The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings - Hardcover

"A figure like Plato or Hegel walks here among us!" Slavoj A iA ek; "An heir to Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser." New Statesman; "Shaking the foundations of Western liberal democracy." Times Higher Education Supplement;"One of the most important philosophers writing today." Joan Copjec; "Scarcely any other moral thinker of our day is as politically clear-sighted and courageously polemical, so prepared to put notions of truth and universality back on the agenda." Terry Eagleton

In the uprisings of the Arab world, Alain Badiou discerns echoes of the European revolutions of 1848. In both cases, the object was to overthrow despotic regimes maintained by the great powers - regimes designed to impose the will of financial oligarchies. Both events occurred after what was commonly thought to be the end of a revolutionary epoch: in 1815 the final defeat of Napoleon and in 1989 the fall of the Soviet Union. But the revolutions of 1848 proclaimed for a century and a half the return of revolutionary thought and action. Likewise, the uprisings under way today herald a worldwide resurgence in the liberating force of the masses - despite the attempts of the "international community" to neutralize its power. Badiou's book salutes this reawakening of history, weaving examples from the Arab Spring and elsewhere into a global analysis of the return of emancipatory universalism.