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  • A Case for Applied Political Theory: Popescu’s Political Action in Vaclav Havel’s Thought
  • Alexander P. Otruba (bio)
Delia Popescu, Political Action in Vaclav Havel’s Thought: the Responsibility of Resistance, Lexington Books, 2012. $60.00 (cloth). $59.99 (eBook). 186 pp. ISBN: 978-0-7391-4957-7

Delia Popescu’s sets the tone for her latest book early on the first page, citing Jeffrey Isaac’s well regarded essay on the “silence of political theory” regarding the revolutions of 1989. This avoidance struck Isaac as a shocking indictment of political theory and, like Isaac, Popescu is unconvinced by those who would argue that the dissidents of 1989 may have been gifted writers and otherwise politically significant figures, but they were “not especially innovative or genuinely theoretical.”1 Popescu looks to settle the question of whether Havel was a “serious” philosopher and I believe she does so convincingly. Her position is made clear when she rejects Aviezer Tucker’s narrow interpretation of Havel as the “blindly optimistic” revolutionary (115). Instead, she argues that Havel is an exceptional critic of twentieth-century political life; reframing Havel the playwright and dissident as a model of what she calls “applied political theory”, a concept that I suspect leans heavily on Gramsci’s concept of ‘philosophy as praxis’(23). She correctly recognizes Havel as part of an historical struggle that lies at the heart of our understanding of modernity and the enlightenment itself. It is therefore not essential in Popescu’s reading that Havel be the “new” or “novel” thinker that his critics insist he must be if we are to take him seriously. I tend to agree, finding great humor in her use of Pontuso’s reference to those who might criticize Socrates for frequently changing the subject and interpret this as an indication of Socrates’ confusion and inconsistency (26). Havel’s greatest contributions lie in his ability to make fresh and relevant a current of dissident political thought that has run alongside history’s dominant course.

The first chapter of Popescu’s book focuses on the performative origins of Havel’s politics as a key influence in shaping the unconventional aspects of his political theory that have often led to him being dismissed as lacking in coherence and rigor. For Havel, the claim that politics could survive under the conditions of ideological domination was absurd. Absurdist theater held a mirror up to the lies that Czech society and post-totalitarianism in general was built upon. The very act of making these lies visible allowed for Havel—and those participating in his plays’ production or as its audience—to begin to carve out a space of truth. The same could be said of his readers. Popescu points to this space of truth amidst the lies of post-totalitarianism that gave rise to ‘antipolitical’ politics. She uses the term “antipolitical” because these activities refused to engage with the state and official ‘political life’ on ‘their’ terms, and instead turned its focus on the individual and civil society as the center of true politics. This resulted in an effort to indirectly challenge the “reality” established by the system and create a parallel reality rooted in individual responsibility and an open civil society. Were this exercise to remain at the level of ironic theater, Havel might have remained the idealist that many of his critics saw him as; however, such was not to be the case. Through his work Havel helped individuals to rediscover their own identity and humanity, and therefore rediscover politics itself; an act of applied political theory if there ever was one. Though Havel’s writings aren’t in themselves instructive in the sense of teaching lessons, they are an example of the practice of philosophy as a practical project. For Havel, this has been largely expressed through his work in the theater. Gramsci, some forty years prior, arrived at a similar conclusion when he introduced the concept of ‘philosophy as praxis’, a concept of philosophy as a “critico-practical activity” that is central to moral and political awakening. Gramsci promotes this concept among a class of new intellectuals who must be actively involved in practical life and whose job it is...

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