The Militant Historian: The Concept of History in the Work of Alain Badiou

(Hardback)

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This is the first wide-ranging analysis of Alain Badious use, development and transformation of the concept of history. Despite the wealth of perspectives now available on how social and cultural practices take shape, historicism still appears to be the most dominant. The Militant Historian delves into Badious work to challenge this primacy and offer a radical riposte. Exploring key texts in Badious oeuvre and examining how his philosophical ideas disrupt dominant conceptions of history and the role of the historian, Kerry William Purcell addresses how these ideas could transform the practices of teaching history and what it means to do history as a meaningful endeavour. Adopting a chronological approach to Badious work, each chapter explores specific conceptual developments in his writing and how they lend themselves to a reconsideration of the historical. From these new and disruptive modes of doing emerges the figure of the militant historian a role with potentially deep impact not just in academia but outside the narrow strictures of academic life.

Author Bio

Kerry William Purcell is a Senior Lecturer in Design History at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. He specialises in visual cultural theory, and has previously written on the philosophy of history and key figures in the history of visual culture.