Episode Details

The overriding narrative of revolution features a defined enemy inhabiting a defined space that we can, with courage, suffering and sacrifice, overthrow and inaugurate a new and better world. However, as Kafka and Musil demonstrated we live in a world that is diffuse, multi-layered and without center. These more uncomfortable and less entertaining versions of our world demonstrate the fundamental naivete of the notion of revolution that, functionally, becomes a disabling myth. Rather than revolution or nothing, in which we get nothing because we can’t have the revolution, I argue for the value of resistance, which is both available and immediate. 

Books I mention in the lecture:

Kafka The Metamorphosis

Kafka The Castle

Musil The Man Without Qualities

Bradbury Fahrenheit 451

Lem The Invincible

Raymond Aron The Opiate of the Intellectuals

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