Three : “Revolution” : Revolutionize
Like
Revolution
Revolution wants to be revolutionized. And yet, it
is hardly detectable when within the historical trajectory carrying
civilization down the progress paths it began being other than
simply—revolution. However, were an historical maze indeed that simple, it
might start leaning toward clearly undesirable oversimplification. One cannot,
nevertheless, help but wonder why Hannah Arendt and thinkers of her ilk insist
on mutually conditioned bastardization between the word revolution and
revolutionary practices. All through history.
Perhaps it is not unreasonable to believe that it is
because revolution is anchored in paradox. More precisely, the revolution debate
brings to awareness ideas related to the question of beginning, as Arendt
claims in On Revolution (1977) that
there is “the element of novelty inherent in all revolutions” (17).[1] Some
of them suggest that: (a) revolution by definition demarcates a new beginning,
and (b) all revolutions are of Christian descent. It follows that : (1) indeed,
revolution generates new socioscape, as Christianity historically demonstrated,
and (2) the very fact subverts the former proposition, as Christian doctrine
contends that a belief in radical newness is untenable, or, better still, a
self-dissolving one; simultaneously, it confirms perpetual reintegration of the
world. Like refacement.
Consequently, that’s the reason why history of
revolutions is a series of futile attempts at overthrowing a regime and
establishing a new governance with a rise to power of the revolutionary forces.
Such historical occasions are certainly not nonviolent. Needless to say, they
are everything but a revolutionary dream come true. They do not bring a
beginning of a new society, since hunger
for power—as James Joyce puts it so succinctly, albeit not in entirely same
context, in A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man (1991),[2]
like “the old sow that eats her farrow” (208) -- dilutes revolutionary impetus
robbing from it authentic energies,
impulse, and demands.
Or, is it so? One wonders. If, presumably, authentic
urge to revolutionize is aimed at initiating a radically new order, then,
indeed, its goals reveal its falseness. However, one should not be misled to
conclude that flawed revolutions are inevitable. Nor should one be persuaded to
believe that historical records are justification of aggression lest it taint the
perception of the potential of revolution. All through history.
Unamerican vs. (no) Revolution
Arendt seems to be highly suspicious of both common
wisdom and, in her opinion, flawed attempts to confront some views frequently
regarded as historical facts. In that context, she considers the idea of all
revolutions being “Christian in origin” (On
Revolution 17) and the critique that denies the American Revolution the revolutionary
character. The latter is, apparently, based on the belief that, since it is
struggle against poverty, and for power that constitutes the major part of
revolutionary impetus, in America – the land welcoming the lowest social strata
– the problem of radical poverty was nonexistent prior to the historic event (On Revolution 16). In addition, the new
continent in which equality reigned provided conditions for generating a
society where the problem of divides was taken care of before what is commonly
known as the American Revolution took place. One of the most prominent
indicators was the possibility of communication between the rich and the poor
on an equal footing. Hence, social reconfiguring that history knows as the
American Revolution is a series of changes that for centuries have been going
under, essentially, a misnomer. The understanding that all revolutions are Christian
in origin is denounced by the fact that it is secularization that enabled
prevalence of materialist minded culture.
The crux of the polemic could be the critique of the
historical occurrence that ensured an intersection between the economic and the
political. This initially tangential phenomenon brought about the fusion of the
two realms ending up in amalgamation within which the political has been
eradicated and continued as a misnomer: essentially, economy under the disguise
of politics. This can be tracked to the questions Arendt raises in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951),
where she points out the rise of liberalism and individualism interwoven with
an increase in inclinations toward materialist wealth and disregard of fellow
humans except as potential competition and object of exploitation. Such a greed
infested climate first enabled sprouting a plague of politicians-turned-businessmen,
then caused a perception of the world through the prism of hostility and
nihilo-cannibalist mentality.
In a world that recognizes uprising only as a means
of obtaining materialist gain, that knows no power beyond sheer force, a viable
way to redescribe social vocabulary is in the vein of Arendt’s remark about
Christian perception of secular history:
Secular history in the
Christian view remained bound within the cycles of antiquity –empires would
rise and fall as in the past—except that Christians, in the possession of an
everlasting life, could break through this cycle of everlasting change and must
look with indifference upon the spectacles it offered. (On Revolution 17)
In a secular parlance, it spells out the way to
revolutionize both the perception and practice of revolution. Namely, the way
in question would be “secularization” of the social realm, i.e., recuperating
it by undoing ill-synthesized spheres. Put differently, a possible way for
revolution to be revolutionized is its being firmly anchored in the vibrancy of
peaceful/peaceable resistance. Like refacement.
Like majestic travesty of storytelling from
darkness: tales from the edges of the grotesque, bizarre, abhorring, scornful,
subverting the very tone featured on the surface level of the narrative. Tales
hiding in obscure depths defiant potential of resistance to the slime and mud
caking the crust, to a monstrous narrative device—a seductive, creepily appealing,
potentially misleading bait that threatens to hinder communication between the
reader and the realms emanating different sound.
Like refacement.
Like a Saturn wandering through the streets of L.A.
smeared in humidity vaporized from the slits zoning from beneath baggy eyelids,
buzzing with detachment. Urban
archipelago whose islands are scattered across an ungraspable ocean. Islands
detached from one another like corrosive skepticism carrying the tales of spies
shifting from unreliable fiction to suspicious world that surrounds it. Birds
of prey staging a history of civilization in a hazy reverie of desert dwellers
of an imaginary Leith. Tales of solace barely detectable in the midst of swarmed,
chimera infested world. The world whose mirror image is digitized waves playing
with pixel plankton on colossal screens projecting pictures captured with a
mighty glamcam. Adopted idiom of binary code galaxies. Adventures in boredom.
Billboard screens abound. They peek from the skin, speak from wounds, from
everywhere. Ethereal ocean’s dream conjured up in a monster tranquilizer
induced sleep, watched by a scribble freed from 3D printing enchantment…“down
by the jetty.” Like Stephen Dedalus’s unshakable “No.” Out of cacophony:
reconstituting wholesome energies and galvanizing the capacity to learn. Like
the remix.
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