The radicality of love / Srecko Horvat.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Horvat, Srećko, author.

Series:

Theory redux

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Communism and love.

Communism and sex.

Love--Political aspects.

Love.

Radicalism.

Revolutions.

Physical Description:

vi, 174 pages ; 20 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; Malden, MA : Polity, 2016.

Summary:

What would happen if we could stroll through the revolutionary history of the twentieth century and ask the main protagonists - from Lenin to Che Guevara, from Alexandra Kollontai to Ulrike Meinhof - seemingly naive questions about love? Why were the most radical revolutionaries like Lenin of Che scared of the radicality of love? What is so radical about a seemingly conservative notion of love? Why is it anything but conservative? By going back to the sexual revolution of the October Revolution and its subsequent repression, to Che's dilemma between love and revolutionary commitment and to the period of '68 and its aftermath, the Croatian philosopher Srecko Horvat opens up a path of thinking that might help us answer these questions. His short book is a modest contribution to the current upheavals around the world - from Tahrir to Taksim, from Occupy Wall Street to Hong Kong, from Athens to Sarajevo - in which the question of love is curiously, surprisingly, absent. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Love in the Age of Cold Intimacies

Rimbaud's reinvention of love

"Fuck bodies"

Nymphomaniac

Grindr & Tinder

Ideology of transparency

Rimbaud again?

2 Desire in Tehran: What Are the Iranians Dreaming Of? 41

The prohibition of desire

Khomeini's Revolution

Wet dreams of the regime

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Iranian nouveau riche H.

The meaning of real freedom

3 Libidinal Economy of the October Revolution 76

Sexual revolution

Sexual counter-revolution

Lenin's troubles

The prohibition of love

"Free love" and "careless kisses"

Appassionato, or Revolution?

4 The Temptation of Che Guevara: Love or Revolution? 108

Killing machine vs. Loving machine

Che & Aleida

Revolution based on love

Communism for two

Madness in love, reason in madness

Renewed caress of bullets

5 "What Do I Care about Vietnam, if I Have Orgasm Problems?" 126

The test of '68

Kommune I

Rudi Dutschke vs. "free love"

Das Wilde Leben

The man as weapon

"Smash the monogamy!"

Lenin again?.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780745691145

0745691145

9780745691152

0745691153

OCLC:

911518124