Abstract
The kind of activity that Hannah Arendt named “the lost treasure of the revolutionary tradition” was a visible part of the transformations of 1989 and has continued to play a significant role in the politics of transformation. Arendt’s notion is described and applied to understanding the great achievements of 1989 and then it is used to understand the political power of an American public figure, Barack Obama.
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Notes
The following description was applied and expanded in a slightly different form in my “On Barack Obama,” Constellations vol. 16, no. 2, 2009 in a broader argument about the revolutionary character of the Obama campaign and presidency. It appears here as it was originally presented at the New School conference.
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Goldfarb, J. 1989 and The Not So Lost Treasure of the Revolutionary Tradition, or Barack Obama and the Politics of Small Things. Int J Polit Cult Soc 22, 579–585 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-009-9086-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-009-9086-4