You Can’t Have a Revolution Without Revolution
You can’t have a ‘revolution without revolution’ was a sentiment expressed by Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist philosopher, in his Prison Notebooks (1926-1937).
Gramsci was specifically commenting on the 19th century Italian Risorgimento—the movement for independence and unity—which he characterised as a ‘passive revolution’. For Gramsci a passive revolution was a top-down revolution that strove for a new and modern political course without actually engaging with the will of the people or disrupting the hegemony of ruling factions. Gramsci considered the Risorgimento a passive revolution because the new Italian government failed to get ordinary people politically involved or truly united…
Necropolitics and Resistance in an Age of Surveillance and Exclusion
As I stroll through my Brussels neighbourhood, I frequently encounter an unassuming bronze plaque embedded in the pavement outside a narrow brick apartment. This plaque commemorates Louis Rickal, a former resident who joined the resistance during the Second World War.
Rickal was arrested by the Nazis in 1943, sent to the Breendonk concentration camp, and ultimately executed a year later at the National Shooting Range in Schaerbeek, a location not far from where I reside. His involvement in the resistance was a courageous act against the horrors of fascism, seeking to protect his community at a time when the Gestapo targeted Jewish residents, minority groups, and ideological opponents, deporting many to camps such as Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Breendonk…