“If it is, by definition, unfair to expect critical theory to respond at the level of direct relevancy to the current conjuncture – if, indeed, such an imperative would dilute the very critical potency that makes the best critical writing transcend the immediate context of its composition – the circumstances of philosophical production and reception should, nonetheless, figure more in our reading, should trouble us more even as we learn from the ‘stars’ of the current philosophical firmament. Those circumstances – institutional, economic, academic – form the ambient frame through which Bosteels’ luminously written reflections on Badiou’s political philosophy should be read.” - Tom Eyers, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books

“Politics is a tough topic to tackle on any level. Badiou is a tough thinker to engage with. Bosteels unites, complements, and distinguishes both in his 436-page book working through the theories of a thinker who himself is grappling directly with politics: politics as an event, politics as being, and politics as one of four truth procedures defining the subject.” - Kevin D. Kuswa, Culture Machine

“Bruno Bosteels’s fine book restores the political and philosophical context of Alain Badiou’s lifework, and shows in particular how he has aimed at completing all the great unfinished problems of contemporary theory, particularly those of Althusser and Lacan. Not only does it serve as a useful introduction to a complex and many-faceted thinker, it also makes it possible for us to grasp some of the debates of the 1960s in a far more comprehensive way than before.”—Fredric R. Jameson, Duke University

Se alle

“The most eagerly awaited book on Alain Badiou’s political thought yet written, Bruno Bosteels’s study is in a class of its own in every respect, remarkable as much for its enthusiasm and commitment as for its insight and precision, its depth of analysis and extraordinary breadth of reference. Badiou and Politics not only tracks the full course of Badiou’s own distinctive post-Maoist trajectory in meticulous detail, it also provides an incisive and illuminating discussion of virtually the whole field of emancipatory theoretical engagement after Sartre.”—Peter Hallward, author of Badiou: A Subject to Truth

“If it is, by definition, unfair to expect critical theory to respond at the level of direct relevancy to the current conjuncture – if, indeed, such an imperative would dilute the very critical potency that makes the best critical writing transcend the immediate context of its composition – the circumstances of philosophical production and reception should, nonetheless, figure more in our reading, should trouble us more even as we learn from the ‘stars’ of the current philosophical firmament. Those circumstances – institutional, economic, academic – form the ambient frame through which Bosteels’ luminously written reflections on Badiou’s political philosophy should be read.”

- Tom Eyers, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

“Politics is a tough topic to tackle on any level. Badiou is a tough thinker to engage with. Bosteels unites, complements, and distinguishes both in his 436-page book working through the theories of a thinker who himself is grappling directly with politics: politics as an event, politics as being, and politics as one of four truth procedures defining the subject.”

- Kevin D. Kuswa, Culture Machine

Badiou and Politics offers a much-anticipated interpretation of the work of the influential French philosopher Alain Badiou. Countering ideas of the philosopher as a dogmatic, absolutist, or even mystical thinker enthralled by the force of the event as a radical break, Bruno Bosteels reveals Badiou’s deep and ongoing investment in the dialectic. Bosteels draws on all of Badiou’s writings, from the philosopher’s student days in the 1960s to the present, as well as on Badiou’s exchanges with other thinkers, from his avowed “masters” Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan, to interlocutors including Gilles Deleuze, Slavoj Žižek, Daniel Bensaïd, Jacques Derrida, Ernesto Laclau, and Judith Butler. Bosteels tracks the philosopher’s political activities from the events of May 1968 through his embrace of Maoism and the work he has done since the 1980s, helping to mobilize France’s illegal immigrants or sans-papiers. Ultimately, Bosteels argues for understanding Badiou’s thought as a revival of dialectical materialism, and he illuminates the philosopher’s understanding of the task of theory: to define a conceptual space for thinking emancipatory politics in the present.
Les mer
Argues for understanding Badiou's thought as a revival of dialectical materialism
Preface ix Acknowledgments xxi Introduction. Elements of Dialectical Materialism 1 1. The Absent Cause 45 2. Lack and Destruction 77 3. One Divides into Two 110 4. The Ontological Impasse 157 5. Forcing the Truth 174 6. Logics of Change 197 7. From Potentiality to Inexistence 226 8. For Lack of Politics 250 Conclusion. The Speculative Left 273 In Dialogue with Alain Badiou Appendix 1. Can Change Be Thought? 289 Appendix 2. Beyond Formalism 318 Notes 351 Selected Bibliography 407 Index 423
Les mer
Argues for understanding Badiou's thought as a revival of dialectical materialism

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780822350767
Publisert
2011-08-10
Utgiver
Vendor
Duke University Press
Vekt
626 gr
Høyde
232 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet

Forfatter

Biographical note

Bruno Bosteels is Professor of Romance Studies at Cornell University. He is the author of several books, including Alain Badiou, une trajectoire polémique and The Actuality of Communism, and the translator of Theory of the Subject and Wittgenstein’s Antiphilosophy, both by Alain Badiou.