Earlier this month, as many readers know, Alain Badiou, Terry Eagleton, Peter Hallward, Michael Hardt,
Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière, Gianni Vattimo, Slavoj Zizek all participated at the conference “On the Idea of Communism.” For those of us who sadly missed it, Monthly Review has a good recap of links. If you know of more, please post them in the comments! (See also the lacan.com article)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oco4ZX1f11g[/youtube]
April 1, 2009 at 4:14 pm
More reports and papers from the Idea of Communism conference here:
http://thekubrickiangaze.blogspot.com/
April 7, 2009 at 9:05 am
A £100 entry fee for a conference on communism? Paradox or dialectic?
April 18, 2009 at 6:47 pm
To Anon:
Paradox or dialectic? How about Academic.
April 27, 2009 at 8:01 am
It was a bit overpriced judging by the final attendance. But most people don’t seem to realise that these events are expensive to run. The hiring of the hall cost £20,000 alone!
Funny how people will happily pay £200-£300 for a summer music festival with 100,000 attendees but winge about the entrance fee for an academic event.
April 27, 2009 at 11:54 pm
I would have gladly paid the required amount to hear Badiou, Zizek, Hardt, Negri, and Hallward deliver papers on the idea of communism..
But I don’t live in the UK.
August 16, 2009 at 10:46 am
Idea ?
What about practice ? What about a new Gulag. My grandparents were peasants in Romania, and the communists simply took all their land, converting them into virtual slaves. Who can be that blind to even think of expropriation anymore? Let’s begin with their properties. Would they agree to be expropriated? Because that’s all there is about communism, that is the illusion we can build a just society based om common ownership.
I agree we can dispute a lot of what happens in capitalism, but there’s really no serious alternative presented so far, except brutal expropriation.
What is even more funny is the way they tax people so they can watch them speaking. Very communistic amd idealistic…