Argues for understanding Badiou's thought as a revival of dialectical materialism

Badiou and Politics offers a much-anticipated interpretation of the work of the influential French philosopher Alain Badiou. Countering ideas of the philosopher as a dogmatic, absolutist, or even mystical thinker enthralled by the force of the event as a radical break, Bruno Bosteels reveals Badiou’s deep and ongoing investment in the dialectic. Bosteels draws on all of Badiou’s writings, from the philosopher’s student days in the 1960s to the present, as well as on Badiou’s exchanges with other thinkers, from his avowed “masters” Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan, to interlocutors including Gilles Deleuze, Slavoj Žižek, Daniel Bensaïd, Jacques Derrida, Ernesto Laclau, and Judith Butler. Bosteels tracks the philosopher’s political activities from the events of May 1968 through his embrace of Maoism and the work he has done since the 1980s, helping to mobilize France’s illegal immigrants or sans-papiers. Ultimately, Bosteels argues for understanding Badiou’s thought as a revival of dialectical materialism, and he illuminates the philosopher’s understanding of the task of theory: to define a conceptual space for thinking emancipatory politics in the present.

"“If it is, by definition, unfair to expect critical theory to respond at the level of direct relevancy to the current conjuncture – if, indeed, such an imperative would dilute the very critical potency that makes the best critical writing transcend the immediate context of its composition – the circumstances of philosophical production and reception should, nonetheless, figure more in our reading, should trouble us more even as we learn from the ‘stars’ of the current philosophical firmament. Those circumstances – institutional, economic, academic – form the ambient frame through which Bosteels’ luminously written reflections on Badiou’s political philosophy should be read.”" - Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

"“Politics is a tough topic to tackle on any level. Badiou is a tough thinker to engage with. Bosteels unites, complements, and distinguishes both in his 436-page book working through the theories of a thinker who himself is grappling directly with politics: politics as an event, politics as being, and politics as one of four truth procedures defining the subject.”" - Culture Machine