Spring 2009 Seminar: “Truth Politics: Contextualizing Alain Badiou’s Logics of Worlds”
The class will meet every Thursday from 3.30-5.30 pm, in NK1 for weeks 1-8, and KCF7 for weeks 9-12.
Head of School: Professor Christopher Fynsk
Convener: Doctor Nick Nesbitt
Download the Syllabus (.doc)
“Nothing like it has ever been published in France,” Peter Hallward has written of Alain Badiou’s 2006 magnum opus, Logics of Worlds. Is this 600-page volume truly the unique event of contemporary thought Hallward claims it to be, or/and does it rather bear a complex relation to an intellectual field of which it is instead a particular and even peculiar outcropping? Does Logics of Worlds demand of its readers a gesture of unquestioning faith and commitment, or is it rather decipherable in relation to a range of recent work in political philosophy addressing the concept of truth? In wagering on the latter-and without pretending to exhaustivity-this seminar will take up the key concepts of Logics of Worlds (Truth, Fidelity, Event, World, Site, Point, Body) and place them in dissonant relation to a range of philosophers of political truth, including Zižek, Butler, Laclau, and Critchley. Simultaneously, select readings from other earlier texts will initiate a critical genealogy of ‘truth politics’ from Socrates’ Apology to Foucault, Deleuze, Levinas, and Jan Patočka.