Queering the Reform/Revolution Dyad: A Spatiotemporal Dialectic

All ages deal with the debate between reform and revolution in the contexts of their

distinctive challenges, problems, and prospects. While reflecting on today’s sociopolitical

realities in the U.S., this paper identifies a theoretical stagnancy in academia

that deters any radical praxis for revolution. Addressing some key theoretical stances

within the reform/revolution dyad, the paper argues that any criticism of “revolution in

a linear future” is no easy approval for “reform in a static present” either. Also,

replacing the “apocalyptic future” with the “here and now” of the progressive present

is perhaps inadequate without critically reflecting on the “quality” of the “present”.

This paper does not recommend any specific prescriptive means but outlines a

speculative prospect of “here and now” for revolution. It critiques theoretical stances

of a number of postcolonial and poststructuralist thinkers and argues that these

stances eventually get appropriated within the hegemonic reform-based justice

underpinning neoliberalism. It argues that using the work of Henry Lefebvre, David

Harvey, and Doreen Massey, a spatiotemporal dialectic for revolution can be

developed which in turn also embraces revolutionary visions of Alain Badiou. The

paper explains how this dialectic reveals an inadequacy in the politics of reform and

adjustment within theories of James C Scott, Michel de Certeau, Homi K Bhabha,

Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. It shows how liberal justice discourses that

routinely promote reform in an attempt to misguide revolutionary potentials manage to find a comfort zone in the politics of difference. Specifically, the paper invests in the

interstice between two types of theories to queer the longstanding reform-revolution

dyad.