The Century that Comments: A Commentary on The Century

Abstract

In this paper, we will trace some of the ways in which Badiou characterizes the Twentieth Century as a century reluctant to both projection (characteristic of the 19th century) and action (characteristic of the 20th century) and, in this sense, we will defend the hypothesis that the current century emerges in Le Siècle as an era that comments on what has been done and thought by previous eras. From there, and to clarify this feature, we will focus on commentary as a literary genre, paying attention both to its history and the role it plays in the transmission of the texts of Aristotle and Plato, as well as to the philosophical potential it holds as a genre in which reading is transformed into writing and gives rise to the formation of a tradition.