Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou teaches philosophy at the École normale supérieure and the Collège international de philosophie in Paris. In addition to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works, including Theory of the Subject, Being and Event, Manifesto for Philosophy, and Gilles Deleuze. His recent books include The Meaning of Sarkozy, Ethics, Metapolitics, Polemics, The Communist Hypothesis, Five Lessons on Wagner, and Wittgenstein's Anti-Philosophy.Blog
The New Communism?
There are Reds under the bed. Or in the academies. Or worse: about to spill into the streets. So warns Alan Johnson in World Affairs, the esteemed Washington-based international affairs journal. Tracing the rising profile of a group of authors such as Alain Badiou, Bruno Bosteels and Slavoj Žižek and the popularity of their books, the columnist outlines what he sees as a nascent threat lurking in the incendiary words of Terry Eagleton and Toni Negri.
Alain Badiou: 'Before the Election'
'Before the Election', from The Meaning of Sarkozy by Alain Badiou: originally written in the context of the 2007 French election, it remains vital reading ahead of the first round of the 2012 election this Sunday, 22 April.
We are now in the midst of an election campaign to appoint the president. How can I avoid speaking of it? A tricky one that . . . Philosophy may resist the content of opinions, but that does not mean it can ignore their existence, especially when this becomes literally frenetic, as it has done in recent weeks.
I discussed voting in Circonstances 1, with regard to the presidential election of 2002. I emphasized on that occasion that little credence should be placed in such an irrational procedure, and analysed in terms of this concrete example the disastrous consequences of that parliamentary fetishism which in our society fills the place of 'democracy'. The role of collective affects could not, I said, be underestimated in this kind of circumstance, organized from one end to the other by the state, and relayed by its series of apparatuses - precisely those that Louis Althusser aptly named 'ideological state apparatuses': parties, of course, but also the civil service, trade unions, media of all kinds. These latter institutions, notably of course television, but more subtly the written press, are quite spectacular powers of unreason and ignorance. Their particular function is to spread the dominant affects. They played a good part in the 'Le Pen psychosis' of 2002, which, after the old Pétainist - a knackered old horse from a ruined stable - had passed the first round, threw masses of terrified young lycéens and right-minded intellectuals into the arms of Chirac, who, no longer himself in his heyday as far as political vigour was concerned, did not expect so much. With the cavalcade headed by Sarkozy, and the Socialist Party choosing as candidate a hazy bourgeoise whose thinking, if it exists, is somewhat concealed, we reap the fatal consequence of this madness five years down the road.
"Save the Greeks from their saviours!": Alain Badiou and others on the Greek bailout
In a fiery critical call for solidarity, rich with the language of class war, a number of European academics and artists call for a campaign of solidarity with the Greek people and a launch against the dehumanising and aggressive ideology of technocratic austerity.
"[T]he future of democracy and the fate of European nations are in question" under the restructuring of Greek debt and the "endless, devastating bailouts", according to the authors, who include French academics Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar, Jacques Ranciere and more. Public assets are being carved up for privatisation under the oversight of the troika, producing vast wealth for the international buyers but failing to address the sovereign debt crisis at all: "it has literally exploded into free fall in approaching 170% of GDP, while in 2009 it represented more than 120%".
Books
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The Adventure of French Philosophy
Over forty years of French philosophy through the eyes of its greatest living exponent.
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The Rebirth of History
Testing the winds of history blowing from the Arab revolts.
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Polemics
Overturning the dominant narrative of events, from the Paris Commune to the Iraq wars.
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Metapolitics
Metapolitics argues that one of the main tasks of contemporary thought is to abolish the idea that politics is merely an object for philosophical reflection. -
Wittgenstein's Anti-Philosophy
The leading continental philosopher takes on the standard bearer of analytical philosophy. -
Five Lessons on Wagner
A leading radical intellectual tackles the many controversial interpretations of Wagner’s work.
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The Communist Hypothesis
A new program for the Left after the death of neoliberalism.
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The Meaning of Sarkozy
The reactionary tradition behind Sarkozy, and the communist hypothesis for the twenty-first century.
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Pocket Pantheon
A journey through twentieth-century philosophy with the titan of French thought.
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Ethics
One of the most powerful voices in contemporary French philosophy explodes the facile assumptions behind the recent ethical turn.
Discussions
Discussions occur on book pages throughout the site. The most recent discussions about the works of Alain Badiou are listed below.
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Badiou and the state
Alain Badiou's political writings, such as his recent Communist Hypothesis, are marked by their association with his theory of the Event (characterised by some as akin to a miracle) and the notion of a politics "at a distance from the state". This has led to criticisms regarding the abstraction of Badiou's politics and the lack of organisational mediations. For example, Luke Evans in Socialist Review says: "Badiou's conflict between the "Event" and the "State" leaves no space for how the immediate struggle for reforms may change gradually over time and become a revolutionary movement as the working class begins to realise its own power. Rather Badiou's revolution is a sudden movement of force. Revolutions don't seem to be able to emerge as a result of the obvious struggles and conflicts that we all see and live through right now." In the face of pressures pushing in the direction of political "realism" and even electoralism, is Badiou's stance a necessary corrective, or rather a replay of classic debates on abstentionism, ultra-leftism and so on?