Century

Many critics have already passed judgment on the twentieth century, describing it as an age of totalitarian violence, utopian and murderous movements, hollow illusions, genocide, and fake avant-gardes that pushed out a grounded democratic realism. Alain Badiou does not set out to defend a century that can speak for itself well enough. He also has no intention of borrowing the stance of Sartre's Frantz, who in The Condemned of Altona claims the century's guilt as his own and promises to answer for it. Instead, the book asks what this century said about itself while it was unfolding.

Badiou proposes to reopen the case against the century. He does this not from the position of the comfortable, seasoned judges that people often pretend to be, but from the viewpoint of the century's own voice. The result is a philosophical reading of the period on its own terms, examining its self-understanding as it developed.