Beating Time in the Slow Movements

Bensaïd’s Revolutionary Rhythms

Bibliographic Data

ID12673448
AuthorsXavier Lafrance (0000-0001-5423-0889, Université du Québec à Montréal, corresponding author), Alan Sears (0000-0001-7610-9000, Toronto Metropolitan University, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume24
Issue4
Pages129-149
Publication date2016-12-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistorical Materialism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-4466 • E-ISSN: 1569-206X
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/1569206x-12341501
OpenAlexW2584105051
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited14

Daniel Bensaïd was prominent among the revolutionary thinkers and activists who emerged from the mass insurgency of the 1960s, a period in which anti-capitalist organisers had genuine social weight grounded in connections to broad layers of the working class and radical movements. As the neoliberal offensive developed, working-class and allied movements experienced crucial defeats that marginalised anti-capitalist theory and practice. Bensaïd developed a unique theoretical analysis of radical mobilising during the neoliberal period, at once grounded in the history of revolutionary organising and audaciously open-ended in assessing the impact of capitalist restructuring and the employers’ offensive. The basis of his theoretical renewal lay in a new approach to understanding temporality that undercut any sense of socialist inevitability, and a commitment to revolutionary pluralism that was crucially located in the political sphere

Aesthetics · Class conflict · Economics · Epistemology · Insurgency · Management · Offensive · Period (music · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Restructuring · Social movement · Sociology · Temporality · Working class · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism