Revolutionary generosity

Abstract

It is a rare privilege to engage with such thought-provoking commentaries on Anatomies of Revolution. Each of the contributions by Adom Getachew, Siniša Malešević, Dana Moss, Alex Prichard, and Andrew Zimmerman raises major issues that have made me think hard about the book: what I was trying to say in it, what—and who—the book was written for, what it opens up and, more uncomfortably, what it closes down. It has not been easy to respond to the multiple challenges laid down by the respondents. Not only do each of them make a range of important interventions, but quite often these interventions point in different directions. I am taken, for example, as a ‘political Weberian’ by Malešević, as a liberal by Zimmerman, and as a Marxist by Prichard. Perhaps I am all three. Or, equally plausibly, none. Either way, I am aware that no author holds a monopoly over their writing. Not only is writing a dialogic process, one that often leaves me surprised at what I come up with, but its social, inter-textual character is only heightened after publication as the text circulates … if we’re lucky. As with revolutions, so it is with books—their meaning is collectively, contextually forged.

With that in mind, I have pooled my response into three themes: history and theory; action and agency; and liberalism and revolution. This approach, I hope, allows me to reason with my interlocutors rather than set-up a faux antagonism against them. My aim is to further cultivate the spirit of revolutionary generosity that has animated their astute readings of my book.