Revolution and Diavolution: What Is the Difference?

Abstract

Whereas revolution has often been viewed as contrary to organization, it in fact requires the overcoming of a present organization in the promise of achieving another superior organization. The article conducts a theoretical, rather than historical, reflection on the interplay among three concepts: organization, revolution, and diavolution. By exploring the modernist conception of revolution, the idea is advanced that the relationship can be framed as follows: organization is the katéchon of revolution, whereas revolution is the éschaton of organization. The last part of the article introduces and discusses the concept of diavolution as an attempt to overcome the dichotomy between the subjectivist and the structuralist view both at the theoretical and the practical level. Diavolution is a style of inhabiting organizations that differs from the revolutionary one; a style of resistance that, although much more elusive and difficult to capture, may prove to be at the same time more human.

New Media and Urban Motilities: A Territoriologic Point of View

“…Similar reflections imply a rather gloomy view for freedom, entailing that nothing unexpected can be produced inside new media. However, resistance is tactical, interstitial and 'diavolutionary' by nature (Brighenti, 2008); it is certainly not paradigmatic-yet it does not mean that it be reduced to a mere syntagm either. Resistance practices tactically reshape visibilities in order to produce 'second-order' visibilities capable of challenging the invisibility of environmental control.…”

Elias Canetti and the counter-image of resistance

“…It is with some bitterness, and a lot of skepticism, that Canetti observes he hardly knew of anyone writing against power who did not in fact want power for himself (here, gendered language is by the author). Whereas critical theorists often conceive resistance as a struggle and as a moment of power conflict -eventually conflict in the political domain, such as revolution -Canetti suggests a perspective that conceives resistance not as revolution but as 'diavolution' (Brighenti 2008).…”

New Media and the Prolongations of Urban Environments

“…They have no cumulative character: a tactic cannot build on its own victories, nor achieve any overall coherence; it can only combine heterogeneous elements and constantly try to turn events into opportunities. Resistance is always of tactical nature (Brighenti, 2008). Its social locations do not correspond to any institutionalized field of knowledge.…”