Draft paper: The Communist Horizon

Below is a draft of the paper I'm giving in Istanbul the first week of November.

There are a couple of immediate problems: section four doesn't tie back into the rest of the argument as well as it should; section five verges on being rather cryptic and devicey. And, the paper is too long.

Unfortunately, it's due today with the translators and, well, I've spent about 35 hours on it over the last five days and I'm burned out. There are some folks who seem remarkably good at writing unbelievable amounts of really good material in a short period of time. I admire (and envy) them. It seems like they are writing great blog posts, book reviews, articles, giving lectures, and holding onto their day jobs with remarkable agility and finesse (these may not be the best advantages but I don't think I've ever used them on this blog so they felt kinda fresh).

Oh well, enough whining and excuses (or maybe not enough: I could also berate the extent to which I refurbish components of other papers, posts, and article in the attached piece; the thing is, it actually feels like I am making something different, that the recombination is leading further rather than just going around in circles. At least that's what I tell myself).

Download The Communist Horizon

Comments

[Robert Allen]

"the current undeniability of division isn’t nothing. It’s something."

You have delineated the boundaries of who needs to be afraid of the communist hypothesis and who doesn't very well. This is a division whose existence "dare not speak its name" in U.S. mainstream media discourse. I wonder if Europeans can really fathom how much sway anticommunist media rhetoric has over the populace, and how the "left" here is completely feckless and has not even a language with which to counter the neo Cold War rhetoric coming from the far right. Hopefully thinkers like yourself will emerge to re energize and at least inform if not radicalize a significant layer of people before it's too late.

[Investigacionesmilitantes.wordpress.com]

i've taken the liberty of translating an excerpt into spanish:

http://investigacionesmilitantes.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/el-comunismo-una-fuerza-del-presente/

[Jodi Dean]

great!