Kurrents

http://kurrents.org/

Thanks to Johannes Björk for the link.

SPEP Program

Ranciere is giving a keynote lecture entitled "The Aesthetic Dimension" on Saturday 31 October at the annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy in Arlington, Virginia.

There is also a session, "Through the Looking Glass: Ranciere's Rejection of the Narrative of Representation", devoted to him, with papers by Gabriel Rockhill, Joshua Delpech-Ramey and Alexi Kukuljevic.

Ranciere in Radical Philosophy

Ranciere has an article, "Notes on the Photographic Image" in the current (July/August) issue of Radical Philosophy.

Le Spectateur Emancipe is reviewed by Bojana Cvejic in the same issue.

Two new books on Ranciere

Duke has two new books on Rancière forthcoming:

 

 

Communities of Sense: Rethinking Aesthetics and Politics;

 

And:

 

Jacques Rancière: History, Politics, Aesthetics (ed. Gabriel Rockhill and Philip Watts)

 

 

 

New issue of Parrhesia

I always enjoy this journal:

 

http://www.parrhesiajournal.org/

 

 

A bit more on Badiou

I did say that I knew it wasn’t going to be popular, didn’t I? And I can’t say I didn’t ask for it! But, yes, hands up, I have not read the two big books. I read two little books (Metapolitics and Ethics) and realised quite quickly that Badiou was – at best – ‘cultural studies lite’. (And I know that this formulation is going to enrage people. But the problem does seem to be that philosophy needs its examples, but then can’t be bothered to actually study them, and so contents itself with little asides...). So I wrote a quick polemic. Then people turn around and say ‘you can't say that until you've read every last word of Badiou’. And I see the point. But, I wonder, why would anyone read all of something or someone when 100% of the two books already read is not very compelling in any particular way? How many people who regard Jeffrey Archer as a bad novelist can back this up with exhaustive research? Why would they? ... Still, there are of course the matters of intellectual responsibility and diligence even in the blogosphere, so, I've ordered both of the big ‘Bad’ books and will read them on holiday in a few weeks and get back to you...

 

In the meantime, there’s this to nod along to or get annoyed with:

 

http://buymeout.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/badiou-and-the-future-of-philosophy/

 

Scattered Speculations on the Question of Badiou

Whilst taking a short break from undertaking a proper analysis of Badiou for a book I'm writing on Bruce Lee, I jotted down a little polemic the other day and put it up on another blog - one that I didn't really think anyone actually read, so I didn't think it would make any difference to anything or anyone. However, it appears to have kicked up a bit of a stink in some quarters. So, in the interests of ... well, I don't know what ... but at least because of the fraught and much disputed and contested proximity/overlap/arguments of Badiou and Ranciere, I think I'll post it here as well. Here's what I wrote:


This is not going to be popular. But I'm going to say it anyway.


1. Badiou's four ontologies basically just tell 'us' what we want to hear (this 'us' would appear to be the constituency Badiou seeks to critique - what we might call university-type Guardian readers): primarily, that 'Art' is really good - actually, more than this: that 'art' has an important ontological status. This, of course, justifies our already-held prejudices, preferences, predilections and pass-times - loving 'art', going to the art gallery, to see the challenging installation ('ooh, isn't that thought-provoking', etc). I mean, think about it: who really likes Badiou? Art PhD students. I wonder why. Why would they love a philosopher who philosophically legitimates art?


2. At the same time, of course, Badiou critiques the middle-class university-type Guardian-readers. As such, he appeals to our shared middle-class university-type ressentiment and sense of our own distinction and difference. That is, 'I' enjoy Badiou critiquing those others that I see every day reading the Guardian and in art galleries next to us at weekends... Of course, it doesn't apply to me, the true, faithful militant art lover...


3. Badiou's four ontologies are cosy, familiar, comforting and ultimately overall conservative: art, maths, love, militancy. Yeah, right.


4. Badiou appears to be radical. But, in this, he's just like Zizek. His radicalism is a rather weak championing of the most traditional of things (art, maths, love, militancy).


5. Badiou is an 'excellent' philosopher. His criterion is 'consistency'. In this, his is the philosophy of the 'university of excellence' (cf Bill Readings): it is non-referential and bears no necessary relation to reality or the real.


6. Badiou reads like a 'lite' introduction to Lacan and Foucault. But the problem is that his Foucault lacks the institutional critique, he hasn't quite got the point about the constitutively political dimension of institutionality, it ignores the argument about 'discourse' (substituting instead 'truth' versus 'opinion', and so on) and his Lacanianism is too quick to put the word 'fidelity' where really one should really put 'phantasy'.


7. Badiou, with his four numbers and types and immortals, etc., is a modern day Jung.


8. Badiou's 'political' philosophy could not sustain even a cursory Bourdieuian critique. Certainly not a deconstruction. Of course, it relies heavily on deconstructive categories and operations. But these are wrenched from a political orientation into the safe terrain of a-contextual disciplinary Philosophy.

June 4th 1989 and June 4th 2009: 20 year anniversary

As well as shutting down all social networking sites in mainland China over the days surrounding 4^th June, the Chinese government has reportedly declared June 3^rd – June 6^th “national server maintenance day”.

 

paul