It is time to re-examine the French Revolution as a political resource. The historiography has so far ignored the question of popular sovereignty and emancipation; instead the Revolution has been vilified as a matrix of totalitarianisms by the liberals and as an ethnocentric phenomenon by postcolonial studies. This book examines why.

• INTRODUCTION The French Revolution Is Not a Myth: Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, Lacan, and Us
• I THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AS AN OBJECT FOR SARTRE
• 1 HOW DID THE FRENCH REVOLUTION BECOME AN OBJECT FOR SARTRE?
• 2 WORKING WITH HISTORICAL DETAILS AGAINST THE FETISHIZATION OF THE REAL
• 3 NO LONGER DISSOLVING THE REAL ACTORS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
• 4 RESTORING THE ROLE OF THE SACRED
• 5 APOCALYPSE AND FRATERNITY-TERROR
• 6 THE QUESTION OF DIALECTICAL TIME, OR THE INANITY OF THE NOTION OF THE REARGUARD
• II REBUKING SARTRE AND HIS FINAL HUMANIST OBJECT: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION UNDER SCRUTINY
• 7 THREE HUMANITIES IN ONE: EUROPEAN, COLONIZED, SAVAGE
• 8 FINISHING A BOOK, CONCLUDING A DISCUSSION
• 9 MICHEL FOUCAULT AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION A Misunderstanding?
• 10 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Between the Archaeology of Knowledge, Discursive Formations, and Social Formations
• 11 ON THE “IRANIAN REVOLUTION” Retrieving the Missed Object, with Foucault and Despite Foucault
• 12 “THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AS MATRIX OF TOTALITARIANISM” The Enigma of a Bizarre Statement
• 13 SADE AND THE ETHICAL FOLD OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
• CONCLUSIONClearing Some Foggy Patches