On Revolution

Hannah Arendt, in the book On Revolution (1963) that Mafalda Santos quotes in the title of this exhibition, briefly discusses the evolution of the semantic field of the word revolution. From Latin, revolutio, the word first appears in our vocabularies to identify cyclical inevitabilities (like the seasons), a return to a pre-established order. Although it does not correspond completely to the truth, it is accepted by Hannah Arendt that it is in 1789, during the French Revolution, that the word takes on the meaning we ascribe to it today. It appears to separate the social movements of the time from the epithet of revolts.
 Often in an unsuspected way, around the words a prodigious battlefield is drawn, the tension between meaning and signifier object of the most violent disputes. Since the year 1789, revolution – in all languages ​​- is one of the fields where the struggle has been highlighted by intensity, marking all generations up to the present. As a rule, those who have the command of the word define the political direction that we recognize as progressive. Today, for diverse reasons, among which tautology will have some weight, we feel the word trapped. Inhabiting relatively stable societies, the word has been assimilated by more everyday languages ​​and it is not uncommon to see it applied to technology, banal products and the most common ideas. However, when used in describing social movements in countries outside our capitalist democracies, such as the countries of North Africa and the Middle East today, it continues to have the strength with which it emerged two hundred and twenty years ago.