Reviewed at Kasama.
Each speaker expressed his own particular enthusiasm and sense of urgency regarding the necessity of reconstituting communism for the 21st century, though what this means exactly, still remains very abstract. For the most part Badiou and Zizek avoided any discussion of concrete or practical tasks (aka “What is to be done?”) aside from
- the need to restore the Communist Hypothesis to its proper place among philosophers and other thinking people, and
- to pay close attention to those new forms of political practice that emerge through current struggles.
As Badiou himself put it, this hypothesis is essentially a negative operation, amounting basically to the assertion and belief –recurrent throughout history, from at least Sparatacus on—that it is possible and necessary to transcend the structures and limitations of class society, and to establish an egalitarian order.
Audio of the talk is available at Impose Magazine.
