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Abstract

Taking the publication in English of several works by Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière as its point of departure, this review article attempts to outline what may be at stake in reading these two authors together. Looking especially at the works on politics and on aesthetics (particularly Badiou’s Handbook of Inaesthetics and Rancière’s Politics of Aesthetics ), the article also draws on other major texts by these authors as a way of clarifying their basic philosophical principles. Under the rubrics of ‘the axiom of equality’ (Rancière) and ‘the empty set’ (Badiou), these two thinkers establish links with their tradition in ways that are mobilized towards invention or transfiguration in spheres of both politics and art.

Keywords

aesthetics Alain Badiou event mathematics politics Jacques Rancière

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References

Badiou, Alain ( 2001) Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward. London: Verso. (First published in French in 1993.)

Badiou, Alain ( 2002) Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return of Philosophy, trans. Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens. London: Continuum.

Badiou, Alain ( 2005a) Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham. London: Continuum. (First published in French in 1988.)

Badiou, Alain ( 2005b) Handbook of Inaesthetics, trans. Alberto Toscano. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (First published in French in 1998.)

Badiou, Alain ( 2005c) Metapolitics, trans. Jason Barker. London: Verso. (First published in French in 1998.)

Badiou, Alain ( 2009a) The Theory of the Subject, trans. Bruno Bosteels. London: Continuum. (First published in French in 1982.)

Badiou, Alain ( 2009b) Logic of Worlds: Being and Event II, trans. Alberto Toscano . London: Continuum. (First published in French in 2006.)

Derrida, Jacques ( 1974) Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. (First published in French in 1967.)

Heidegger, Martin ( 2002) Off the Beaten Track, trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

10.

Mallarmé, Stéphane (1982) Selected Poetry and Prose, edited by Mary Anne Caws. New York: New Directions.

11.

Rancière, Jacques ( 1975) La Leçon d’Althusser. Paris: Gallimard.

12.

Rancière, Jacques ( 1991) The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lesssons in Intellectual Emancipation, trans. Kristin Ross. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

13.

Rancière, Jacques ( 1999) Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans. Julie Rose . London: Verso. (First published in French in 1995.)

14.

Rancière, Jacques ( 2003) The Philosopher and his Poor, trans. John Drury, Corinne Oster and Andrew Parker. London: Verso. (First published in French in 1983.)

15.

Rancière, Jacques ( 2004) The Politics of Aesthetics, trans. Gabriel Rockhill with an Afterword by Slavoj Žižek. London: Verso. (First published in French in 2000.)

16.

Rockhill, Gabriel ( 2004) ‘The Silent Revolution’, SubStance 33(1): 54-76.

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Sellars, Roy ( 2007) ‘Harold Bloom (Comic) Critique’, pp. 255-89 in Graham Allen and Roy Sellars The Salt Companion to Harold Bloom. Cambridge: Salt.

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Žižek, Slavoj ( 1999) The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology . London: Verso.