Tuesday 12th December 2017
18:30 – 20:30 GMT
What are the possibilities for revolution in our time? What, if any, realistic alternatives to the current world order may be achievable? Although Ian Parker’s Revolutionary Keywords for a New Left may not answer these questions directly, it sets out to address the conceptual densities of contemporary revolutionary keywords ranging from academicisation to neoliberalism, from fascism to feminisation, from postcolonialism to Zionism, while also focusing on thinkers including Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Sigmund Freud, and Slavoj Žižek. In laying bare each concept, Parker provides the philosophico-historical lines of its formation and situates it within its broad social conditions. The book is a pioneering convergence of activist writings and philosophical inquiry.
Parker’s talk, ‘Philosophy and Revolution’, will consider the kinds of resources that philosophy, and related disciplines like psychoanalysis, critical theory, and critical psychology can bring to questions of revolution and political change. At a time when few on the left seem able to imagine, let alone provide the theoretical or practical resources to realise, a future that might be different from the present, this talk will offer an analysis of the pervasive cynicism in which we seem to be mired, and even hold out the prospect of an antidote. This event is a book launch for Revolutionary Keywords for a New Left.
The author:
Ian Parker is a world-renowned academic psychologist, an activist, and a practising psychoanalyst. He is most widely known as one of the most vociferous critics of the discipline of psychology. He has published numerous books including Slavoj Žižek: A Critical Introduction and Revolution in Psychology.