The militant historian: the concept of history in the work of Alain Badiou

Purcell, Kerry William (2022) The militant historian: the concept of history in the work of Alain Badiou. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

This thesis pivots on two suppositions: firstly, that historicism as an approach to the past remains dominant in the 21stcentury; and secondly, the work of the philosopher Alain Badiou offers an original and altogether radical riposte to this form of historiography. The work as whole is principally focused on the second of these assumptions and seeks to offer the first wide ranging analysis of Badiou’s use, development, and transformation of the concept of history. Broken into six chapters, the first five sections center on key texts in Badiou’s still developing oeuvre and examine how the growth of his philosophical ideas serve to challenge dominant conceptions of history and the role of the historian. In a hypothetical turn, the final section addresses how these ideas could transform the practices of teaching history and what it means to ‘do history’ as a meaningful endeavour. The thesis concludes by exploring what forms the ‘militant historian’ could take outside the narrow strictures of academic life.

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