Polemics / Alain Badiou ; part two, chapter 8 by Cécile Winter ; translated and with an introduction by Steve Cocoran.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Badiou, Alain

Contributor:

Winter, Cécile.

Standardized Title:

Circonstances. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Political science--Philosophy.

Political science.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 339 pages ; 20 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Verso, 2006.

Summary:

"Polemics" is a series of brilliant metapolitical reflections, demolishing established opinion and dominant propaganda, and reorienting our understanding of events from the Kosovo and Iraq wars to the Paris Commune and the Cultural Revolution. With critical insight and polemical skill, Badiou considers how language becomes judgment, which judgments form opinion, how opinions harden into propaganda, and which propaganda becomes the dominant power. With wit and profundity, Badiou presents a series of radical philosophical engagements with politics, and questions what constitutes political truth.

Contents:

PT. 1. PHILOSOPHY AND CIRCUMSTANCES: Introduction

Philosophy and the question of war today: 1. On September 11 2001: philosophy and the 'War against terrorism'

2. Fragments of a public journal on the American war against Iraq

3. On the war against Serbia: who strikes whom in the world today?

The 'democratic' fetish and racism: 4. On parliamentary 'democracy': the French presidential elections of 2002

5. The law on the Islamic headscarf

6. Daily humiliation

Openings/Affirmations: 7. The power of the open: A discourse on the necessity of fusing Germany and France

8. Third sketch of a manifesto of affirmationist art

Notes to part one

PT. 2. USES OF THE WORD 'JEW': Introduction

1. Israel: the country in the world where there are the fewest Jews?

2. The destruction of the European Jews and the question of evil (fragments from Ethics: an essay on the understanding of evil, translated by Peter Hallward)

3. A dialogue between a Jew from Darzia and an Arab from Epirus

4. Saint Paul and the Jews (excerpt from Saint Paul: the foundation of universalism, translated by Ray Brassier)

5. Against negationism

6. Local angel

7. Intervew at the Daily Haaretz

8. The master-signifier of the New Aryans (by Cécile Winter)

9. The word 'Jew' and the sycophant

Notes to part two

PT. 3. HISTORICITY OF POLITICS: LESSONS OF TWO REVOLUTIONS. 1. The Paris commune: a political declaration on politics

2. The cultural revolution: the last revolution?

A brief chronology of the cultural revolution (translated by Bruno Bosteels)

Notes to part three.

Notes:

"'Part one' first published as Circonstances 1 in 2003 ... and Circonstances 2 in 2004 ... ; 'Part two' first published as Circonstances 3 ... 'Part three' first published as 'La commune de Paris' and La revolution culturelle' ..."--T.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1844670899

OCLC:

76827959