I here explore the educational potential of cinema and TV-series through the eyes of the French philosopher Alain Badiou. To illustrate, I read the Norwegian web-based TV-series Skam, which reached out to millions of Nordic teens by a broad distribution, easy access and speaking a language young people could relate to. The series portrays the many faces and ambiguities of shame and shaming embedded in Nordic youth culture. In bringing the question of the pedagogy of cinema and TV-series to the (...) forefront, I here read Skam on three analytical levels. First, to explore the TV-series capability to captivate the viewers through a doubling of the real. Second, to examine Badiou’s idea of cinema as an ontological art, revolving around the question of the relationship between being and appearing. Third, I read Skam analytically, to consider Badiou’s claim that cinema is a democratic emblem. In sum, what may be the series’ potential for shaping the viewers’ ethical–political awareness? (shrink)

Badiou's philosophy of the ‘event’ has itself become an event of sorts for contemporary social and political theory. It has broken radically with a set of propositions concerning the operation of power, the status of knowledge, and the possibility of action that were for some time considered nearly unquestionable, in many ways defining what Badiou might call ‘the state of the situation’. After briefly outlining the manner in which Badiou's reinvigoration of the concept of ‘truth’ constitutes a serious challenge for (...) the politics of difference and the ethics of alterity, this paper explores the significance for educational philosophy of what, borrowing from Jacques Rancière, Badiou calls the ‘axiom of equality’, or the notion that, in democratic politics, ‘equality must be postulated not willed’. I suggest that this axiom is best understood when read in relation to Rancière's The Ignorant Schoolmaster, and thus explore an intrinsic link between Badiou's more obscure philosophical claims and political assertions on the one hand, and the question of education on the other. I further propose that the limitations of Badiou's criticism of Rancière's work, which suggests that he stops short of locating an effective political subject who might oppose the parliamentary state, are revealed most explicitly when we reassess Rancière's approach to education in The Ignorant Schoolmaster, and in his more recent work on political aesthetics. Ultimately, however, I conclude that a truly democratic approach to education will have to learn from both Badiou and Rancière, and take seriously the ‘axiom of equality’. (shrink)

In this thesis I outline a view of primary legislation from a systems perspective. I suggest that systems theory and, in particular, autopoietic theory, as modified by field theory, is a mechanism for understanding how society operates. The description of primary legislation that I outline differs markedly from any conventional definition in that I argue that primary legislation is not, and indeed cannot be, either a law or any of the euphemisms that are usually accorded to an enactment by a (...) parliament. I cite two reasons for such a conclusion. The primary reason for my conclusion is that I see primary legislation as being an output of a particular subsystem of society, while the law is the output of another subsystem of society. I argue that these outputs are the discrete products of separate subsystems of society. I argue that primary legislation should be viewed as a trinity. The first state of this trinity is that, upon enactment, primary legislation is a brute fact in that it is but a thing and the only property of this thing is that of being a text. The second state of this trinity is that following the act of enactment, the thing enacted will be reproduced and this reproduction is a separate thing that will sit in some repository until used. The third state of this trinity is that, upon use, this thing that is primary legislation will be transformed into an object and the user will attribute such functions and attributes to that object as are appropriate to the context within which the object is used. The thing has therefore become an object and an institutional fact. The second reason for my conclusion that primary legislation is not a law relates to the fact that the thing that is primary legislation is a text and the only function of a text is that it is available to be read. That is to say, of itself, a text is incapable of doing anything: it is the reader who defines the status of the text and attributes functions and attributes. Upon use, primary legislation thus becomes a censored input for future action and one of these actions may be some statement by a court of law. I assert that the view of primary legislation that has been accepted within the body politic is the product of the discourse of a particular subsystem of society that I have designated 'the legal practice', and I outline why and how this has occurred. Outlining a view about primary legislation also necessitates outlining a view as to the nature of the law. I assert that the law is a myth and I see this myth as a product of the discourse of the legal practice. I have asserted that although it is the judges that state the law, such statements flow from the discourse of those who practise the law. (shrink)

This special issue responds to the current discourse on cinema and education from a philosophical point of view. Considering the fact that young people worldwide are watching films and series via their smartphones or personal computers, we here explore the educative aspects of this popular activity. Does this wide-ranging habit mis-educate the next generation? Or does cinema carry a potential for ethical-political education, parallel to the ancient Greek tragedies and the modernist Bildungsroman? The authors of this special issue deliberate this (...) question by exploring the intersection between cinema and philosophy and the potential powers of cinematic education. (shrink)

The narrative of Plato’s cave story is loaded with ‘some of the most suggestive opposites in the repertoire, namely the contrasts between down and up, darkness and light, chains and freedom’ (Hrach...

ABSTRACT The metaphor of ‘viral modernity’ denotes an era characterized by communal experiences of how viruses, be they in the shape of physical, virtual or symbolic forms, permeate and shape social and cultural life. To think educative justice in viral modernity thus require a radical move beyond the surfaces of conventional paradigms in order to reach at a deep-seated understanding of the phenomena of education and justice itself. Motivated by this ambition, I here present a Badiouan reading of educative justice (...) in relation to the aims and mission of philosophy of education. I start by briefly mapping out current educational philosophical paradigms and their ways of treating the issue of justice. Next, I contrast these orthodoxies to a Badiouan model. My overall ambition is to promote a philosophy of education that avoids philosophical doctrines, old and new, while simultaneously carrying a potential for unveiling the phenomenon of justice as educative truths-in-worlds. (shrink)

Taking its points of departure from Alain Badiou’s readings of Paul Celan, this paper explores Badiou’s philosophical departure from Heidegger and its consequences for the relationship between philosophy and poetry. For Badiou, Celan both takes part in and heralds the closure of a sequence in which, guided by “the question of Being,” poetry constructs “the space of thinking which defines philosophy.” More, in ending this sequence, Celan “completes Heidegger.” The theoretical knot comprised by Badiou, Heidegger and Celan invites us to (...) explore the relationship between poetic language, thought and Being. This paper asserts the centrality of a radical nothingness to any poetic “thought of Being,” and approaches this ontologically efficacious “nothing” via the privilege afforded to “silence” in both Celan’s poetry and Badiou’s imperatives for “the modern poem.” It does this in order to sharpen our understanding of both Badiou’s movement away from Heidegger, and the privileged role Celan plays in this departure. Following an opening discussion concerning the role of silence in Badiou and Celan, this paper then clarifies the relationship between poetic language, silence and Being in Heidegger and Badiou. (shrink)

The essay distils from Badiou's writing a pedagogy based on his theories of knowledge and truth, as brought to bear on poetry and the arts. By following Badiou's implicit ontology of learning, which presupposes a dynamic and passionate engagement with a concrete situation, the essay argues that Badiou's view of modernity, in particular, contributes greatly to the educational topic, and offers an alternative teaching paradigm to the outmoded schools of criticism of the 20 th century. It also argues that the (...) concept of universalism in education, as against identitarian particularism, is further evinced from a discussion of Badiou's study of St. Paul. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between materialism, dialectics, and theology in Alain Badiou's work. The first three sections of the article focus on Badiou's reading of Hegelian dialectics in his 1982 work, Theory of the Subject. The first section accounts for Badiou's splitting of Hegel into an idealist and materialist dialectic, and presents an exposition of the latter. The second section outlines Badiou's critical analysis of the theological model implicit in Hegel's dialectics. The third section investigates the core of this (...) criticism through a discussion of Badiou's reading of the “negation of the negation.” The remaining four sections examine the anti-dialectical interpretation of the Christ-event that Badiou presents in his book Saint Paul. Here the article illustrates how Badiou's insistence on separating the death of Christ from the resurrection is linked to his rejection of the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation, and how this drives Badiou towards idealism. (shrink)

The Heideggerian rupture in the history of philosophy in the name of a phenomenological and poetic ontology has provided an opening which many of the key figures in twentieth century continental thought have exploited. However, this opening was marked by Heidegger himself as an ambiguous one, insofar as metaphysics was perhaps integrally ‘onto-theology,’ that is, ultimately continuous with the world-historical capture of the thought of being. This piece argues that the philosophy of Alain Badiou, which departs from the recognition that (...) Heidegger is the ‘last universally recognised philosopher’, provides the means for a radical reconsideration of the philosophy-theology relationship in its specifically Heideggerian form, involving as it does further questions of science and technology, the status of the poem, and the nature of ontological thought as such. We argue that, through the deployment of mathematics as ontology, the Gordian knot of onto-theology and its legion of consequences can be cut, and a new assemblage of many of the key Heideggerian motifs can be put into play: the poem, history, and philosophy itself. (shrink)

This paper considers the questions that Badiou's theory poses to the culture of economic managerialism within education. His argument that radical change is possible, for people and the situations they inhabit, provides a stark challenge to the stifling nature of much current educational debate. In Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, Badiou describes the current universalism of capitalism, monetary homogeneity and the rule of the count. Badiou argues that the politics of identity are all too easily subsumed by the prerogatives (...) of the marketplace and unable to present, therefore, a critique of the status quo. These processes are, he argues, without the potential for truth. What are the implications of Badiou's claim that education is the arranging of ‘the forms of knowledge in such a way that truth may come to pierce a hole in them’ (Badiou, 2005, p. 9)? I will argue that Badiou's theory opens up space for a kind of thinking about education that resists its colonisation by the cultures of management and marketisation and leads educationalists to consider the emancipatory potential of education in a refreshing new light. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I here read the Iranian film Hit the Road through the eyes of the French philosopher Alain Badiou. In doing so, I hope to illuminate the triadic link between cinema, philosophy and paideia (ethical-political education). To explore, I adopt a philosophical methodology with the double ambition to reveal the latent pedagogies of the film and to acquire insights on the distinctiveness of a Badiouan conception of cinema. My questions are to what degree and in what ways cinematic experience can (...) be said to promote ethical-political formation. I start by portraying Badiou’s cinematic philosophy. Next, I expose how Hit the Road confronts us with a hidden real. Third, I close the paper by considering Badiou’s idea of cinema as an influential form of ethical-political education. (shrink)

Though concerned with knowledge, this article begins with unknown political events that are ignored by the culture and educational practices of the societies in whose name the events took place. The questions that these events raise indicate a relation of epistemology with ethics and education that complicates some theoretical and managerial attitudes to knowledge. This relation, along with Richard Smith’s notion of knowingness, will frame an exploration of virtue-epistemologies that contests epistemic exaggerations of the knower as accomplished virtuous character. The (...) article emphasizes the need for a normative epistemology that critically invigorates the educational aim of transmitting knowledge and submits it to ethico-political considerations. (shrink)

This essay investigates thought as an event of “multiplicity.” French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou pose this as a concept of change (political and otherwise). Both philosophers propose that multiplicity means thinking happens as an event by engaging a theoretical impasse, or “un-thought.” Un-thought opens up and changes ideas into complex varieties or multiplicities. This dynamic is examined through the example of May ‘68, an actual event that gives context to how multiplicity expresses “radical change.” The aim of this (...) article is to see how both thinkers’ theories overlap. For Badiou, multiplicities are “truths” that happen whilst making a decision, engaging a notion of “point.” For Deleuze, multiplicities are concepts that happen materially in life as metaphysical forces, or “lines.” Multiplicity is critically approached as a complex variety of ideas that change in the forms of art, politics, and science. (shrink)

This essay explores Badiou's writings on art and inaesthetics. It reviews his notion of the artistic event, comments on his 15 theses on contemporary art and examines his notion of inaesthetics. What follows is then applied to art and its education in terms of his search for a ‘third position’ that would challenge the extremes of capitalist design innovation and Romantic idealism that in his summation define the contemporary landscape.

This essay will strive to provide the reader with various entry points into the project of François Laruelle's non-standard philosophy and its relation to non-aesthetics, via its relation to philosophy as rigorous fiction. It is a new genre, what Laruelle also calls a philo-fiction. Via Laruelle's preoccupation with photography as a new kind of thought, we will follow his trajectory of applying non-philosophy to photography. From his concept of non-photography and continued in Photo-Fiction, a Non-Standard Aesthetics, Laruelle's practice of striving (...) to create a genre of thinking that would be akin to science fiction and use philosophy as material shows itself in the form of experimental, theoretical applications of his philo-fiction to the photo. In their performative thrust, one can begin to see the components or what he calls aspects of philosophy and quantum physics, including the use of superposition and the imaginary number, as well as conceptual personae and generic humanity. Laruelle's work has at its base a highly poetic, fictional strain that in striving to superpose philosophy and art (fiction) also has at its core a place for reducing the violence of decision and actions attempting to work within a space of radical immanence and radical passivity. A performation-withoutperformance. Laruelle will call the photo a ?weak insurrection.? This particle of Laruelle strives merely for such a poetic attempt. (shrink)

This paper approaches Badiou’s essay, ‘Dance as a Metaphor for Thought,’ on its own terms, considering its stated approach and central claims. This is in order to avoid the indignant tone of some responses from the field that desire other approaches to philosophy’s engagement with dance. Badiou’s project in ‘Dance as a Metaphor for Thought’ is antithetical to my own current, advocatory research, thus offering an adversary of sorts. If it is the case that dance is ‘instrumental’ for the art-philosophy (...) schema that Badiou is formulating, that is, being ‘incorporated’ into the strategies of a philosophy of art, what’s in it for dance? Can Badiou’s project be repurposed for our own disciplinary concerns? For instance, if his conception of dance is seen as lacking from a disciplinary perspective, then what is the idea of dance that positions his as ‘wrong’? (shrink)

This PhD thesis examines the concept of poiesis, that is ‘calling into existence that which was not there before’, in the context of obstruction in studio practice. It poses the question ‘Is there a methodology that engages with obstruction which in turn calls new work’? In this thesis, the concept of poiesis emerging from the late Dr. Murray Cox’s ‘Aeolian Mode’, is analyzed alongside a concept of praxis, (a philosophical companion to poiesis), familiar to artistic practice. This thesis describes the (...) orientation of the original idea, The Aeolian Mode, clinically developed by Dr. Murray Cox in Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital. This PhD seeks to identify if there are similar ‘tenets of approach’ held within the methodology of ‘The Aeolian Mode’, that would be useful or are identifiable in artistic studio practice. This thesis draws on the work of the philosopher, Professor Richard Kearney, specifically Kearney’s ideas on the necessity of ‘the other’ for ‘radical possibility’ to occur. It maps a context of both Freudian and Jungian interpretations of art practice, identifying how these ideas have shaped the way art is seen today. Furthermore, it challenges the Freudian idea of ‘pathography’ and favours a Jungian approach of ‘individuation’ in the understanding of creative processes. It develops a ‘methodology of the conversation’, interviewing students, established artists, tutors about their approaches to obstruction/poiesis in art practice. Additionally, it examines my own obstruction to painting and identifies the methodology that released me from this obstruction. Conducting these interviews on art practice has enabled me to confirm my initial concerns about Freudian ‘pathography’ whilst validating the possibility of the Jungian concept of ‘individuation’ being of use to art practice. Finally, this PhD discusses the implications for further study and research, which have emerged during the ‘methodology of the conversation’ and the task of dissolving my obstruction to painting. (shrink)