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Revolutionary Terror from Robespierre to Mao

The essay analyzes revolutionary terror apropos of two exemplary cases: the Jacobin phase of the French Revolution and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In both cases, terror should be dismissed not as a mass crime but as a failed articulation of the radical emancipatory will. Our task is to imagine how this radical emancipatory will can be given a new expression in the forthcoming crisis of global capitalism.

Duke University Press

Slavoj Žižek

positions: asia critique

2011

Title: Revolutionary Terror from Robespierre to Mao

Description:

The essay analyzes revolutionary terror apropos of two exemplary cases: the Jacobin phase of the French Revolution and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

In both cases, terror should be dismissed not as a mass crime but as a failed articulation of the radical emancipatory will.

Our task is to imagine how this radical emancipatory will can be given a new expression in the forthcoming crisis of global capitalism.

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