In this essay, I explore Alain Badiou’s longstanding project of theorizing political situations and political transformation through the analysis of forms and formalisms. This amounts, I argue, to a politics of form that draws on the thought of Sartre, Althusser, and Lacan, but offers new alternatives for political thought and action today. In particular, Badiou’s rigorous consideration of forms, which draws on mathematics, model theory, set theory, and category theory, allows him to theorize political change in a way that avoids (...) the errors of existing critical approaches. Central to this consideration are Badiou’s theory of what he calls the event, which summons itself into existence by its own naming of itself or auto‐nomination, and his recent theory of the plurality of worlds and their possible transformation in Logics of Worlds. I also discuss Badiou’s recent treatment of the 20th century project of formalization in The Century, arguing that Badiou’s analysis here offers useful terms for the political thought of the present situation. (shrink)

*This article attempts a Marxist critique of Alain Badiou’s positions. The importance of Badiou’s ontology as an affirmation of the possibility of radical-historical novelty is stressed, but also its limits. These limits have to do with Badiou’s abandonment of a dialectical-relational conception of social reality, his refusal of any causal connection between social reality, political decision and event, and the absence of a theory of ideology and hegemony in his work. Consequently, Badiou’s notion of a ‘subtractive’ politics cannot be considered (...) an answer to the open questions of communist strategy, despite his endorsement of the ‘communist hypothesis’. (shrink)

Following the publication of his magnum opus L’être et l’événement (Being and Event) in 1988, Alain Badiou has been acclaimed as one of France’s greatest living philosophers. Since then, he has released a dozen books, including Manifesto for Philosophy, Conditions, Metapolitics and Logiques des mondes (Logics of Worlds), many of which are now available in English translation. Badiou writes on an extraordinary array of topics, and his work has already had an impact upon studies in the history of philosophy, the (...) history and philosophy of science, political philosophy, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and ontology. This volume takes up the challenge of explicating, extending and, in many places, criticising Badiou’s stunningly original theses. Above all, the essays collected here put Badiou’s concepts to the test in a confrontation with the four great headings that he himself has identified as essential to our humanity: science, love, art and politics. Many of the contributors have already been recognised as outstanding translators of and commentators on Badiou’s work; they appear here with fresh voices also destined to make a mark. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is one of Alain Badiou’s principle philosophical enemies. Kant’s critical philosophy is anathema to Badiou not only because of the latter’s openly aired hatred of the motif of finitude so omnipresent in post-Kantian European intellectual traditions—Badiou blames Kant for inventing this motif—but also because of its idealism. For Badiou-the-materialist, as for any serious philosophical materialist writing in Kant’s wake, transcendental idealism must be dismantled and overcome. In his most recent works, Badiou attempts to invent a non-Kantian notion of (...) the transcendental, a notion compatible with the basic tenets of materialism. However, from 1988’s Being and Event up through the present, Badiou’s oeuvre contains indications that he hasn’t managed fully to purge the traces of Kantian transcendental idealism that arguably continue to haunt his system—with these traces clustering around a concept Badiou christens “counting-for-one”. The result is that, in the end, Kant’s shadow still falls over Badiouian philosophy—this is despite Badiou’s admirable, sophisticated, and instructive attempts to step out from under it—thus calling into question this philosophy’s self-proclaimed status as materialist through and through. (shrink)

Alain Badiou’s theoretical work maintains an ambiguous relation to Marx’s critique of political economy. In seemingly refusing the Marxian analytical strategy of displacement and referral across the fields of politics and economy, Badiou is frequently seen to be lacking a rigorous theoretical grasp of capitalism itself. In turn, this is often seen as a consequence of his understanding of political subjectivity. But the origins of this ‘lack’ of analysis of the social relation called ‘capital’ in his work can also be (...) investigated by means of a detour into the economic writings of theUnion des communistes de France marxiste-léniniste, the political organisation in which Badiou played a leading rôle throughout the 1970s in particular. By excavating this theoretical work of the 1970s, we can identify more precisely the historical and political reasons behind Badiou’s ambiguous relation to Marx and specifically to Marx’s systematic grasp of the logic of capital. This excavation will consequently lead us to a reflection on the limits and openings in Badiou’s thought for the Marxian critique of political economy. (shrink)