new state was exhausted, isolated and disorientated. As the anticipated world revolution receded into the distance, new paths had to be charted if the Soviet state was to survive.

With his characteristic brio and provocative insight, i ek suggests that Lenin’s courage as a thinker can be found in his willingness to face this reality of retreat unflinchingly. In today’s world, characterized by political turbulence, economic crises and geopolitical tensions, we should revisit Lenin’s combination of sober lucidity and revolutionary determination.

About this title

About the Author

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana. His books include Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes and many more.

Review

Praise for Slavoj i ek:

“The excitable fluency, ursine congeniality and gleeful readiness to provoke and offend all feed the sense of authentic spontaneity and energy that has made i ek something like European philosophy’s punk icon, packing out auditoriums around the world.”
—Josh Cohen, New Statesman

“Few thinkers illustrate the contradictions of contemporary capitalism better than Slavoj i ek, one of the world’s best-known public intellectuals.”
—John Gray, New York Review of Books

“A gifted speaker—tumultuous, emphatic, direct—he writes as he speaks.”
—Jonathan Rée, Guardian

“Like Socrates on steroids. Breathtakingly perceptive.”
—Terry Eagleton

“Such passion, in a man whose work forms a shaky, cartoon rope-bridge between the minutiae of popular culture and the big abstract problems of existence, is invigorating, entertaining and expanding enquiring minds around the world.”
—Helen Brown, Daily Telegraph

Edition details

• Publisher: Verso
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1786636301
• ISBN 13: 9781786636300
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272