Bruno Bosteels on Hegel, Mao, and Badiou
April 22, 2026
Columbia University
Core Readings
Alain Badiou, Theory of the Subject, trans. Bruno Bosteels (London: Continuum, 2009), please focus on Part I, pp. 1-50 and Part III, pp. 111-176.
Alain Badiou, The Rational Kernel of the Hegelian Dialectic, trans. Tzuchien Tho (Melbourne: re:press, 2011).
Alain Badiou, “Hegel in France,” in The Adventure of French Philosophy, ed. and trans. Bruno Bosteels (London: Verso, 2012), pp. 19-26.
Mao Zedong, Five Essays on Philosophy (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1977), especially “On Contradiction” and “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People,” pp. 23-133.
Resources
Alain Badiou, “One Divides into Two,” in Lenin Reloaded, ed. Sebastian Budgen, Stathis Kouvelakis, and Slavoj Žižek (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 7-17.
Bosteels’ translator’s introduction to Badiou’s Theory of the Subject, pp. vii-xxviii.Bruno Bosteels, “Hegel,” in Alain Badiou: Key Concepts, ed. A. J. Bartlett and Justin Clemens (Durham, UK: Acumen, 2010), pp. 137-145.
Bruno Bosteels, “Hegel in America,” in Hegel & the Infinite. Religion, Politics, and Dialectic, ed. Slavoj Žižek, Clayton Crockett, and Creston Davis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 67-90.
Bruno Bosteels, “Hegel in America: New Hypotheses” (unpublished manuscript).Bruno Bosteels, “Marx’s Theory of the Subject,” in Accumulation and Subjectivity in Latin America, ed. Karen Benezra (Albany: SUNY Press, 2022), pp. 255-274.
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We are also planning a seminar on Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Jacques Martin, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida
Louis Althusser (1947), Jacques Martin (1947), and Michel Foucault (1949) wrote their masters’ theses on Hegel. Gilles Deleuze (1968) wrote his doctoral thesis against Hegel. And a few years later, Jacques Derrida deconstructed Hegel in his book Glas (1974).
In each case, their early interest in Hegel would shape their mature writings and politics. For instance, in his master’s thesis, La constitution d’un transcendantal historique dans la Phénoménologie de l’esprit de Hegel, Foucault explored the relationship between the transcendental conditions of experience and the Hegelian dialectic and theory of history. This tied directly to Foucault’s emerging theory of experience, which was his effort at developing a materialist philosophy—and would guide all of his later work.
In this segment, then, we return to the early writings of Althusser, Martin, Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida, to explore their early interest in Hegel and how it shaped their later thought and politics.
Core Readings
Louis Althusser, “On Content in the Thought of G. W. F. Hegel,” in The Spectre of Hegel: Early Writings, trans. G. M. Goshgarian, ed. François Matheron (New York: Verso, 2014 [1947]) (master’s thesis), https://www.versobooks.com/products/1576-the-spectre-of-hegel.
Jacques Martin, L’individu chez Hegel, ed. Jean-Baptiste Vuillerod (Paris: ENS Éditions, 2020 [1947]) (master’s thesis).
Michel Foucault, La constitution d’un transcendantal historique dans la Phénoménologie de l’esprit de Hegel. Mémoire du diplôme d’études supérieures de philosophie (Paris, Vrin: 2024 [1949]) (master’s thesis).
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994 [1968]) (principal thesis for the Doctorat D’État).
Jacques Derrida, Glas, trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986 [1974]).
Bruno Bosteels, “Difference,” in Finitude (work-in-progress).
Additional Readings
Bernard E. Harcourt, “A Preface to Experience,” foreword to Michel Foucault, Binswanger and Existential Analysis, trans. Marie McDonough (New York: Columbia University Press, 2025).
Pierre Macherey, “Did Foucault Find a ‘Way Out’ of Hegel?,” Theory, Culture & Society, 40(1-2), 19-36 (2022), available at https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221084903.
Oliver Roberts-Garratt, “Foucault’s Hegel Thesis: The ‘Tragic Destiny’ of Life and the ‘Being-There’ of Consciousness,” Foucault Studies, no. 36 (September 2024): 443-469, available at https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.i36.7227.
Jean-Baptiste Vuillerod, La Naissance de l’anti-hégélianisme. Louis Althusser et Michel Foucault, lecteurs de Hegel(Paris: ENS Éditions, 2022).
Jean-Baptiste Vuillerod, La révolution trahie : Deleuze contre Hegel (Villeneuve d’Ascq : Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2023)