A Taste of Alain Badiou

Wikipedia has a valuable short bio of Alain Badiou, and links to a great many resources.

Videos of Badiou

• (French) “Autour des Logiques des Mondes” at The American University of Paris
• Art as a Place for Politics (Video – Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, 11/16, 2006)
• Truth Procedure in Politics (Video – Abreu Gallery, New York, 11/18, 2006)
• Truth Procedure in Art (Video – Tilton Gallery, New York, 11/17, 2006)
• Jacques Lacan’s Seminar On Anxiety (Video – The Drawing Center, New York, 03/07, 2006)

Dozens of videos of Badiou lectures are available on youtube.

Websites devoted to Badiou

• Alain Badiou at Lacan Dot Com
• Alain Badiou Bibliography
• Collège International de Philosophie
• Badiou at the European Graduate School
• Cosmos and History

Articles by Badiou

In English

• The Contemporary Figure of the Soldier in Politics and Poetry, UCLA
• Destruction, Negation, Subtraction Art Center College of Design – Pasadena
• The Uses of the Word “Jew”
• The Adventure of French Philosophy
• Behind the Scarfed Law, There is Fear (On the French headscarf ban)
• Bodies, Languages Truths
• The Cultural Revolution: The Last Revolution? (PDF)
• Democratic Materialism and the Materialist Dialectic
• The Desire for Philosophy and the Contemporary World
• Destruction, Negation, Subtraction – on Pier Paolo Pasolini
• Eight Theses on the Universal
• An Essential Philosophical Thesis: “It Is Right to Rebel against the Reactionaries” (PDF)
• The Event in Deleuze (PDF)
• Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art
• The Formulas of L’Etourdit
• The Factory as Event Site
• Further Selections from Théorie du sujet on the Cultural Revolution (PDF)
• Highly Speculative Reasoning on the Concept of Democracy (from Metapolitics)
• Lacan and the Pre-Socratics
• A Musical Variant of the Metaphysics of the Subject (PDF)
• Number and Numbers
• On the European Constitution
• On the Truth-Process
• One Divides into Two (On Lenin)
• Philosophical Considerations of the Very Singular Custom of Voting
• Philosophy as Creative Repetition
• Philosophy and Politics
• The Political as a Truth Procedure (from Metapolitics)
• Politics: a Non-expressive Dialectics (PDF)
• The Scene of Two (English translation from De l’amour)
• Selections from Théorie du sujet on the Cultural Revolution (PDF)
• The Subject of Art (Deitch Projects, New York, April 1, 2005)
• The Triumphant Restoration (PDF)
• What Happens (On Beckett; PDF)
• What is to be Thought? What is to be Done? (On the 2002 French elections; written by Badiou, Sylvain Lazarus and Natasha Michel)
• A Musical Variant of the Metaphysics of the Subject
• The Event in Deleuze
• What is a Philosophical Institution?
• ‘What is the Left?’ An excerpt from ‘The Paris Commune: A Political Declaration’
• What is Love? (PDF)
• The Communist Hypothesis

In French

• L’aveu du philosophe
• Considérations philosophiques sur des événements récents (On the September 11, 2001 attacks; PDF)
• De la demande de faire des lois et de la façon d’y répondre

• De la dialectique négative dans sa connexion à un certain bilan de Wagner (part one; part two) (Two lectures on Theodor Adorno and Richard Wagner)
• De l’idéologie (PDF)
• L’Homme aux Rats (On the 2007 French presidential election)
• Huit thèses sur l’universel
• L’humiliation ordinaire (On the 2005 civil unrest in France; translation)
• Notes sur Le Dernier des hommes (On the movie The Last Laugh by Murnau)
• Panorama de la philosophie française contemporaine
• La subversion infinitésimale (PDF)
• Théorie de la contradiction (PDF)
• Un, multiple, multiplicité(s) (On Gilles Deleuze)

In other languages

• (Spanish) en “Grupo Acontecimiento”
• (Spanish) en “antroposmoderno”
• (Spanish) en “Turbulencias”
• (Spanish) La Etica (Translation of Badiou’s book on ethics)
• (Spanish) Nietzsche, filosofía y antifilosofía (On Friedrich Nietzsche)
• (Italian) Il cinema come falso movimento
• (Italian) Si può parlare di un film?

Interviews

• On Evil (Badiou interviewed by Christoph Cox and Molly Whalen)
• Matters of Appearance: An Interview with Alain Badiou (Badiou interviewed by Lauren Sedofsky)
• AGR interviews Professor Alain Badiou (Badiou interviewed by Shane Perlowin)

• Being by Numbers (part one; part two; part three; part four; part five; Badiou interviewed by Lauren Sedofsky)
• Beyond Formalisation (Badiou interviewed by Peter Hallward and Bruno Bosteels; questions in English, answers in French)
• A Conversation with Alain Badiou (Badiou interviewed by Mario Goldenberg)

• (Spanish) “Las democracias están en guerra contra los pobres” (Badiou interviewed by Héctor Pavón; PDF)

• (Spanish) Entrevista a Alain Badiou (Badiou interviewed by Julia Goldenberg)

• (French) L’être, l’événement, la militance (Badiou interviewed by Nicole-Édith Thévenin)

• (Spanish) “Las ideas existen y tienen poder” (Badiou interviewed by Pedro B. Rey)

• (French) “L’intellectuel de gauche va disparaître, tant mieux” (Badiou interviewed by Nicolas Weill)
• “Universal Truths & the Question of Religion” (Badiou interviewed by Adam S. Miller)
• Carceraglio: Interview (Badiou interviewed by Diana George and Nic Veroli)

• (French) “Alain Badiou: Le XXIe siècle n’a pas commencé” (Badiou interviewed by Elie During)
• New Horizons in Mathematics as Philosophical Condition: an Interview with Alain Badiou (Badiou interviewed by Tzuchien Tho; PDF)
• Interview with Alain Badiou from InDigest Magazine (Interviewed by Genoa Mungin)

Political movements & organisations influenced by Badiou’s works

• Abahlali baseMjondolo
• Congolese Rally for Democracy
• L’Organisation politique
• Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign

Commentry and Interpretation

Arguably, the most important commentators on Badiou in English are considered to be

• Peter Hallward, see for instance his Badiou: A Subject to Truth (2003) and Think Again: Alain Badiou & the Future of Philosophy (2004) and
• Bruno Bosteels, see his Badiou and Politics, forthcoming Duke UP, and Badiou o el recomienzo del materialismo dialectico, Palinodia, 2007.

Other commentary:

• Fractal Ontology (English) featuring original translations of Alain Badiou’s work by Taylor Adkins and Joseph Weissman
• On Badiou and Logiques des mondes by Slavoj Zizek

Works

[edit] Philosophy

• Le concept de modèle (1969 , 2007)
• Théorie du sujet (1982)
• Peut-on penser la politique? (1985)
• L’Être et l’Événement (1988)
• Manifeste pour la philosophie (1989)
• Le nombre et les nombres (1990)
• Conditions (1992)
• L’Éthique (1993, 2005)
• Deleuze (1997)
• Saint Paul. La fondation de l’universalisme (1997, 2002)
• Abrégé de métapolitique (1998)
• Court traité d’ontologie provisoire (1998)
• Petit manuel d’inesthétique (1998)
• D’un désastre obscur (1998)
• Le siècle (2005)
• Logiques des mondes. L’être et l’événement, 2. (2006)

[edit] Critical essays

• Rhapsodie pour le théâtre (1990)
• Beckett, l’increvable désir (1995)
• Le Siècle (2005)

[edit] Literature and drama

• Almagestes (1964)
• Portulans (1967)
• L’Écharpe rouge (1979)
• Ahmed le subtil (1994)
• Ahmed Philosophe, followed by Ahmed se fâche (1995)
• Les Citrouilles, a comedy (1996)
• Calme bloc ici-bas (1997)

[edit] Political essays

• Théorie de la contradiction (1975)
• De l’idéologie, with F. Balmès (1976)
• Le Noyau rationnel de la dialectique hégelienne, with L. Mossot and J. Bellassen (1977)
• Circonstances 1 (2003)
• Circonstances 2 (2004)
• Circonstances 3 (2005)
• Circonstances 4: De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom ? (2007)