Language for Resisting Oppression
Review of Revolutionary Keywords for a New Left

http://solidarity-us.org/atc/192/p5190/
Date Written:  2018-01-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2018
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23265

Review of the Revolutionary Keywords for a New Left by Ian Parker.

Abstract: 
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Excerpts:

His new book, Revolutionary Keywords for a New Left, is published in the context of the centennial of the October revolution, and should be read in tandem with similarly themed books recently published by Verso (e.g. Ali, 2017; Miéville, 2017; Žižek, 2017).

Parker's treatise is a critical celebration of "the century of revolutions" (252), his central thesis entails changing the Left in order "to change the world." (9)

But in order to change the Left, according to Parker, we first need to pay close attention to "the link between language and action." The "keywords" we use in describing the world, he writes "are intimately linked to the very possibility of changing that very same world because '[l]anguage is woven into reality.'" (6, 8)

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