Product Description

The idea of a Lenin renaissance might well provoke an outburst of sarcastic laughter. Marx is OK, but Lenin? Doesn't he stand for the big catastrophe which left its mark on the entire twentieth century? Lenin, however, deserves more profound consideration than this, and his writings of 1917 are testament to a formidable political figure, revealing as they do his ability to grasp the significance of an extraordinary moment in history. Everything is here, from Lenin-the-ingenious-revolutionary strategist to Lenin-of-the-enacted-utopia. To use Kierkegaard's phrase, what we can glimpse in these writings is Lenin-in-becoming: not yet Lenin-the-Soviet-institution, but Lenin thrown into an open, contingent situation. In Revolution at the Gates, Slavoj i ek locates the 1917 writings in their historical context, while his extensive Afterword tackles the key question of whether Lenin can be reinvented in our era of 'cultural capitalism,' i ek is convinced that, whatever the discussion--the forthcoming crisis of capitalism, the possibility of a redeeming violence, the falsity of liberal tolerance--Lenin's time has come again.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #132638 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
" i ek's prose style has a rebellious and highly compelling side that brushes up against the most critical intellectual trends of our day like cultural studies, contemporary feminism, postcolonialism, and postmodernism." Ha'aretz "A return to Marx may be acceptable today... But a repetition of Lenin?... Perhaps i ek's return to Lenin is merely tactical, figurative even. He can't be serious, van he?... i ek claims that Lenin's act, 'his choice', continues to speak to thos of us on the left today. Faced with our current conceptual deadlock, we must have the courage, the nerve to risk isolation, self-annihilation even, in order to offer a real alternative to the false oppositions recuperated by and churned out for our consumption by the image industry of late capitalism... The postmodernists and liberal multiculturists, today's Bernateins and Kautskys - our contemporary Plekhanovs and Martovs, beware!" Bad Subjects

From the Back Cover
'After the Hungarian rebellion of 1956 was crushed by the Russian tanks, Georg Lukacs was taken prisoner; when a KGB officer asked him if he had a weapon, Lukacs calmly reached into his pocket and handed over his pen ... If ever a pen was a weapon, it was the pen which wrote Lenin's 1917 texts.' - from the Introduction

The idea of a Lenin renaissance might well provoke an outburst of sarcastic laughter. Marx is OK, but Lenin? Doesn't he stand for the big catastrophe which left its mark on the entire twentieth-century world political scene?

Lenin, however, deserves wider consideration than this, and his writings of 1917 are testament to a formidable political figure. They reveal his ability to grasp the significance of an extraordinary moment in history. Everything is here, from Lenin-the-ingenious-revolutionary-strategist to Leinin-of-the-enacted-utopia. To use Kierkegaard's phrase, what we can glimpse in these writings in Lenin-in-becoming; not yet Lenin-the-Soviet-institution, but Lenin thrown into an open, contingent situation.

Slavoj Zizek's Introduction situates the 1917 writings in their historical context, while his Afterword tackles the key question of whether Lenin can be reinvented in our era of 'cultural capitalism'. Zizek is convinced: whatever the discussion - the forthcoming crisis of capitalism, the possibility of a redeeming violence, the falsity of liberal tolerance - he believes Lenin's time has come again.

About the Author
Slavoj i ek is a senior researcher at the institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana. His books include The Sublime Object of Ideology, The Plague of Fantasies, The Ticklish Subject, Welcome to the Desert of the Real and most recently Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle

Customer Reviews

an aggressive political intervention...and lenin's not bad either
An odd one, this. You get a selection of letters, articles and pamphlets detailing the course of events between february and october 1917 (contrary to an earlier review, plenty of context is given via footnotes and a more 'on-topic' intro from Zizek than we are accustomed to - coming at it from a more or less virginal perspective I finished Lenin's part with a vague idea of who did what to whom in this complicated period). and then you get a novella-length extended essay from Zizek on Leninism and such.

This was my first Zizek experience - nay, the first bit of 'cultural theory' i came across - and for those coming at it from that sort of perspective, i suppose the best testimonial i can give is that it really did hook me and may well have changed the entire course of my life (although i doubt many people will share that particular experience).

He is often accused of favouring style over substance. This is unfair - there's plenty of substance here, but you have to read the bloody thing ten times before the style stops wowing you off your feet. He moves from anecdote to anecdote, has a pop at seemingly every figure in leftist academia, mounts a Lacanian assault on multiculturalism and has apparently watched every film in history. To give an example - in one chapter, entitled "Did Lenin Love His Neighbour?", you will learn about the socially adhesive effects of obscene racist jokes, why the ideal recipient of Liberal love is a corpse and most importantly, how Lacan accounts for Cindy Crawford being more attractive to more people than Claudia Schiffer; however, you will be left somewhat baffled as to what it all has to do with Lenin.

this bravura should not be confused with populism - this is no 'Lacan for dummies' thing, and Zizek is unafraid to pile on the jargon in the assumption that you already know basically what it means. Furthermore, many ideas here appear, and are better developed, in other parts of his estimably proportioned ouevre. However, for a largely intoxicating romp through the state of the world today with a French psychoanalyst and a rather bemused Vladimir Il'ich for company, this is hard to beat.

Lenin will be turning in his mausoleum
Zizek has been enthusiastically associating himself with Lenin for some time, although the fit between Zizek's highly psychology-centred Lacanianism and Lenin's sometimes economistic Marxism is tentative to say the least. The Lenin texts in this book are mostly already widely available, and the choice of material - especially the exclusion of texts from before and after 1917, meaning that key works such as "Imperialism" and "What is to be Done?" are absent - is somewhat eccentric.

There is more of Zizek in this book than of Lenin, and Zizek's introduction and afterword (totalling around 150 pages) fill in the context which is left blank by the temporal void in which the Lenin texts are presented. Unfortunately, the context Zizek provides is highly skewed, consising mainly of an attempt to articulate Lenin with his concept of the Act (a nihilistic gesture of symbolic self-destruction - "beating oneself up", in one explication - which forms the core of Zizek's political theory). For this reason, the book should be read with caution, and readers interested in Lenin's ideas should be careful with anything they get from Zizek until they've checked it with other sources. Indeed, in my view the main appeal of this book is likely to be for existing readers of Zizek, especially those interested in his flirtation with Marxism.