First off, I think generalizing Revolutions as strictly random or strictly inevitable is an impossible task as each case is different in many ways. However, a passage that has stood out to me in recent readings was in Ardent’s piece. It reads, “Almost every revolution which has change the shape of nations has been made to consolidate or destroy inequality.” The reading also says, “this reality was biological and not historical…a change whose movements are automatic, independent of our own activities, and irresistible” As for Ardent she believes that Revolutions are a matter of human nature. The idea that humans will always fight for their dignity in the face of inequality. Similar to what we read the first week in Shah of Shahs about that pebble that contently nags at our side. So it seems, as long as there are oppressed peoples, as long as inequality defines a nation, there will be revolution. Sure it will be upon the back of an extraordinary event, a moment of viability when the impossible seems possible, but the “overwhelming urgency” that Ardent speaks of will always be engrained in our human nature.
So are revolutions inevitable or random? Can they be both? Consider our study of Haiti. Sure it may have shocked the French masters when the men they once trusted as loyal turned on them and their families. However, the cogs of the uprising had be silently turning for quite a while.
I thought the point on inequality was interesting, especially given the way in which many revolutions typically fail to institute substantive change. As seen in Fanon he describes the what comes after of the revolution and illustrates the ways in which many times the systems of oppression reproduce themselves in the post-revolutionary society just with new oppressors replacing the old. It’s made me question whether revolution truly is the best way to enact change, and whether or not in some scenarios it is the best option because no other solutions really exist.
I think you (along with everyone who falls in the same camp) did a great job of articulating sound justifications for why revolutions may be the product of human agency, but I have a hard time differentiating between revolutionary actors and the institutional frameworks that allowed them to attain their goals. Yes, unrest had been brewing in Haiti. But without a social structure that created a caste of free blacks within a slave system, the Haitian revolution looks very different. In Iran, it took the political coopting of an institutionalized mourning process to make protest feel viable. Perhaps, though this is not the same argument of my own post, human agency and institutional frameworks are inherently inseparable in revolutionary action (a feature that makes them a bit more unique).
I thought this aspect of human agency and nature was interesting as well simply because i also found it hard to believe that we can attribute such a grueling process to just inevitability and randomness. Without it doubt it takes away from the pain and endurance one must undergo. Therefore, i feel as though it is important that both the randomness and the human agency are given equal attention…