At the interface of contingency and history. Badiou’s concept of the event and historical materialism

Abstract

At the interface of contingency and history. Badiou’s concept of the event and historical materialism. (Article) – The article addresses the issue of the connecting lines between Alain Badiou’s philosophy and historical materialism. In Badiou’s theory, contingency as one of the profound categories is linked up to all pivotal concepts such as the event, truth-procedures, fidelity to the event, the subject. On the contrary, historical materialism discloses societal determinations and latent tendencies which cannot be explained as being contingent. The author strives to point out that these two approaches are linkable through the concept of the dynamic latency.