Corey Robin

This project examines the leading ideas and intellectuals of counterrevolutions across time. Drawing from seven episodes of US and European history, it focuses on the following themes: how counterrevolutionaries view the old regime they claim to be defending as a greater threat than the revolution they are opposing; how they learn from the revolution they mobilize against; how they use racism, empire, and war to reconcile their hostility to equality and commitment to the mass; and how, once they defeat the revolution, they experience a sense of loss for the enemy that is no more. The first sustained inquiry into counterrevolutions from the seventeenth century through today, this project is intended as a counterpart to Hannah Arendt's classic study, On Revolution.