Revolution and Diavolution: What Is the Difference?

Abstract

Whereas revolution has often been viewed as contrary to organization, it in fact requires the overcoming of a present organization in the promise of achieving another superior organization. The article conducts a theoretical, rather than historical, reflection on the interplay among three concepts: organization, revolution, and diavolution. By exploring the modernist conception of revolution, the idea is advanced that the relationship can be framed as follows: organization is the katéchon of revolution, whereas revolution is the éschaton of organization. The last part of the article introduces and discusses the concept of diavolution as an attempt to overcome the dichotomy between the subjectivist and the structuralist view both at the theoretical and the practical level. Diavolution is a style of inhabiting organizations that differs from the revolutionary one; a style of resistance that, although much more elusive and difficult to capture, may prove to be at the same time more human.