The concept of democracy — both ideologically and theoretically — is of key importance in “the radical reconception of revolutionary theory,” to quote from our masthead. The following excerpts from Badiou’s contribution to Democracy in What State? may serve as a beginning step in that direction. In this book a number of contemporary thinkers (Giorgio Agamben, [...]
Posts under ‘Alan Badiou’
Political Art
The question of art and revolution is an old one, reaching back at least to the French Revolution. It’s one that every radical activist has probably thought about (probably inconclusively), and it’s one that has arisen for every actual revolution and for many artists. The following talk by Alain Badiou was given at the Miguel Abreu [...]
Some contributions to thinking in the present moment
There’s a new wind blowing across this globalized world, from Tunisia to Egypt to Greece to Spain to Occupy Wall Street. How do the theoretical investigations of this site relate to this, to what’s new and emerging? This question of the emergence of novelty, of understanding this very changing world so as to help to [...]
Badiou on existence
The following is a bit more abstract than what we usually publish here, but for those who want to understand what Badiou is doing philosophically, this essay (originally a talk) will repay the effort. The talk was obviously given several years ago, and was originally published in lacanian ink 29 (Spring 2007). It is republished [...]
What is Badiou’s communism?
The following essay by J. Ramsey is expanded from remarks delivered at the Platypus Society Convention in April, as part of a panel on Badiou and Post-Maoism: Marxism and Communism Today. Other speakers were Chris Cutrone of Platypus (whose paper can be found here), Mike Ely of Kasama (whose remarks can be found on Kasama), [...]
John Steele: Why is Badiou of political value?
Following is the paper I gave yesterday at the Platypus convention in Chicago, as part of a panel titled Badiou and Post-Maoism: Marxism and Communism Today. Other panelists were Chris Cutrone of Platypus, Mike Ely of Kasama, and Joe Ramsey. Cutrone’s paper strongly attacked Badiou, whom he characterized as a typical ’60s new leftist, deeply [...]
Badiou on the Arab revolts
Reprinted from the symptom (edited slightly for typos and paragraphing). The Tunisian and the Egyptian people are telling us: raise up, build up a public space for the communism of movement, protect it by all means while inventing the sequential course of action. The universal reach of popular uprisings Alan Badiou The wind of the [...]
Badiou — and George Bernard Shaw — on Richard Wagner
Another book by Badiou just out in Engish, this one on a surprising topic. Richard Wagner is not someone about whom I have much knowledge, either artistically or politically, aside from the usual background that he’s often been classed as a racist and reactionary. This is a verdict against which Badiou argues in Five Lessons [...]
An important work
Following is a review, appearing recently in the Marx & Philosophy Review of Books, of Badiou’s Theory of the Subject, a work published in French in 1982 (although consisting of a series of seminars given four years earlier), and not in English until last year. This book is not only one of the “stages on [...]
The Cultural Revolution in China: what was its meaning?
The Cultural Revolution in China (the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was its official title) was one of the great revolutionary political events of the 20th century, and coming to grips with it is part of what’s essential, I believe, to any renewal of the communist hypothesis (to use Badiou’s very apt term). The following essay [...]
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