Covering Part 8 of Alain Badiou’s Being and Event on “Theory of the Subject,” Alex and Andrew discuss the theory of subject and the event, and Badiou’s wider work.

Guest Andrei Rodin contextualizes Badiou’s project through its relation to the wider philosophy of mathematics. Rodin is a mathematician and philosopher with affiliations in France, including the University of Lorraine and the University Paris-Cité, and in Russia at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint-Petersburgh State University, as well as the Russian Society for History and Philosophy of Science. He is the author of Axiomatic Method and Category Theory.

Concepts related to the Theory of the Subject

Badiou’s Theory of the Subject, the Future Anterior of Truth, Paul Cohen’s Forcing, Comments on Lacan, Event versus Language, Subject, The Outside, The Undocumented Family, State as Preventing the Event, Decolonize Badiou.

Recap of Being and Event

(Parts 1-3) normal and natural, being qua being, entities multiples sets void, ordinal chains, infinity (natural and real), being is the state and state of situation (form through set theory) (Part 4) turning point, there will always be sites that are presented but whose members are represented, gap, normal and abnormal, un- in- ex-, (Second Half of the Book) how things work, fidelity as a procedure that assigning belonging (temporal), quasi existentialism of the decision, against a construction which is an internal model that grinds through itself, construction always hits an impasse (errancy of the excess of the situation), external model, excess (End of the Book), fidelity to the event, not an act of construction, subtraction, the subtractive procedure is forcing (Cohen), the generic is a product of forcing (Cohen), the four truth procedures (love, art, science, politics) are for subjects, the subject is local configuration of event, fidelity, force, generic.

Further Reading

Manifesto for Philosophy (BE Explainer), Number and Numbers (math notes for BE), Conditions (Four Truth Procedures); BE Trilogy: (1) BE is both abstract and set theoretical, (2) LW is in the world and takes the perspective from world that truth interrupts, and IT (3) takes the perspective of truth to asks where everything else comes from (in favor of infinite against finite); Logic of Worlds is less heroic, undoes the eureka theory of event, more temporality and history, subjectivity as process, phenomenology, additional math theories, category theory; Immanence of Truths, back to set theory, transfinite mathematics and large cardinals, in the Gödel-Cohen debate “I choose Cohen”

Interview with Andrei Rodin

WVO Quine, Set Theory, Meta-Mathematics, Category Theory, Computation, ZFC and Paul Cohen, Constructivist Mathematics, Infinities and Georg Cantor, Euclid and Numbers, Big Numbers, Non-Countable Sets, Axioms, David Hilbert, Generic, Forcing

Links

Rodin page, http://philomatica.org/

Rodin papers, https://varetis.academia.edu/AndreiRodin

Rodin texts, http://philomatica.org/my-stuff/my-texts/

Rodin, Review of Badiou’s “Mathematics of the Transcendental,” http://philomatica.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/braspublished.pdf

Rodin, Axiomatic Method and Category Theory, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-00404-4

Covering Part 7 of Alain Badiou’s Being and Event on “Forcing the Generic,” Alex and Andrew discuss the four truth procedures as a way to force the generic into existence.

Guest Madhavi Menon presents a queer universalist approach through indifference to difference. Menon is Professor of English at Ashoka University in India. She is the author of five books, including Indifference to Difference: On Queer Universalism published by University of Minnesota Press.

Concepts related to Forcing the Generic,

The Four Truth Procedures (Love, Science, Politics, Art), Critiquing the Encyclopedia of Knowledge, Generic Procedures as Constructing through Negation, The Figure of the Militant, Naming, Jacques Rancière, Generic versus Universal, Gender and Genre, The Undocumented Family, Supernumerary, the Young Marx, Indifference to Difference, Rousseau’s General Will.

Interview with Madhavi Menon

Reading as Surprise, Queerness and Superabundance, Universalism of Failure, Indifference to Difference, Cultural and Identity Politics, Scene of the Street, Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, Comic Books, the Hijab, Anti-Philosophy, Anti-Identity, GWF Hegel and the Fury of the Absolute, Indian Transgender, Against the Sovereign.

Links

Menon profile, https://www.ashoka.edu.in/profile/madhavi-menon/

Menon, Indifference to Difference: On Queer Universalism, https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/indifference-to-difference

Covering Part 6 of Alain Badiou’s Being and Event on “The Impasse of Ontology,” Alex and Andrew discuss Badiou’s critique of the discernible and constructible as foreclosures of the event.

Guest Calvin Warren thinks the catastrophe through the post-metaphysics of anti-math and the problem of the one. Warren is a professor of African American Studies at Emory University. His research interests include Continental Philosophy (particularly post-Heideggerian and nihilistic philosophy), Lacanian psychoanalysis, queer theory, Black Philosophy, Afro-pessimism, and theology. He is the author of Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation (Duke University Press).

Concepts related to The Impasse of Ontology

The Cantor-Gödel-Cohen-Easton Symptom, Events as Decisions, James C Scott’s Seeing Like a State, The Impasse of Ordinality/Cardinality Set/Number Situation/State and Belonging/Inclusion, Errancy and the Immeasurable, Cardinality, Diagonalization and Cantor/Continuum Hypothesis, Kurt Gödel and Paul Cohen, Jacques Lacan and the Impasse of Formalization, The Power Set and the Size of the State, The Subject and the Abyss, Critiques of Leibniz’s Discernible and Constructible Worlds (and Analytic Philosophy’s Symbolic Thought), Rousseau’s General and Undifferentiated  Being of Truth (and Paul Cohen’s Absolutization of Errancy), and all Classic Metaphysics that includes Communist Eschatology (and Large Cardinals, the Virtual Being of Theology, and Transcendence).

Interview with Calvin Warren

Qui Parle on The Catastrophe, Ontological Terror, Alain Badiou and the One as Anti-Black, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Pure Form as Pure Violence, Black aesthetics, Katherine McKittrick, The Ledger as Both the Inclusion of Black Death and the Concealment of Black Life, Catastrophe, Abyss, Nihilism, Nothingness, Pessimism, Post-Metaphysics, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Lacan, Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon and the Zone of Non-Being, Subtraction, Aesthetics, Romanticism, Afrofuturism

Links

Warren profile, https://aas.emory.edu/people/bios/warren-calvin.html

Warren papers, https://emory.academia.edu/calvinwarren

Warren, Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation, https://www.dukeupress.edu/ontological-terror

Warren, "The Catastrophe: Black Feminist Poethics, (Anti)form, and Mathematical Nihilism," https://muse.jhu.edu/article/749148/pdf

Covering Part 5 of Alain Badiou’s Being and Event on “Breaking the Law,” Alex and Andrew discuss intervention and fidelity through subtraction and deduction.

Guest Anna Kornbluh discusses mathematical formalism, the spontaneity of vitalism, and Marxist humanism. Kornbluh is a Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is author, most recently, of The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space (2019) and is working on a new book that deals with immediacy and mediation.

Concepts related to Breaking the Law

Digital Philosophy, States and Subjects, Being, Events, Randomness, Badiou’s books Manifesto for Philosophy, Second Manifesto for Philosophy, Number and Numbers, Conditions, Concepts of Undecidability, a Subtractive Definition of Intervention, Seven Features of the Event (A-G), Critique of Speculative Leftism, ZFC’s Axiom of Choice as Fidelity to the Event, Fidelity, Theory of Points, Deduction.

Interview with Anna Kornbluh

Form and Formalism, Formlessness, Mathematical Formalism, Marx and Marxism, Foucault and Anarcho-Vitalism, Marxist Humanism, Spinoza and Badiou’s Anti-Party, Hunger for the Signifier, Jacques Lacan, Democratic Neoliberalism.

Links

Kornbluh homepage, http://www.annakornbluh.com/

Kornbluh profile, https://engl.uic.edu/profiles/kornbluh-anna/

Kornbluh, The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space, https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo44521006.html

Kornbluh, Realizing Capital: Financial and Psychic Economies in Victorian Form, https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823280384/realizing-capital/

Covering Part 4 of Alain Badiou’s Being and Event, described through the expression “On the Edge of the Void,” Alex and Andrew cover the event, history, and the contradictory hypotheses of the ultra-one (the necessity of the event) and the being of non-being (the necessity of the decision).

Guest Elisabeth Paquette identifies limits to universality from Badiou’s Marxist legacy and suggests Afro-Caribbean approaches to emancipation through difference. Paquette is a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the author of Universal Emancipation: Race Beyond Badiou and is currently working on a book on Sylvia Wynter.

Concepts related to the Edge of the Void

Being Qua Being through (1) a Presentation of the Multiple, (2) the Void as the Proper Name of Being, (3) Representation as the Excess of the State of a Situation, (4) Nature as Normal, and (5) Infinity that Expands Beyond the Limit, History as an Alternative to Nature, Singular Multiplicities, Edge of the Void, Site of the State and Evental Site, Axiom of Foundation, The Subject Who Makes a Decision, The Matheme of the Event, Contradictory Hypotheses of the Event, the Standpoint of the Undecidable, Event as External to Ontology

Interview with Elisabeth Paquette

Badiou’s Saint Paul, System Thinking, Sara Ahmed, Audre Lorde, Critiques of Marxism, Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césiare, Leon Trotsky and Whiteness, Universal, Difference, Sexual Difference, Subtraction, Sylvia Wynter, CLR James, Édouard Glissant.

Links

Paquette profile, https://pages.charlotte.edu/elisabethpaquette/

Paquette papers, https://uncc.academia.edu/ElisabethPaquette

Paquette, Universal Emancipation: Race Beyond Badiou, https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/universal-emancipation

Covering Part 3 of Alain Badiou’s Being and Event on “Nature & Infinity,” Alex and Andrew complete the "arithmetic, natural story" that constitutes Badiou’s presentation of being within the book so far.

Guest Sarah Pourciau explores the history and philosophy of set theory, while also scrutinizing the conclusions Badiou tries to draw from it. Pourciau is a professor of German Studies at Duke University. Her expertise includes 19th Century German thought, including both philosophy and mathematics (Dedekind, Cantor). She is the author of the book The Writing of Spirit: Soul, System, and the Roots of Language Science.

Concepts on Nature and Infinity

Political Modernism, Math as the Difference between Real and Natural Numbers, Martin Heidegger’s Poetic Ontology, Jacques Lacan’s Matheme, Physis, Nature, Natural Multiples, the Non-existence of Nature, Cardinality and Ordinality, Ordinal Chain, Infinity and Finitude, Arithmetic and Natural Infinity, Georg Cantor and Richard Dedekind, Five Critiques of GWF Hegel’s Notion of Infinity.

Interview with Sarah Pourciau

Digital Ocean, Richard Dedekind, Platonic Eidos, Georg Cantor and the Abyss, Gender and “The Feminine,” Kantian Intuition, Logos and the Origin of Set Theory, Politics, Naming and Numbers, Spontaneity, Différance, Alan Turing and Kurt Gödel, Computability.

Links

Pourciau profile, https://scholars.duke.edu/person/sarah.pourciau

Pourciau, The Writing of Spirit: Soul, System, and the Roots of Language Science, https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823275632/the-writing-of-spirit/

Pourciau, "A/logos: An Anomalous Episode in the History of Number," https://muse.jhu.edu/article/728110

Pourciau, "On the Digital Ocean," https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/717319

Continuing with Part 2 of Alain Badiou’s Being and Event on the topic of “Badiou vs. Deleuze,” Alex and Andrew compare the metaphysics of the two French philosophers Alain Badiou and Gilles Deleuze through ontologies of multiplicity, mathematics, identity, and the one.

Guests David Maruzzella and Gil Morejón discuss the mid-century intellectual climate of France, the history of truth, Spinozism, and philosophies of the subject. Maruzzella completed a dissertation on the concepts of science and ideology in contemporary French philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago, and is currently Collection and Exhibition Manager at the DePaul Art Museum. Maruzzella has also worked as a translator, co-translating (with Morejón) a volume of essays on Spinoza by Alexandre Matheron published by Edinburgh University Press. Morejón completed a dissertation on Leibniz, Spinoza, and Hume also at DePaul. In addition to early modern philosophy, Morejón also works on German idealism, social epistemology, Marxist critical theory, twentieth century continental philosophy, and is co-host of the podcast What’s Left of Philosophy?

Keywords from Badiou vs. Deleuze

Paris VIII Vincennes, François Dosse’s Intersecting Lives, What is Philosophy?, A Thousand Plateaus, The Fascism of the Potato, The Clamor of Being, Platonism, Multiplicity, Assemblages and Sets, Leibniz and Constructible Worlds, Vitalism, the Politics of Numbers, Digital/Analog, Computers, Fidelity.

Interview with David Maruzzella and Gil Morejón

Alexandre Matheron, The History of Truth and Science in France, Historicity, Spinoza, Event, Void, Subject, Louis Althusser, Georges Canguilhem, Rationalism and Empiricism, Math and Physics, Finite and Democratic Materialism.

Links

Maruzzella papers, https://ens.academia.edu/DavidMaruzzellla

Matheron, Politics, Ontology and Knowledge in Spinoza, translated by Maruzzella and Morejón, https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-politics-ontology-and-knowledge-in-spinoza.html

Morejón profile, https://gilmorejon.wordpress.com/

Morejón papers, https://depaul.academia.edu/GilMorej%C3%B3n

What’s Left of Philosophy? podcast, www.leftofphilosophy.com

Covering Part 2 of Alain Badiou’s Being and Event on “Belonging, Inclusion, and the State,” Alex and Andrew discuss belonging, inclusion, and the state through Badiou’s set-theoretical philosophy of the situation.

Guest Nick Nesbitt outlines an anti-colonial politics of the revolutionary event through an encounter between Caribbean thinkers and Badiou. Nesbitt is Professor of French and Italian at Princeton University and author or editor of many books including Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment (2008). Nesbitt is also the editor of a collection of writings and speeches by Toussaint Louverture, titled The Haitian Revolution

Concepts related to Belonging and Inclusion

Sets, The Situation, Inclusion and Belonging, Multiples, Infinity, GWF Hegel on Infinity, The Continuum Hypothesis, Lack and Excess, Power Set, Null Sets, The State, Undocumented Family, Marxism, the State, Socialism.

Interview with Nick Nesbitt

Badiou’s Logic of Worlds, Worlds, Toussaint Louverture, the Event, French versus Haitian Revolutions (1789/1804), Abstraction, Universality, and the Axiom of Equality, CLR James, Structural Causality, Baruch Spinoza, Édouard Glissant, Louis Althusser, Slavery and Color.

Links

Nick Nesbitt profile, https://fit.princeton.edu/people/f-nick-nesbitt

Nesbitt papers, https://princeton.academia.edu/NickNesbitt

Nesbitt, Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment,

Nesbitt, The Price of Slavery: Capitalism and Revolution in the Caribbean, https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5724/

Louverture, The Haitian Revolution, edited by Nesbitt, https://www.versobooks.com/books/3046-the-haitian-revolution

Covering Part 1 of Alain Badiou’s Being and Event on the topic of “Being,” Alex and Andrew introduce some foundational concepts and address Badiou’s relation to other philosophers.

Guest Knox Peden outlines where Badiou fits within the intellectual history of French philosophy, Marxism, and science. Peden is author of Spinoza Contra Phenomenology: French Rationalism from Cavaillès to Deleuze (published in 2014). Knox has also worked as an editor and translator including collaborations on Cahiers pour l'Analyse (published as Concept and Form, volumes 1 and 2) and On Logic and the Theory of Science by Jean Cavaillès.

Schools of Philosophy

Math and the Philosophy of Mathematics, a Mathematic Ontology based in Set Theory, Being Qua Being, Martin Heidegger and Badiou’s Critique of Poetic Ontology, Post-Cartesian Theories of the Subject from Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Jacques Lacan, Logical Positivism and the Vienna Circle.

Key Thinkers and Concepts

Jean Cavaillès, Albert Lautman, Georg Cantor, and Kurt Gödel, Axiomatic Set Theory (Axiom of Extensionality, Power Sets, Axiom of Union, Axiom of Separation, Axioms of Replacement and Substitution), The Count, The One, Void, ∅ (Mark Naught), Nature, Name, Cardinality.

Interview with Knox Peden

French Marxism, Marxist Science and Ideology, Rationalism, Empiricism, Phenomenology and Edmund Husserl, Gaston Bachelard and Philosophy of Science, Truth, Cahiers pour l’Analyse including Jacques-Alain Miller and Jean-Claude Milner, “Mark and Lack,” the Subject, Suture.

Links

Knox Peden profile, https://hass.uq.edu.au/profile/7697/knox-peden

Peden, Spinoza Contra Phenomenology: French Rationalism from Cavaillès to Deleuze, https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=22793

Hallward and Peden, Concept and Form, two volumes dedicated to Cahiers pour l’Analyse, https://www.versobooks.com/series_collections/35-concept-and-form

Cahiers pour l'Analyse(electronic edition) http://cahiers.kingston.ac.uk/

Cavaillès, On Logic and the Theory of Science, translated by Peden and Mackay, https://www.urbanomic.com/book/logic-theory-science/

Join Andrew Culp and Alexander R. Galloway for a deep dive into Alain Badiou's 1988 book Being and Event. Pairing close readings of the text with special guests, it promises to enlighten both those new to Badiou as well as those already familiar with his work. Episodes released weekly through Spring 2023.