On Practice and Contradiction
These early philosophical writings underpinned the Chinese revolutions, and their clarion calls to insurrection remain some of the most stirring of all time. Drawing on a dizzying array of references from contemporary culture and politics, Žižek’s firecracker commentary reaches unsettling conclusions about the place of Mao’s thought in the revolutionary canon.
Paperback, 199 pages
ISBN: 9781844675876
January 2007
$16.95 / £7.99
Blog
In praise of freedom and chaos—Slavoj Žižek on the Arab revolutions
"Why fear the Arab revolutionary spirit?"—Slavoj Žižek, writing for the Guardian, takes on the "breathtaking" hypocrisy of western liberals in prioritising stability over democracy in the Arab world.
Here, then, is the moment of truth: one cannot claim, as in the case of Algeria a decade ago, that allowing truly free elections equals delivering power to Muslim fundamentalists. Another liberal worry is that there is no organised political power to take over if Mubarak goes. Of course there is not; Mubarak took care of that by reducing all opposition to marginal ornaments, so that the result is like the title of the famous Agatha Christie novel, And Then There Were None. The argument for Mubarak - it's either him or chaos - is an argument against him.
A revolution is not a dinner party
2010 closed with two excellent articles on Mao—one by Tariq Ali for New Left Review and another by Pankaj Mishra for The New Yorker.