For the Get to Know Series, we’ve gathered together our collection of an author’s books and information about them, their work, and background. Combined with other materials such as reviews, interviews, discussions, and more, we hope it will become a resource to find out more about their life and works, and place their books in context.
This month, we’ve gathered together works by, and about, Alain Badiou, ahead of his latest book with Stanford University Press, Badiou on Badiou, forthcoming in May 2022.
Alain Badiou (born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École normale supérieure(ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Jean-François Lyotard.
Badiou by Badiou
“This book captures the latest developments in Alain Badiou’s thought, while providing an excellent introduction for new readers. Badiou by Badiou, his most legible work, is a riveting tour of the domains of art, love, politics, and science.” – Héctor Hoyos, author of Things with a History
Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism
“Badiou introduces the reader to the notion that philosophy stands somewhere beyond the commonplace . . . [and] illustrates the way in which during [St. Paul’s] time Paul decided that for God particularities such as nationality or sex are unimportant and therefore everybody is (compared to God) just a human being.” – Peter Takac, Human Affairs: Postdisciplinary Humanities & Social Sciences
Handbook of Inaesthetics
A sustained debate with contemporary philosophical uses of the poem, bold articulations of the specificity and prospects of theater, cinema, and dance, along with subtle and provocative readings of Fernando Pessoa, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Samuel Beckett.
Can Politics Be Thought?
“Distinguished by his unique combination of philosophical stringency and political engagement, Alain Badiou is not afraid to question the very fundamentals of our liberal-democratic consensus.” — Slavoj Žižek
Deleuze: The Clamour of Being
“Small this book may be, but it will have the effect of a bomb. Badiou challenges at the outset the received perception of Deleuze. Far from being some avatar of May 1968, anarchist in nature, and dedicated to the glorification of all that flows, especially the primal sanctity of desire, Deleuze, according to Badiou, is an aristocrat of thought, very much dedicated to rehabilitating the metaphysical project in our day. Badiou proposes a 180° turn in the interpretation of Deleuze’s work, and all those who have taken Deleuze to be the apostle of desire, flux, and animal anarchy will have apoplexy reading this book.” Wlad Godzich, University of Geneva
Books about Badiou
Badiou and Politics
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.
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.
Universal Emancipation: Race Beyond Badiou
Is inattention to questions of race more than just incidental to Alain Badiou’s philosophical system? Universal Emancipation reveals a crucial weakness in the approach to (in)difference in political life of this increasingly influential French thinker. With white nationalist movements on the rise, the tensions between commitments to universal principles and attention to difference and identity are even more pressing. Paquette juxtaposes Badiou’s use of universality as indifference to difference with Sylvia Wynter’s pluri-conceptual theory of emancipation, emphasizing solidarity over indifference. Paquette then develops her view of a pluri-conceptual theory of emancipation, wherein particular identities, such as race, need not be subtracted from a theory of emancipation.
Badiou: A Subject to Truth
Badiou is the first comprehensive introduction to Alain Badiou’s thought to appear in any language; it provides a highly readable discussion of each of the basic features of his ontology. Peter Hallward demonstrates in detail and in depth why Badiou’s ongoing philosophical project should be recognized as the most resourceful and inspiring of his generation.