Alain Badiou

Gabriel Riera

Description

There is little doubt that Alain Badiou is one of the most challenging and controversial figures in contemporary philosophy. This volume of essays brings together leading commentators from both sides of the Atlantic to provide an introduction to Badiou's work through critical studies of his more productive and controversial ideas.

Over the course of three decades, his numerous and extensive texts have challenged traditional views on ontology, mathematics, aesthetics, literature, politics, ethics, philosophy, and sexual difference. His texts on Plato, Saint Paul, Pascal, Lacan, Althusser, Heidegger, MallarmeŒ, Pessoa, and Beckett are among the most perceptive and penetrating essays on contemporary philosophical and literary culture. In addition to providing insight into the basic conceptual apparatus of Badiou's philosophy, the essays also offer a more substantial critical assessment of the import of his main theses for different disciplines.
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations

Introduction. Alain Badiou: The Event of Thinking
Gabriel Riera

PART I. MATHEMATICS = ONTOLOGY

1. On Alain Badiou’s Treatment of Category Theory in View of a Transitory Ontology
Norman Madarasz

2. The Ontological Dispute: Badiou, Heidegger, and Deleuze
Miguel de Beistegui

PART II. THE POEM

3. For an “Ethics of Mystery”: Philosophy and the Poem
Gabriel Riera

4. Unbreakable B’s: From Beckett and Badiou to the Bitter End of Affirmative Ethics
Jean-Michel Rabaté

5. The Mallarmé of Alain Badiou
Pierre Macherey

PART III. LOVE (Philosophy and Psychoanalysis)

6. Gai Savoir Sera: The Science of Love and the Insolence of Chance
Joan Copjec

7. Alain Badiou: Philosophical Outlaw
Juliet Flower MacCannell

8. Feminine Love and the Pauline Universal
Tracy McNulty

PART IV. POLITICS AND ETHICS

9. On the Ethics of Alain Badiou
Simon Critchley

10. Can Change Be Thought?: A Dialogue with Alain Badiou
Bruno Bosteels

Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Ethique et morale
• Literary theory
• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 11 mai 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780791483077
• Langue: English

Extrait

A L A I N B A D I O USUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory
Rodolphe Gasché, editorA L A I N B A D I O U
P h i l o s o p h y a n d I t s C o n d i t i o n s
Edited by
Gabriel Riera
State University of New York PressPublished by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2005 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic,
magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, address State University of New York Press,
90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207
Production by Judith Block
Marketing by Susan Petrie
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Alain Badiou : philosophy and its conditions / edited by Gabriel Riera.
p. cm — (SUNY series, Intersections : Philosophy and Critical Theory)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-6503-9 (hardcover / alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-6504-7 (pbk. : alk.
paper)
1. Badiou, Alain. I. Riera, Gabriel. II. Series: Intersections (Albany, N.Y.)
B2430.B274A63 2005
194—dc22
2004018837
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1C o n t e n t s
Acknowledgments vii
Abbreviations ix
Introduction. Alain Badiou: The Event of Thinking 1
Gabriel Riera
PART ONE. MATHEMATICS ONTOLOGY 21
1. On Alain Badiou’s Treatment of Category Theory
in View of a Transitory Ontology 23
Norman Madarasz
2. The Ontological Dispute: Badiou, Heidegger, and Deleuze 45
Miguel de Beistegui
PART TWO. THE POEM 59
3. For an “Ethics of Mystery”: Philosophy and the Poem 61
Gabriel Riera
4. Unbreakable B’s: From Beckett and Badiou to the
Bitter End of Affirmative Ethics 87
Jean-Michel Rabaté
5. The Mallarmé of Alain Badiou 109
Pierre Macherey
PART THREE. LOVE (Philosophy and Psychoanalysis) 117
6. Gai Savoir Sera: The Science of Love and the Insolence of Chance 119
Joan Copjec
7. Alain Badiou: Philosophical Outlaw 137
Juliet Flower MacCannell
vvi CONTENTS
8. Feminine Love and the Pauline Universal 185
Tracy McNulty
PART FOUR. POLITICS AND ETHICS 213
9. On the Ethics of Alain Badiou 215
Simon Critchley
10. Can Change Be Thought?: A Dialogue with Alain Badiou 237
Bruno Bosteels
Bibliography 263
Contributors 269
Index 273A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
I wish to thank Rodolphe Gasché, the editor of the SUNY series
Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory, who was enthusiastic about the project
from the start, as well as James Peltz, my editor at SUNY, who steered the book
to completion. I am also grateful to Juliet Flower MacCannell and Joan Copjec
for their enthusiasm, support, and extraordinary intellectual range. Charles
Ramond of the Université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3 and Patrice
Vermeren from L’Harmattan generously authorized the translation of Pierre
Macherey’s chapter, which was originally published in Alain Badiou, Penser le
Multiple. I would also like to thank Tracy McNulty and the Department of
Romance Languages at Cornell University, which provided a venue for
presenting part of my work on Badiou. Finally, thanks to Marilyn Gaddis Rose and Ray
Brassier for their help with various translations.
viiA b b r e v i a t i o n s
AMP Abrégé de métapolitique (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1998).
AP “L’Âge de Poètes,” in La Politique des poètes: Pourquoi des poètes en
temps de détresse? ed. Jacques Rancière (Paris: Bibliothéque du
Collége International de Philosophie, Rue Descartes, 1992).
B Beckett: L’increvable désir (Paris: Hachette, 1995).
BE Being and Event, in Umbr(a) 1 (1996): 13–53.
C Conditions (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1992).
CP Catégories pour philosophes (Unpublished, 1992).
CTOT Court traité d’ontologie transitoire (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1998).
D Deleuze: “La clameur de l’être” (Paris: Hachette, 1997).
E L’Éthique: Essai sur la conscience du Mal (Paris: Hatier, 1983).
Translated by Peter Hallward as Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of
Evil (London: Verso, 2001).
EE L’être et l’événement (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1998).
L&P “Logic and Philosophy” (lecture, University of California–Irvine,
April 2002, handout).
MPh Manifesto for Philosophy, trans. Norman Madarasz (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1999).
MPP Manifeste pour la philosophie (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1989).
NN Le nombre et les nombres (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1990).
ixx ABBREVIATIONS
ODT “One Divides into Two,” trans. Alberto Toscano, in Lacanian Ink
21 (2003): 245–53.
P&P “Politics and Philosophy: An Interview with Alain Badiou,”
Angelaki 3, no. 3 (1998).
PI “Poèsie au point de l’ innomable,” Po&sie 64 (1994).
PMI Petit Manuel d’inesthétique (Paris: Seuil, 1988).
PPP Peut-on penser la politique? (Paris: Seuil, 1982).
Psy & Ph “Psycho-analysis and Philosophy” (lecture, University of
California–Irvine, April 2002, handout).
QP “Qu’est-ce qu’un poème et qu’en pense la philosophie?” in Petit
Manuel d’inesthétique (Paris, Seuil, 1998).
QPP “Que pense le poème?” in L’art est-il une connaissance? (Paris:
Le Monde Editions, 1993).
QQA “Qu’est-ce que l’amour?” in Conditions (Paris: Seuil, 1992).
RPP “Le Recours philosophique au poème,” in Conditions (Paris: Seuil,
1992).
SD La Scène du Deux, in De l’Amour, sous la direction de l’École de la
Cause Freudienne (Paris: Champs Flammarion, 1999).
SP Saint Paul: La Fondation de l’universalisme (Paris: PUF, 1997).
TS Théorie du sujet (Paris: Seuil, 1982).
WL “What Is Love?” trans. Justin Clemens, in Umbr(a) 1 (1996).
WTTC “What Do You Think of the Twentieth Century?” (lecture,
University of California–Irvine, April 2002, handout).I n t r o d u c t i o n
Alain Badiou: The Event of Thinking
Gabriel Riera
There is little doubt that Alain Badiou is one of the most challenging and
controversial contemporary philosophical figures. Published over the course of three
decades, his numerous and extensive texts include several books on ontology,
mathematics, aesthetics, literature, politics, ethics, and sexual difference. Yet
Badiou is a thinker whose exact place in the intellectual landscape of our time is
difficult to determine. He approaches philosophy with the recalcitrant rigor of a
mathematician and the economy of means of a modern poet, but also with the
passion of a militant of truth. Knotting together philosophical and mathematical
discourses, his writing renews their traditional alliance and asks fundamental
questions of each, while also dramatizing the incommensurability that sets the
two discourses apart. In his writing, then, Badiou transforms the terms in which
it is henceforth possible to think about the question of philosophy, of its
possibility and future, and also to think, beyond the double constraint of the One and of
Totality, about the immanent multiplicity in which we are immersed.
Badiou’s contributions bring a new perspective to some of the most pressing
issues currently being debated in philosophy and the social sciences. Among them
are the conditions of political intervention, the possibility of philosophy, the
ethics of sexual difference, and the formulation of a subject who is at the same
time singular and universal and an ensuing critique of cultural relativism. A
serious assessment of Badiou’s philosophy forces us to reevaluate these topics, as well
as to reexamine some of the tenets of contemporary philosophy.
Alain Badiou (b. 1937) belongs to the generation of philosophers who entered
the École Normale at the end of 1950s. Like Etienne Balibar, Pierre Macherey, and
Jacques Rancière, he was attracted to Marxism, as well as to psychoanalysis, logic, the
history of science, and structuralism. He is professor of philosophy at the University
of Paris VIII, editor of the prestigious collection “L’Ordre Philosophique” at Les
Éditions du Seuil, and program director at the College International de Philosophie.
12 GABRIEL RIERA
Badiou was inf luenced by Jean-Paul Sartre early in his career, but in the 1960s was
drawn to the work of Luis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, George Canguilhem, and Jean
Hyppolite. As a student at the École Normale, Badiou attended Jacques Lacan’s
seminars and took part in the activities of the Epistemological Circle responsible for the
publication of Cahiers pour l’Analyse. The research conducted by the Epistemological
Circle incorporated developments in logic, mathematics, topology, and linguistics.
The names Jean Cavaillés and Albert Lautmann are also important points of
reference in Badiou’s formation since they represent an important tradition of
mathematical philosophy in France.
It is not by accident, therefore, that Badiou’s work crosses a wide range of
disciplines, including ontology, mathematics, topology, modern poetry, theater, film,
psychoanalysis, and politics. His is a systematic philosophy that can be situated in
the rational tradition inaugurated by Descartes and that responds to Plato’s
decision of “interrupting the poem,” that is, of founding philosophy in mathematical
conceptuality and reestablishing a free circulation between the nonphilosophical
conditions: science, poetry, politics, and love. However, Badiou pushes this
tradition to its limits, since he aims to link what exceeds the means of rational
presentation, the event, to what is singular par excellence, the subject, and therefore to
articulate the generic procedures through which universal truths are produced.
Badiou’s philosophy is difficult to classify among the currents that have
dominated the second half of the twentieth century. In spite of his conceptual
innovations and its unique style of presentation, as well as its attunement to the
signs of the time in the fields of art, mathematics, politics, and psychoanalysis
(love), there is something untimely in Badiou’s philosophy: his systematic drive.
The grafting of post-Marxist (Althusserian