The double bind: The ambivalent treatment of traig passions in Hanna Arendt's theory of revolution

History of Political Thought 28 (4):719-746 (2007)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This article offers a close reading of Hannah Arendt's book On Revolution. It exposes the ambivalence of Arendt with regard to tragedy and mimesis. This ambivalence is not just her own; it is inherent in the treatment of tragedy and mimesis throughout the history of political thought. In spite of Arendt's argument that privileges the limited American Revolution against the boundless French one, in her rhetoric and in her storytelling Arendt presents a unitary but dialectical picture of revolution, where suffering and foundation are inseparably intertwined. The founding public action of revolutionaries implies a crisis of mimetic passions (of fear and pity) which threatens to undo, but also set the stage for, revolution. This negative, passionate and passive side of revolution helps us to come to terms with the non-productive but emancipatory revolutions in the Eastern Europe of 1989-91

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Reading Arendt’s on revolution after the fall of the wall.Dick Howard - 2008 - Veritas – Revista de Filosofia da Pucrs 53 (1):29-44.
China the Anomaly Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, and the Maoist Regime.Peter Baehr - 2010 - European Journal of Political Theory 9 (3):267-286.
Politics in dark times: encounters with Hannah Arendt.Seyla Benhabib (ed.) - 2010 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hannah Arendt: sobre la revolución.Albrecht Wellmer - 1998 - Areté. Revista de Filosofía 10 (1):67-100.
O Pensamento Político de Hannah Arendt: Uma Revolução Copernicana?Lídia Flgueiredo - 2002 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 58 (2):379 - 400.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-12-01

Downloads
19 (#682,951)

6 months
2 (#668,348)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references