Virtue and TerrorIn this dazzling new series, philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek interrogates key writings on revolution. Robespierre's defense of the French Revolution remains one of the most powerful and unnerving justifications for political violence ever written, and has extraordinary resonance in a world obsessed with terrorism and appalled by the language of its proponents. Yet today, the French Revolution is celebrated as the event which gave birth to a nation built on the principles of enlightenment ... So how should a contemporary audience approach Robespierre's vindication of revolutionary terror? Zizek takes a helter-skelter route through these contradictions, marshalling all the breadth of analogy for which he is famous. "If the spring of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the springs of popular government in revolution are at once virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is powerless." |
Contents
Introduction | vii |
Suggested Further Reading | xli |
Chronology | xlix |
Copyright | |
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9 Thermidor accomplices accused Alain Badiou allies ambition Applause aristocracy armies Assembly attacks Austria authority called calumnies Camille Desmoulins cause citizens Committee of Public condemned conspirators constitution corrupt court crimes dare declared decrees defenders democracy democratic denounce despotism destiny dictatorship divine Dumouriez duty eternal Europe faction favour fear fighting foreign France French Republic French Revolution friends of liberty Girondins Glossary homeland honour human individual interest intrigues Jacobin Jacobin Club justice kings legislators Louis XVI Maximilien Robespierre ministers Montagnards moral National Convention national representation nature Oeuvres oppressed oppressors ourselves Paris Paris Commune passions patriotism people's representatives perfidious persecuted plotters political pretext principles proscribed Public Safety punish reason Reference Republic's republican revolutionary government Revolutionary Tribunal Robespierre ruin sacred sans-culottes scoundrels September Massacres slander Slavoj Žižek social society terror Thermidor traitors triumph truth tyranny tyrants universe Ventôse decrees victory virtue weakness