This book aims to provide fresh perspectives on Vattimo and Zabala's groundbreaking foundational text, Hermeneutic Communism, from 2011. The contributors to this collection of essays explore various facets of Vattimo and Zabala's "anarchic hermeneutics" and "weak communism" in order to investigate the concepts resulting from them, such as "framed democracies," "armed capitalism" and "conservative impositions." Vattimo and Zabala's text is one of the most innovative contributions to the current debate on Communism, in which authors such as Badiou, Negri, and Ranciere have been the protagonists so far. The unique and original contribution of Vattimo and Zabala's position consists in letting politics evolve from one of the anarchic origins of hermeneutics: the end of truth. This triggers the essential question of how far politics is possible without truth. One of the essential, methodologically innovative characteristics of this collection is its dialogical, hermeneutical form, which is achieved by inserting Vattimo and Zabala's personal reactions to each essay in the book. By responding to each chapter in turn, Vattimo and Zabala establish a hermeneutic dialogue with the contributors. Thus hermeneutics will not only be a central topic, but also an epistemological, concrete application of Vattimo and Zabala's theories. An indispensable critical tool for students, researchers, professors, activists and general readers interested in the philosophical and political debate on Communism, which encompasses a wide variety of disciplines such as philosophy, political science, sociology, postcolonial studies, critical theory and Latin American studies. Offering an innovative first analysis of the new concepts of Hermeneutic Communism, this book represents a vital contribution to the understanding of the intriguing interrelation between philosophical hermeneutics and political communism. "A very much needed and refreshing perspective for all those interested in rethinking radical politics beyond both political Eurocentrism and philosophical imperialism." (Chiara Bottici, New School of Social Research, and author of Imaginal Politics) "The book offers much food for thought both for those who have given up hope and for those who have been fighting for a better world for some time...The contributions to Making Communism Hermeneutical may be seen as step in the direction of a much-needed change in thinking." (David Block, ICREA Research Professor in Sociolinguistics, Universitat de Lleida)

It is time to re-examine the French Revolution as a political resource. The historiography has so far ignored the question of popular sovereignty and emancipation; instead the Revolution has been vilified as a matrix of totalitarianisms by the liberals and as an ethnocentric phenomenon by postcolonial studies. This book examines why. More so than historians, it is philosophers that have played the leading role in the portrayal of this major event in French political history. The philosophical quarrels of the 1960s placed the French Revolution at the heart of their debates. The most well-documented among these is the conflict between Jean-Paul Sartre and Claude Levi-Strauss and subsequently, Michel Foucault. Do we need an ethics of the history of the French Revolution? Ranciere, Derrida, Balibar, Lefort, Robin, and Loraux can help answer this question, in an epistemological approach to history. These successive explorations allow us to move away from a myth of identity and to rediscover a real Revolution, capable of offering Enlightenment and political utility and interrogating what democracy and emancipation mean for us today.