Another revolution is possible: Foucault, ethics, and politics
It is time to think about revolution again. After the failures of the Russian revolution signaled by Stalin’s defensive slogan, “socialism in one country” (every bit as oxymoronic as “capitalism in one firm”), the 1960s reawakened a sense of revolution from some- thing of a slumber. New Year’s eve in Havana, 1959, brought the Cuban revolution and over the next two decades an extraordinary series of events put revolution squarely back on the agenda: successful anticolonial struggles and preemptive declarations of independence in Africa and Asia (prefigured in the Asian subcontinent in 1947), Vietnamese opposition to imperialism, antiwar uprisings in various continents, the feminist revolt, the global crescendo of 1968, working-class rebellion from Santiago to London, antiracist and civil rights movements, the demise of fascism in Spain and Portugal, environmental and queer rebellions, Sandinista victory in Nicaragua, a workers’ revolt turned clerical clampdown in Iran.